Rackspace to Acquire Onica

Rackspace US, Inc. agreed to acquire Onica Group LLC, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) Premier Consulting Partner and AWS MSP.

Locations of Onica

This acquisition brings Onica’s professional services capabilities – including advisory, architecture and engineering and application development – to the Rackspace portfolio, complementing its existing managed cloud services capabilities.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, Onica has grown to more than 350 consultants across North America.

It has raised $20 million in funding over one round on October 31, 2017.

The company holds 9 AWS competencies across data and analytics, DevOps, education, healthcare, industrial software, IoT, Microsoft Workloads, migration and storage. It has been a regular on Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces list and ranked fifth on the CRN Fast Growth 150 list.

As a cloud-native services company, it helps customers build new revenue streams, increase efficiency and deliver experiences by bringing the capabilities of the cloud to some of the most complex technology projects.

“As a cloud pioneer, Onica has established itself as one of the largest pure-play AWS consultancies, with an unmatched reputation for true capability leadership with AWS and customers,” said Kevin Jones, CEO, Rackspace. “This acquisition will strengthen our ability to meet all of our customer needs on AWS, and together, we will have the most complete set of professional services and managed service capabilities in the industry. Rackspace is known for providing fanatical experience to its customers and Onica’s customer-first mindset is a natural culture fit. We are thrilled to welcome Stephen, Tolga and the talented Onica team to the Racker family.”

The demand for professional services for public cloud is growing and customers are continuing to adopt cloud solutions. The acquisition of Onica will enhance and extend Rackspace’s offering to customers who are maturing on AWS and seeking professional services spanning the spectrum of expertise in the cloud.

“By combining our capabilities with Rackspace’s global presence, resources and scale, we will be better positioned to achieve our mission of helping customers innovate using AWS,” said Stephen Garden, CEO, Onica. “We pride ourselves on delivering results for customers, and in Rackspace we have found a partner that shares our passion for providing a customer-obsessed experience.”

The transaction is expected to close in late 4FQ19.

Garden and Onica CTO Tolga Tarhan will continue to lead the Onica team, reporting to Sid Nair, GM of Americas, Rackspace.

Both companies are privately held, with Rackspace owned by affiliates of certain funds of Apollo Global Management, LLC and certain co-investors.

Onica is a portfolio company of Sunstone Partners.

Evercore, Inc. acted as sole financial advisor to Rackspace on the transaction.

Barclays acted as sole financial advisor to Onica.