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TDS (NYSE: TDS) this week renamed its growing Hosted and Managed Services (HMS) subsidiary OneNeck IT Solutions LLC (http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/tds-hms-renames-itself-oneneck-it-solutions-unifies-managed-services-brands/2014-01-06) , a move that will house its growing collection of cloud, managed and IT services under one brand.
Building this business did not happen overnight.
Like its larger ILEC brethren CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ), the company had to conduct a number of targeted acquisitions to build this solutions set. Over the past four years, the telco purchased five managed services and IT-related companies: OneNeck IT Services (http://www.fiercetelecom.com/special-reports/most-important-mas-2011/tds-purchases-oneneck) , VISI, TEAM Technologies (http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/tds-expands-hostedmanaged-services-play-team-companies-acquisition/2010-12-16) , Vital Support Systems (http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/tds-complements-its-cloud-managed-service-portfolio-vital-support-systems-a/2012-06-12) and MSN Communications (http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/tds-acquires-it-services-provider-msn-communications-40m/2013-10-09) .
Each of these deals brought different elements of expertise to the table. VISI and TEAM gave TDS Tier 3 data center capabilities. OneNeck had advanced application hosting, while MSN and Vital Support Systems had IT solution services.
Initially, TDS housed these elements...