Bare metal, interconnection, IPO, edge, APAC, SMB
It was a busy week again with a significant amount of activity coming from the data centre category.
The data centre landscape has seen growing separation between wholesale and retail and within retail, there is more separation, between those that are have an interconnection capability and those that are mostly oriented around ping, power and pipe. Another angle is emerging amidst the change underway: bare metal and converged infrastructure.
However, this not your father’s bare metal, sold as a relatively straightforward standalone service. The bare metal offerings are now more about enabling hybrid through mixed deployment models that are tied together through interconnection services. The goal is to enhance and extend infrastructure in the colocation data centre and on-premise and to drive interconnection uptake. A number of leading providers have been active in this area in recent weeks. Equinix rolled out an expanded footprint to support Equinix Metal, Lumen is doing the same with its bare metal edge service, CoreSite lit up VMware Cloud on Dell EMC in its data centres, Faction also worked with Dell to enable data storage and multi-cloud, while Cyxtera expanded its bare metal footprint to Europe.
Cyxtera recently released its plans to go public and were shortly followed by SMB cloud provider Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean brings a new comp to the market that speaks to the inherent diversity across the sector. The public markets are going to be busy this year as unified communications provider Intermedia also filed its S-1. The likes of Global Switch and OVH are also in the rumour mill, though a terrible disaster at the Strasbourg-based data centre run by OVH may put a damper in those plans.
Finally, the week saw some activity on the SMB side. Digital Ocean’s numbers reveal the underlying steadiness in the sector and Wix’s recent earnings validate that further. On the WordPress side, WP Engine continues to grow and disclosed strength in international markets. The global market is a big one and that is what is driving a good portion of the SMB sector’s continuing growth.
Still in France, Equinix confirmed plans for its latest build adjacent to a subsea cable landing location; this time Bordeaux, France. Equinix recently revealed plans to do the same in Genoa, Italy and there could be more on the horizon.
Edge markets are emerging and some are reaching hyperscale levels. One of these markets is arguably Columbus, Ohio and Cologix confirmed plans to expand its campus there with a multi-MW expansion.
Edge markets are also emerging in APAC and a new platform called Turbidite was recently formed to pursue edge markets in the region. Some of these markets have been quiet for a a while, but for some it won’t be long till they are full-blown hyperscale markets. Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia is one of them and thegovernment has officially approved US-based hyperscalers to expand in the market and build in-country infrastructure.
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