IPOs, cloud, renewables, international expansion, machine learning, M&A
It was another busy week across the sector with activity in the public markets, M&A, hyperscale expansions and developments in emissions and sustainability
The cloud market has few non-hyperscale comparables listed on the public markets, but Digital Ocean changed that and raised $775m in its IPO last week. The likes of Squarespace and OVH have been candidates for listing as well. But Squarespace looks to be putting this off as it raised $300m from a group of new investors, while OVH continues to struggle with its data centre disaster in Strasbourg, France. The latest developments are not good.
The non-hyperscale clouds, or alternative clouds, are a category that has flown under the radar. But there is real growth in this category. Hosting companies have moved into this market and Krystal Hosting in the UK is the latest with its new performance-oriented cloud infrastructure service called Katapult. Katapult has two infrastructure nodes: one in the US with Iron Mountain and another in the UK. Both data centre providers were chosen for their use and commitment to renewable energy sources.
Renewables are increasingly a driver behind end user choices when it comes to cloud infrastructure. Google recognizes this and has committed to being transparent and provide clear information about renewable energy usage across its cloud data centre footprint. In APAC, Australia’s NEXTDC recently revealed its carbon emissions program.
Data centre growth continues to be driven by cloud and this requires capital resources. Both DataBank and STACK INFRASTRUCTURE issued securitized notes to fund growth initiatives. Elsewhere in hyperscale, AirTrunk brought online its second data centre campus in Sydney, Web Werks acquired land in Navi Mumbai, while Microsoft disclosed plans to build multiple AZs in all new markets going forward. Microsoft’s decision speaks to the need for redundancy, but also the scale Azure has attained. Finally in other markets around the world, we had a chance to speak with IXAfrica, who are building in Kenya, and IBM Cloud is expanding in Brazil.
Meanwhile, in the emerging managed third party cloud market, Mission released a new AI and data analytics practice that reflects how the market is already starting to shift up-market.
There were also some interesting M&A developments. On the SMB side, Miss Group in Sweden acquired a second SMB hoster in Finland, while in the channel world, master agent Telarus acquired Chorus Communications. There was a big data centre deal in the preceding week, with Ascendas Reit in Singapore acquiring a portfolio of former Digital Realty data centres in the UK and Europe.
Finally, it has been a long drawn out earnings season and we take a closer look at results from QTS and Switch. The data centre category continues to show remarkable resilience through the pandemic environment.
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