M&A, hyperscale, expansion, AZs, wholesale, re-brands
It didn’t take long for the sector to kick back into gear as M&A activity on the hosting and cloud side followed a run of data centre deals.
The recent Vantage and Cologix acquisitions saw data centre assets in Quebec picked up and this past week there was another transaction coming out of Canada. However, this one was on the MSP side of the game. Private equity firm M/C Partners acquired two cloud and managed hosting providers – Carbon60 Networks and Gossamer Threads – and put them together as they look to build a platform that will lead the way into managed third party cloud services in Canada.
But the biggest deal of the week saw a merger between long-time sector mainstays Hostway and HOSTING. The two firms are looking to combine forces to tackle the SMB and mid-market that is undergoing a significant amount of transition amid the rise of hyperscale clouds. We have some details.
While there continues to be manoeuvring amongst independent providers, the hyperscale clouds are also involved in M&A, though they are focused on adding technology and capabilities. This past week AWS acquired CloudEndure to help it with backup, migration and data portability.
Meanwhile, it was busy in the Singapore data centre market. Equinix will build its fourth data centre there, while Microsoft put additional AZs into GA in Singapore as well. In other parts of Asia, there was more expansion activity. GDS is building in Shanghai to accommodate hyperscale deployments and STT GDC is expanding into Thailand.
And back in the US, there has been a run of expansion announcements lately. Two firms that are in the wholesale game and moving into new markets are Vantage and RagingWire. Vantage acquired land in Phoenix and will build out a new campus, while RagingWire is set to build in Silicon Valley.
Finally, back to the strategic side of things, the market officially saw a new entrant. Last year, Brookfield acquired AT&T’s data centre portfolio and they came to market this past week as Evoque Data Center Solutions. We spoke with management and have some details.
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