Earnings, Canada, infra funds, edge, VMware
It was a busy week across the sector as we continue to look at the numbers coming from earnings season. The sector maintains a steady growth trajectory, even if there are pockets of weakness, and the strategic activity reflects the appetite to tap into this ongoing opportunity.
On the earnings side, we look at numbers coming from Equinix, Iron Mountain, IBM, GoDaddy and TeraGo – a diverse group to say the least. A number of data centre operators have commented on the situation in Ashburn, VA and some industry chatter has already begun to get a bit ahead of itself. We offer a quick take on if an oversupply situation is in fact likely to emerge.
Strategic activity remains front and centre. The Canadian market has been extremely active of late as we saw in recent weeks with the Compass acquisition of ROOT. And there continue to be opportunities in Canada as independent operator eStruxture acquired a western Canadian asset from Shaw Communications. Meanwhile, over in Asia, Brookfield acquired data centre assets in Australia from Blackstone.
Still on the strategic side, partnerships and joint ventures are coming together to tackle the unique opportunities presented by hyperscale and edge. GDS partnered up with GIC for hyperscale builds in China, while Rackspace partnered with EdgeConneX to access edge locations and on-ramp to cloud.
The cloud world continues to expand and evolve. VMware continues to go cloud agnostic and now has full support on Google Cloud even as its AWS footprint expands. Meanwhile, AWS is looking to double down on its massive storage footprint. It is looking to lock in data as a pathway to locking in toolsets. AWS’s Lake Formation is a sign of where Amazon is going to drive its next phase of growth.
And not surprisingly, the global cloud build out moves further afar. There is word that Latvia is next for AWS and Oracle is moving its new cloud platform to Australia.
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