QTS, exits, asset-light, Google, M&A, cryptocurrency
The past week was a busy one and most of the activity revolved around hyperscale cloud and colocation. The focus on cloud and colocation also drove the industry narrative last week with the QTS exit from managed hosting and private cloud. This past week we saw its strategy put into motion as QTS signed a 24 MW wholesale customer. The win got us thinking about some key questions. One of them: how likely is it for a hyperscale cloud to actually move out of a leased data centre? And another: how much leasing and building will hyperscale clouds engage in? And will that include other asset-light approaches? The hyperscale clouds have been particularly busy in recent weeks. Alibaba rolled out a number of new products targeted at European end users, is adding AZs (also in Europe) and has started to pre-sell in its newest APAC node in Jakarta, Indonesia. Google hired another senior executive and confirmed a big win with the NCAA (which followed its recent win of Apple’s iCloud service). It also partnered up with Acronis’s backup tools that ultimately will let service providers build new offerings that are asset-light. Meanwhile, Azure continues with its momentum. Another driver of wholesale colocation growth is the cryptocurrency market. And we have some details on a recent strategic move, acquiring Hydro66, that is aimed at pushing further into this market. There were also some interesting strategic developments. In APAC, Exabytes continues to roll up SMB hosting assets, ConvergOne picked up another integrator and earlier last month, Premier BPO picked up dinCloud, a channel-centric DaaS and infrastructure services provider. Meanwhile, Internap updated its guidance on the heels of its acquisition of SingleHop.
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