Industry Briefing

QTS Goes Big in Atlanta, Mobile Data Pricing, and More

Hello,

Last week Jeff Bezos wrote his final letter to shareholders as he prepares to depart the Chief Executive role and welcome AWS leader, Andy Jeassy later this year in Q3. Since the infamous 1997 letter, these have always been something worth reading. Before we get into this weeks news, I want to highlight an excerpt that resonates with me, and I’m sure a lot of you as well.

Create More Than You Consume

If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with. Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world. It’s on the way out.

In our industry—or industries, depending on how you look at the universe of digital infrastructure that I cover in this newsletter, there are a lot of companies that stand out when it comes to being customer centric and really focus on creating value for their customers.

Multi-Tenant Data Center’s have a slight head start because as platforms they are natural marketplaces. They provide the space, along with power, for producers (service providers) and consumers (enterprise, small business) to deploy IT equipment to either sell or buy services that are important to their business. Over time, the value realized from these customers exceeds the value of the business operating the MTDC, but not every MTDC is created equally and network effects at scale are much harder to achieve, and most multi-tenant data centers probably wont ever realize them which I expect will drive significant consolidation over the next few years.

Building a business is hard, and not everyone will be successful, no matter how much cash you have raised, and no matter how cool your idea might be. A Relentless focus on creating value for your customers, however, is a good thing to be laser focused on.

Earrings seasons kicks off next week with Crown Castle reporting on Thursday, and the following week is QTS, Cogent, Equinix, American Tower, CyrusOne, CoreSite, and DigitalRealty.

Let’s get into the weekly update.

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QTS has submitted plans to build yet another data center on its Atlanta campus. The plans submitted to the Georgia Department of Committee Affairs reveal plans to build another 1M sq foot data center, along with offices, retail, and residential properties. Both Facebook and Microsoft recently announced data center expansions in the region as well. (Link) As recent as a few weeks ago, Cushman & Wakefield was marketing 80,000 sqft / 6MW available capacity at 250 Williams in the Downtown area. Market data from Cushman highlights that absorption in Atlanta remains low compared to other primary/secondary markets.

The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 230 countries from analyzing over 6,000 mobile data plans. (Link)

UPSTACK, a platform and marketplace for IT procurement raised $50M in an equity investment from Berkshire Partners. UPSTACK is one of a handful of new online marketplaces attempting to shift the dynamics of how digital infrastructure is purchased. The company actually looks more like an evolution of the traditional channel partner and employs agents in tandem with its online marketplace. The investment, which may seem out of place for an equity investor follows Columbia Capital’s similar investment in Telarus late last year. (Link)

Cologix is entering the Silicon Valley market by way of acquisition. In its second transaction with vXchnge, having previously acquired its Minneapolis operation in the 511 building, the company announced it will acquire vXchnge’s data center in Santa Clara, which sits between a bunch of CoreSite, Digital Realty, and Vantage facilities. (Link)

Cyxtera launched a new customer portal, and it looks slick. (Link)

In a note about Towers, MoffettNathanson analysts are skeptical that edge computing will become a material driver of tower growth.

“We don’t doubt that edge computing is a real trend. The notion of moving computing resources closer to end users makes perfect sense for certain applications. It can reduce latency, trim backhaul needs, and improve performance. Instead, our suspicion is that most edge computing needs can likely be met with region deployments in locations like traditional data centers rather than deployments at the base of a cell tower." (Link)

A lot of smart people share this same perspective, and they have for a while now.

Google opened its latest cloud region in Warsaw, Poland, which is their 7th region in Europe (Link) and Tencent announced that its first data center in Jakarta is now live. (Link)

Telkom Indonesia launched its latest data center under the neuCentrIX brand in Banjarmasin and has a capacity of 30 racks. (Link)

Princeton Digital secured $230M in debt financing from China Merchants Bank as it continues its 300MW / $1B expansion in China. (Link)

QTS Goes Big in Atlanta, Mobile Data Pricing, and More

Your Weekly Briefing

Further Reading

Read more

AI Demand Brings Verizon Back to Data Centers

Macquarie Acquires Stake in Applied Digital

Internet, Cloud, and AI Infrastructure - Foundations Returns

Meta Plans to Build 5-10 MW Data Centers Across the US