SMB, M&A, software, ecosystem, earnings, consulting shops
It was another busy week across the sector. There was a significant amount of activity coming from the SMB hosting space, we took a look at more earnings reports and there were more developments coming from the cloud world.
The SMB space saw a number of strategic developments. 1&1 has been quiet on the M&A side for some time and recently acquired a hoster based in Austria. The move reflects 1&1’s longstanding approach to market consolidation. The SMB market in Asia is also consolidating and Dreamscape continues to acquire and recently picked up providers in both Singapore and Australia. Still on the SMB side, Oakley Capital acquired a stake in control panel vendor cPanel. Oakley is also an investor in Plesk and is now focusing its investment efforts on the supporting ecosystem around hosters and service providers.
The cloud market continues to push forward. Reports indicate Microsoft is set to build out further in Quincy, Washington and in APAC, AWS is building in Japan, though it ran into some trouble recently in one of its buildings. The APAC region continues to see data centre expansion activity as colocation providers go after the hyperscale clouds as tenants. We take a look at the recent moves from GDS and 21Vianet.
On the managed third party cloud side, we saw some interesting developments, particularly from the larger consulting firms. Accenture launched a business unit focused on Google’s cloud and DXC created an integrated practice of its own with AWS.
We are moving towards the end of earnings season and this past week, have more details on GDS, 21Vianet, China Telecom and Switch. On the private side, we came across data points that speak to growth at managed services firms Unitas Global and Netrepid.
There were also some notable executive moves, with Secure-24 bringing on a new CEO and Chayora adding a senior sales executive in the US.
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