Subscale, CDN, edge, M&A, SEA, Local Zones, global expansions
A busy week was highlighted by movement to the edge as Akamai acquired Linode and AWS revealed more details about its expansion plans for AWS Local Zones. Elsewhere, there were other strategic developments in the APAC region, more M&A, further global data centre expansion and developments around the moratorium in Amsterdam.
CDNs have been logical candidates for building distributed infrastructure platforms and Akamai took a big step to acquire Linode and start the process of offering compute at the edge to complement its delivery, security and edge application services. We have details and discussion. AWS’s edge strategy has come into clearer focus and it completed the build-out of its US footprint and is now focusing on global markets. Exact locations have been disclosed and there were a few surprises, but most importantly, the locations chosen provide clues as to how AWS thinks of scale and operating efficiency.
In APAC, there were more strategic developments in emerging Southeast Asia markets. Media reports point to EdgeConneX closing a deal in Indonesia and there was another step forward in the Singtel, Gulf Energy partnership to build data centres in Thailand.
There were also other transactions of note, with Cloudflare acquiring a SaaS tool, an MSP transaction in Utah and TELUS in Canada acquiring MSP Fully Managed. The TELUS deal was an interesting one. Telcos have been divesting assets for some time, primarily around data centres and colocation, but managed services capabilities may still be a desirable asset class.
Global data centre expansion continues and there were developments in the past week in Japan, Brazil, Philippines, Germany and Ireland. Meanwhile, Colt DCS is doubling down in hyperscale and acquired land in multiple markets, while Cologix is building hyperscale capacity in Columbus and Silicon Valley. The pace of expansion continues to impact government planning and decision-making, and there were more changes around the build moratorium in the Netherlands.
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