IceWEB, a provider of unified data storage appliances for both virtual and cloud environments, has recently executed a letter of intent to acquire Computers and Tele-Comm (CTC), a privately held wireless broadband provider that offers web hosting, email hosting, and colocation hosting. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

IceWEB CEO Rob Howe said in a statement that the acquisition allows IceWEB to “agressively compete in the cloud computing space.” CTC’s wireless ISP chops, he said, will expand the company’s capabilities in the cloud services industry, such as developing expandable hybrid cloud solutions. 

IceWEB will leverage CTC’s network acccess point (NAP) to gain a competitive advantage. “It is important for our customers and shareholders to fully comprehend the unique physical assets of CTC,” he said. “The carrier-neutral NAP is not only a rare, highly sophisticated technology, but it also represents a significant competitive advantage in that it enables the data center to provide customers with the lowest transmission latency possible. That means their data moves faster, saving critically important time.”

In a addition to leveraging CTC’s NAP, IceWEB will expand its data center “into an astounding 1 million or more square feet of highly secure, energy-efficient, disaster-proof space in a purpose-built structure housed in an underground limestone cavern,” Howe said. “This acquisition adds a major set of additional critical components, capabilities and extensions to those solutions, beginning with our own fully secure, powerful, and expandable data center.”

The announcement was released after a heated discussion during a panel at the 2013 Channel Partners Conference and Expo in Las Vegas regarding the roles of value-added resellers (VARs) and telecomm agents in the cloud services market. The two events, as far as we know, are unrelated, but this acquisition adds more to the discourse.

IceWeb created a cloud services business unit back in December 2012 to expand cloud capabilities to its customers.