ByteGrid has just increased its base by 170 customers through its acquisition of NetRiver, a Seattle-based colo provider of cloud services and managed storage. (You get married and all of a sudden you have a whole new set of friends.)

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but ByteGrid's purchase includes a 45k SF, 5.4 MW facility in Lynnwood, and NetRiver's employees will join its firm. This now gives ByteGrid a fixed platform to launch managed hosting with smaller customers across its data center empire, says ByteGrid's Ken Parent (snapped at DICE, our Data Center Investment Conference & Expo in DC last month). Look for further growth in the pipeline, he says.

Ken tells us ByteGrid is still in acquisition mode, targeting a half dozen data centers across the country. This comes just a few months after ByteGrid entered Chicago with the purchase of CNA's flagship 70k SF, Tier III data center in Aurora in a sale and partial leaseback agreement. It also secured an incentive grant from Montgomery County, Md., where it operates a data center (above) that will allow ByteGrid to offer up to $12M in customer incentives to offset IT op costs.