A YORK web hosting company named as one of the Top 50 fastest growing technology companies in the north is accelerating its expansion with the completion of its first acquisition.

Bytemark, which hosts internet servers and cloud hosting from its own data centre at York Business Park, has taken over Derby hosting company Swordfish Hosting for an undisclosed sum.

The deal, which was completed this week, includes Swordfish’s data centre assets and its entire customer base, adding to Bytemark’s York and Manchester data centres, and 23 staff.

Matthew Bloch, co-founder and managing director of Bytemark said: “We’re delighted to welcome Swordfish’s customers to Bytemark. This acquisition is an important part of our plans for growth, building on the success of our own data centre in York.”

Swordfish Hosting was founded in 2007 by Stuart Harper and Richard Marriott, and offers managed dedicated and cloud hosting from its Tier 3 Derby data centre.

Stuart Harper, co-founder of Swordfish Hosting said: “We’ve spent over seven years building a successful hosting company that cares about the service to our customers.

“To maintain that level of service and grow, we needed to find another technically led company to move things forward. In Bytemark, we’ve found a company, and a team, who can do just that.”

Bytemark opened its £1.2 million data centre in York in 2013. Its customers include brands such as Carling.com, Asda and the Royal Institution among thousands of other domains, supported by a backup site in Manchester, and 10Gpbs national fibre network.

Peter Taphouse, co-founder and technical director of Bytemark said: “We have been looking for another technically led hosting company to work with for some time and Swordfish provided us with the right opportunity.”

“The fact that it already has a strong technical reputation meant that it was a natural fit for Bytemark’s existing customer base.”

Bytemark Hosting was named one of the Top 50 Fastest Growing Tech Companies in the North at the GP Bullhound Northern Tech Awards 2014.

Its York data centre, YO23, was named a finalist in the DatacenterDynamics EMEA Awards for Innovation in Medium-sized Data centre in December 2013, while the business was a finalist in last year’s Press Business Awards for the Think Green category.