CenturyLink has sold its data center and co-location business, as announced in their press-release CenturyLink reaches an agreement to sell data centers and co-location business to a consortium led by BC Partners and Medina Capital, issued in November last year.
In order to fund CenturyLink’s purchase of Level3 Communications, they are selling off their data center business for $1.86bn, down from the predicted $2.15bn. The 57 data centers covering 2.6 million square feet are sold to a newly created organisation, Cyxtera.
CEO Manuel Medina will run Cyxtera. Cyxtera takes the CenturyLink physical assets from BC Partners, and the security assets of Medina Capital (Cryptzone, CatBird, Easy Solutions, and Brainspace). This is an interesting mix, but one with two independent growing markets, so the company should grow initially.
Medina previously ran the Terremark hosting organisation, prior to it being brought by Verizon in April 2011 for $1.4bn. Terremark started as a real-estate company in 1980, and then built out some large co-location and data centres, initially building NAP of the Americas in Miami, Florida. There then followed expansion, and it’s acquisition by Verizon.
Medina Capital still retains Booker, a cloud platform for local service businesses, such as spas and salons. The software allows them to advertise available slots, manage bookings, support sales and e-commerce, manage the business, and retain customers.
Previously Medina Capital realised their investment in Prolexic, where they had a part of the $30m of Series C funding round, when sold to Akamai in Feburary 2014 for $370m.
BC Partners, CenturyLink, and Medina Capital press releases on the creation of Cyxtera are available.