IT consulting firm Level 3 Communications recently acquired content-delivery firm Savvis putting it in the position to benefit from Microsoft’s steadily expanding Internet search and video business.  Savvis’ content-delivery network helps 100 customers, with Microsoft being the largest customers and the one with the most resources.

IT consulting experts state that this will be a great move for Level 3 because it will tap them directly into the resources Microsoft offers.  Currently major providers for Microsoft’s Internet business include Savvis, Akamai and Hewlett-Packard.

According to Microsoft spokesperson Arne Josefberg, as Microsoft grows its online services business, strengthening the network infrastructure will become more and more important in order to better serve customers, partners and advertisers.  Because IT consulting firm Level 3 already runs a huge Internet services segment through its fiber-optic network, its addition to the family will be welcome.

This $135 million acquisition was announced Tuesday and will be finished within the first quarter of 2007.  The acquisition of IT consulting firm Savvis will include network components, customer contracts and all intellectual property.  CDN, the Savvis content-delivery network had sales of $15 million for the nine months ending September 30.  The CDN components will allow Level 3 to better take advantage of rich media applications including video, Web 2.0 applications, multiplayer online gaming, software and others via the Internet.

IT consulting firm Level 3 will bring great experience in online video distribution to the table and make its relationship with Microsoft stronger than it was previously because it will get closer to the heart of the company.

IT consulting firm Savvis will spend $200 million creating four new data centers for the managed hosting and collocation services in Atlanta, New York, Washington, D.C. and Santa Clara, CA.  

Added By:  Computer Consulting 101