The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, supports Pulsant’s strategy of geographic expansion, allowing the company to extend its edge platform to Manchester and expand its northwest UK presence.

Edge data centres in cities and large towns enable service providers to bring content, apps and services closer to their customers, with the lower latency and improved delivery performance that comes from it.

This is Pulsant’s first acquisition since receiving investment from French private equity group Antin Infrastructure Partners (EPA: ANTIN) in July 2021.

The Manchester deal includes the data centre, the transfer of 40 clients, and all site staff from M247. In turn, M247 will become a major client of Pulsant, in continuing to use the Manchester site to serve its own business needs going forward.

The central Manchester, 6,500 sq ft data centre provides capacity of around 1MW of power, with Pulsant now planning further investment to expand and upgrade the facility.

The location offers good transport links and connectivity, including a LINX (London Internet Exchange) point-of-presence (PoP).

Rob Coupland, chief executive officer at Pulsant, said: “The acquisition of such a well-established and high-quality facility is an important step in our strategy to bring the benefits of edge computing to every business across the UK.”

Darryl Edwards, chief executive officer at M247, added: “Pulsant’s extensive experience in operating regional data centres makes them uniquely placed to take over the data centre. We are looking forward to developing our relationship through the new strategic supply partnership, to maintain a full set of connectivity and cloud-based services to our customers.”

Pulsant already operated 10 regional edge data centres across the UK, including sites in Milton Keynes; Croydon, London; Newcastle; Edinburgh, Scotland and Reading.

Last December, technology distributor Exertis started partnering with Pulsant to provide local and lower latency connectivity to the reseller channel. As a result, Exertis can offer colocation services alongside its existing portfolio of cloud, edge and networking solutions.