CenturyLink said it plans data center capacity expansion at 4 locations this year citing growing demand for flexible hybrid IT capabilities
CenturyLink is looking to further its global data center capabilities, announcing plans to increase capacity at four data centers through the first half of this year.
The telecom operator said expansion plans were based on growing demand for “flexible hybrid IT capabilities such as colocation and cloud consumption,” and build on its move last year to add 14 megawatts of capacity at eight data centers. CenturyLink claims it has completed 39 data center expansion projects over the past five years, including the addition of 11 new data centers. The company said it currently offers 2.62 million square feet of “gross raised floor space throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.”
“With global enterprises and service providers under increasing pressure to become more agile, many are utilizing hybrid IT solutions to achieve key business objectives,” said David Meredith, SVP for global data centers at CenturyLink. “We are announcing today our continuing and expanding commitment to help our customers achieve those objectives.”
CenturyLink last year announced it was looking at strategic alternatives for its data center and colocation business operations in a move analysts noted could include further breaking apart of CenturyLink’s operations. The company said at that time it was looking at a “full range of options,” including a partnership or joint venture, or the sale of all or a portion of the data centers.
During the company’s most recent quarterly results conference call in early February, CenturyLink management said it was still moving through the process.
“This is an ongoing process that could result in any one of these outcomes, including the potential sale of a portion of or all of our data center business,” explained CenturyLink CEO Glen Post. “Also, as we have said, we could ultimately choose to retain these assets and related operations. As we outlined in November, we believe, in the macro trends of the data center location industry and the importance of the service in our hybrid IP solutions, but we do not believe we must own the colocation facilities to provide the full range of services our customer needs to manage variety of functions. We expect to fully engage interested parties within the next two weeks or so.”
Reports earlier this year claimed Verizon Communications was looking to raise more than $2.5 billion through the sale of 48 data centers as it continued to monetize non-core assets. The assets included those acquired as part of its $1.4 billion purchase of Terremark Worldwide in 2011, which it said at the time would bolster its cloud service operations.
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