Silicon Valley firm snaps up Allegro Networks

THE NWIX internet business, which was bought out of administration in 2012 and rebranded as Allegro Networks, has been acquired by a Silicon Valley firm IIX.

Allegro, which has around 30 staff in Wilmslow, operates a fibre network between Manchester and London and sells services to internet service providers.

In a statement IIX said it was attracted to Allegro’s “pioneering” platform, Snap, which allows for faster peering – the exchange of traffic – between the different networks that make up the internet.

“Snap eliminates the manual and laborious process of creating direct network interconnections across multiple markets that can take weeks and often months,” it said.

“Using a laptop, tablet or mobile device, customers can log on to a secure portal and buy and provision connections to the content providers, cloud providers, and other trading partners that are key to their business – in under five minutes.”

Andy Davidson, Allegro’s chief technology officer, has been appointed IIX’s vice president of network engineering, Europe.

He said: “This acquisition enables our customers to have direct access to additional leading content and application providers globally.”

NWIX was founded in 2004 by founder Nick Whittaker who previously designed and built the Manchester Internet Exchange. It went into administration in November 2012 and its assets were picked up for £200,000 by Sheffield telecoms business Ask4 and Wilmslow-based property developer Mark Stott. Allegro’s directors were Ask4 director Jon Thornhill, and Giles Beswick and Mr Stott.

The terms of the IIX deal were not disclosed.