NEW YORK – February 3rd, 2023 — Uptime Institute the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority, a Dominus Capital, L.P. portfolio company, announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Academia Group Limited and all of its global subsidiaries including CNet Training, Ltd.
CNet Training, located in Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk, England is an International award-winning technical education company. CNet Training has been designing and delivering professional network and data center infrastructure training programs since 1996 and has trained over 83,000 data center professionals across 45 countries.
“The data center industry is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. The continued, extraordinary industry expansion requires a growing and diverse workforce, however concerns over the industry’s ability to attract, educate, and retain skilled technical staff persist. This acquisition will help our respective customers thrive in a rapidly changing ecosystem, by giving them access to a range of world class corporate learning and development technical education programs that are backed up by practical experience and specialized domain expertise,” said Martin V. McCarthy, CEO Uptime Institute.
CNet Training dramatically extends the range and depth of Uptime Education offerings and positions Uptime as the Learning & Development partner of choice around the world. The combined offerings will include solutions valuable for every point in a career for a digital infrastructure professional. This includes entry level staff, even adolescents in apprenticeships, to post graduate degrees in Data Center Leadership for savvy, long serving professionals.
“We are excited to join the accelerating Uptime team. CNet Training was already growing quickly, but now will have many more opportunities through further geographic expansion, and new service offerings, as a part of Uptime. As we look forward to this next phase, I want to personally thank all our clients, staff, and investors who have supported us over these past 26 + years of delivering unique value and in bringing ongoing innovation to the Digital Infrastructure Education market,” said Andrew Stevens, CEO of CNet Training.
Uptime Institute’s Intelligence team recently completed a market research study indicating the number of staff needed to design, build, and operate data centers will continue to grow globally from about 2.0 million in 2019 to nearly 2.3 million by 2025. A wide range of specialist jobs (230 detailed in Uptime Institute Data Center Career Pathfinder, developed in association Google, Meta & Microsoft) are required by the sector to support its continued expansion. The combination of Uptime Institute and CNet Training will directly address the evolving training needs of all current and future data center employees as they progress through their careers.
Bob Haswell, Founding Partner at Dominus Capital, added “This first acquisition for Uptime under Dominus ownership will further establish Uptime Education as the unparalleled leader in Digital Infrastructure Education around the world. Uptime is the undisputed market leader worldwide, with results-oriented solutions for both providers and consumers of services delivered through mission critical data center, the true digital foundries, and factories of the Internet economy. The ongoing availability, resiliency, sustainability, security, and business value of these key infrastructure building blocks still overwhelmingly depend on the quality and capabilities of the workforces that operate them, and the skill, training and education of each individual team member.”
Uptime Institute continues to identify and assess potential add-on acquisitions to broaden its offering and continue to execute on its mission to help data center owners, operators, and tenants ensure resilient, available, sustainable, and secure digital infrastructure.
CNet worked with the experienced tech M&A specialists Prism Corporate Broking to facilitate the deal.
About Uptime Institute
Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. For over 25 years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level consistent with their business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers – the backbone of the digital economy. With its Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews, SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, broad range of additional risk and performance assessments, Intelligence research services, and accredited training courses completed by over 10,000 data center professionals, Uptime has helped thousands of companies in over 100 countries to optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency.
Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, KSA Singapore, and Taipei. For more information, please visit www.uptimeinstitute.com.
About CNet Training
CNet Training (CNet) has been delivering technical education programs since 1996. Today CNet is the global leader in technical education for the digital infrastructure industry, comprising the data center and network infrastructure sectors and is the only industry dedicated education provider to award both internationally recognized qualifications and professional certifications. A significant part of CNet Training ’s history is the development of the highly acclaimed Global Digital Infrastructure Education Framework, which offers industry professionals an opportunity to plan technical education, qualifications, and certifications to meet on-going individual and business needs.
Since CNet’s inception it has delivered training across 218 delivery locations in 45 countries and in 19 time zones. Over 83,000 individuals of 153 different nationalities have accessed CNet Training’s technical education. For more information, please visit www.cnet-training.com
About Dominus Capital, L.P.
Based in New York, Dominus Capital is a leading middle-market private equity investment firm focused on management-led buyouts and growth capital investments in family-owned and founder-operated companies in the business services and light manufacturing sectors. Drawing on the experience, knowledge and network of its founders and a team of in-house operating executives, Dominus works hand-in-hand with exceptional management teams to unlock the untapped potential of its portfolio companies. Recently named one of the top 50 middle market private equity firms, Dominus takes a long-term approach to investing and has a consistent and highly successful track record of achieving significant growth at its portfolio companies. The Dominus team has executed more than 90 transactions over the past 20+ years. For more information, please visit www.dominuscap.com.
