M&A, SMB, strategics, IPO, edge, MSPs
The sector saw a surge of M&A and strategic activity in recent weeks, while developments around edge computing continued to see momentum.
There were a number of notable transactions across a number of segments. In the SMB space, Total Webhosting Solutions continued to consolidate assets in Europe and there was another smaller deal in Canada. Other deals were oriented around technology. OVH acquired EXTEN for its block storage technology, while Liquid Web and GoDaddy both purchased plugin capabilities around the WordPress platform.
Strategic acquirers continue to be busy. Cognizant acquired another Azure cloud consulting shop called 10th Magnitude and Digital Realty arm Interxion picked up an asset in Croatia.
On the strategic side, there was move movement in the public markets. Rackspace recently went public and China-based data centre operator Chindata has also filed. Meanwhile, there were rumblings that OVH is looking at an IPO possibility next year. On the investment side, GI Partners recently lined up nearly $2b for infrastructure-oriented investments and Wix created a VC arm to stay on top of innovation.
The early stages of the edge build out continues to gain momentum. American Tower added two more edge data centres in the US and the development that we are watching very closely – AWS Local Zone in Los Angeles – is set to bring online a second node in another Los Angeles-based location.
Finally, MSPs continue to innovate and there was an interesting new managed third party cloud product released by Data Intensity. The product is called Safe-Switch and is for customers that want to take advantage of the interoperability of the Microsoft and Oracle cloud infrastructure platforms.
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