VMware, AWS, cloud, M&A and earnings
It was a relatively busy week despite it being a short one with long weekends in the US, Canada and Singapore.
Before the long weekend, VMware hosted its annual VMworld event. The biggest development around cloud was the official launch – revealed late in 2016 – of VMware Cloud on AWS. The move is the latest step in VWware’s shift to being cloud agnostic and also opens up an interesting opportunity for service providers. Denver-based Faction was one of the first to jump on this and it has a unique value proposition to offer.
There were some interesting M&A activity and the most high-profile transaction reflected the ongoing momentum to on-boarding and managed cloud. HPE is in the midst of that shift and it acquired Cloud Technology Partners to enhance its managed third party cloud capabilities. Another transaction of interest saw Intermedia add to its unified communications arsenal with the purchase of web conferencing specialist AnyMeeting. And over in Europe and the UK, independent cloud provider Exoscale was acquired by a Telekom Austria subsidiary and Firstnet and Select Data Centres merged.
There were also transactions involving data centre properties. Zayo acquired in Denver and Evocative in Los Angeles.
Earnings season is a long one after the second quarter as a number of providers around the world report on a half-year basis. This past week we looked at results coming from Hong Kong’s SUNeVision and PCCW and Australia’s Macquarie Telecom.
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