Strategic, M&A, IPO, bare metal, SMB, Europe
The past week saw a number of developments on the strategic side along with some important product developments.
On the strategic side, there was movement in the public markets. Toronto’s Pivotree recently filed for an IPO and listed SMB provider Endurance International is said to be again considering its strategic options, which could include a sale that takes it private. It was a quieter week in M&A, but Stonecourt Capital acquired 365 Data Centers, while a new investment vehicle – Strategic Data Center – acquired a facility in Northern Virginia.
There were interesting product launches from divergent parts of the ecosystem. On the data centre side, Equinix rolled out a new bare metal service called Equinix Metal. The product gives Equinix a retail infrastructure-as-a-service offering that is part of its ongoing transformation from a colocation and interconnection provider to a more end-to-end digital infrastructure enabler.
On the SMB side, GoDaddy launched a new service that enables end users to build integrations and sell on Facebook and Instagram. The launch is timely as organizations look more closely at e-commerce given the pandemic environment.
Cloud infrastructure continues to grow and expand on a global basis. Microsoft confirmed it will build a new region in Greece, while the Equinix Metal platform will be available initially in Amsterdam, Washington, DC, Silicon Valley and New York.
Adoption of cloud continues to surge across the board and organizations are seeing help from service provider partners. 2nd Watch moved Crate and Barrel to AWS and Rackspace moved an existing customer from traditional infrastructure to AWS.
Finally, in Europe, the GAIA-X initiative continues to push forward as OVH and T-Systems partnered up to build and house cloud infrastructure that is based in Europe and in compliance with local data privacy regulations.
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