M&A, telco spin out, executive shuffles, global expansions
There was more activity across a very busy sector. There was yet more strategic activity, movement in executive circles and a number of notable expansions and builds.
The telco spin out wave has played out over the last several years. But things are not quite done yet and one of the transactions that has been anticipated was officially confirmed in the last week. AT&T, after selling its managed hosting assets to IBM, will sell its data centre portfolio to private equity firm Brookfield. A new operating entity will be created under CEO Timothy Caulfield. We’ll have more details in the coming weeks.
This was not the only large transaction. Like AT&T, it has been relatively well documented that SMB hoster Web.com has been looking at strategic options. This past week, private equity firm Siris Capital confirmed it would acquire Web.com for $2b. Elsewhere on the SMB side, Deluxe closed another hosting acquisition.
In other activity, Spire Capital took a stake in MSP Dynamic Quest and Fusion acquired MegaPath on the unified communications side. Bringing on investors to propel growth continues to be a driving force and CentriLogic was the latest to take that route.
There continues to be a lot of shuffling in executive circles. Digital Ocean will bring in former Citrix CEO Mark Templeton to lead its business and INAP named a new CFO.
Finally, on the data centre side, things continue to push forward. The major metros continue to see steady expansion activity. RagingWire began pre-leasing in NoVA and Infomart brought in new capacity there as well. There was also activity globally with expansions in India, Sweden and Italy. Meanwhile, on the hyperscale side, IBM expanded its global footprint and Google stockpiled more land in Europe.
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