M&A, edge, interconnection, AWS, managed third party cloud, SMB
It was a busy week, with M&A dominating the headlines. The deals reflected the shifts in the landscape brought on by hyperscale and the emerging edge opportunity. On both fronts, AWS has been very active since late last year and we take a closer look at its recent moves.
The headline-grabbing deal saw Equinix acquire cloud and edge compute provider Packet. This is very much a deal about capabilities and technology, but at its core, this is another path to driving interconnection across core to edge network and infrastructure.
AWS has been building its edge compute strategy. We commented previously on the AWS answer to edge compute: Local Zone. The network side of edge saw it release AWS Wavelength. We have details.
Another notable deal was on the managed third party cloud side and saw Effectual acquire JHC Technology. Effectual picked up a public sector practice and the backing of a new investor.
Economies of scale are a given when it comes to hyperscale cloud. But the economies of innovation should not be ignored. AWS has been heads down of late raising the bar across its portfolio and continually building out new products, services and features.
There were also some interesting developments on the SMB side. GoDaddy re-branded after over two decades with the same logo and WP Engine shared some colour on its progress in international markets.
The sector continues to be driven by hyperscale and this past week was no exception. There were a number of wins for AWS and Google and the underlying indicators – land banking in core cloud locations and footprint expansion – speak to the continued growth even if things have showed some signs of slowing of late.
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