M&A, cloud uptake, managed cloud and interconnection
It was another relatively quiet week, but there was more M&A activity, movement in interconnection services and two large organizations continued to make big bets on public cloud.
Two smaller, somewhat more regionally focused players, completed transactions. Green House Data in Wyoming acquired Atlanta-based managed cloud provider Cirracore and Online Tech in Michigan expanded to Kansas City through the acquisition of Echo Cloud, which came with two data centres. Technology platforms were also active in the cloud space. Microsoft added to its container capabilities with the purchase of Deis and VMware acquired a monitoring solution built by Wavefront (details to come). Meanwhile, in other strategic developments, ClearDATA raised an additional $12m to help propel its growth.
The New York Times and Accenture both continue to move big chunks of their IT infrastructure to cloud. NYT made its decision to move more recently and notably, is using Google’s cloud as its primary option and AWS for specialized workloads. Google continues to get logo wins – Evernote and Snapchat are two – and is being picked as primary with AWS as an alternative or backup. The service provider ecosystem around Google’s cloud is picking up as well. Claranet in the UK shared some data points about uptake for its new managed Google cloud service.
Elsewhere, there was more new interconnection services as organizations look to scale and connect with massive-scale clouds through their third party data centre locations. Telehouse, Interxion, Unitas Global and Equinix, and Verne Global all rolled out new offerings recently and for multiple clouds in multiple locations and regions.
Finally, Huawei confirmed it would build a direct services strategy for public cloud outside of China. The ambitions are unsurprisingly lofty but the chances of this changing the overall trajectory of the larger public cloud market is unlikely.
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