This week Verizon and CenturyLink have been off-loading their data centre investments suggesting that the days of everyone+dog wanting a data centre business are past.
IT and telco providers are concluding that owning datacentres is too much of an effort and are off-loading them as soon as they can find a buyer.
Verizon this week flogged 29 datacentres to Equinix for $3.6 billion in a deal involving the transfer of 250 staff.
CenturyLink closed the sale of its data centre and colocation business, which has 700 staff, to a consortium of private equity investors.
In all cases the moves have been to release capital into their businesses. The companies feel it is better to invest in things like networks, instead of trying to support datacentres – particularly when there might be companies out there better suited to it.
UK-based resellers and hosting players are also having to re-assess their data centre strategies.
With more use of the cloud happening, even companies that own their own data centres are having to become increasingly technology-agnostic and data centre owning companies are having to change their operations.
