Data Center M&A to Start off 2016

Verizon put its Terremark division up for auction. Windstream sold its data centers to TierPoint. Rumor has it that CenturyLink and AT&T are looking at selling their data centers.

The market for data centers is at a high – and the telcos need cash, so a sale makes sense. It might be why they are looking. If you can get a couple of billion, pay down debt, make the quarter look better, and as the CEO get some more money out of it. All upside.

In one of the LinkedIn groups, the discussion was about the telcos not having the right mentality to stay in the data center game. I don’t think it is that. C-Link isn’t having trouble selling old Savvis and Cyber Center space. It is that the cash out is available. And most of the CEOs of telcos are now just finance guys more worried about the Street and stock price than if the business is positioned correctly for the future.

Zacks is reporting that DuPont Fabros is putting its NJ1 Data Center up for sale. It was a pivot for DF to leave the wholesale data center space. They are pivoting back to wholesale.

TierPoint is on a roll. After buying Windstream’s data centers for $575M, it just bought AlteredScale Data Center in Chicago. TierPoint bought CxP Data Centers based in Jacksonville, Florida, last year. Lots of added space to go with its acquisition from ABRY of Xand, leading provider of colocation, cloud, disaster recovery and managed service with six data centers located in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Bulking up at TierPoint.

Cool look at Amazon’s first AWS data center in Northern VA’s Internet Alley where 70% of worldwide Internet traffic passes through!

Tags: collocation, data center, mergers
Related tags: center space, center, centers, tierpoint, telcos, space