News

Telecom Giant CenturyLink Acquires Cloud Provider Savvis

Telecommunications heavyweight CenturyLink on Wednesday said it has agreed to acquire managed hosting and cloud provider Savvis for $2.5 billion.

The deal marks the latest in which a major cloud provider was acquired by a traditional provider of communications services. Verizon recently finalized its deal to acquire Terremark for $1.4 billion, and Time Warner Cable agreed earlier this year to acquire NaviSite for $230 million.

Monroe, La.-based CenturyLink is paying an 11 percent premium for Savvis based on its stock closing price on Tuesday, and a 53 percent premium since the beginning of the year. CenturyLink said Savvis will let it provide managed hosting and cloud services to its enterprise customers.

"Today, businesses are shifting the way they manage their information technology services and infrastructure, and this transaction helps us meet these needs by offering Savvis' leading products and services coupled with CenturyLink's network," said Glen F. Post III, CenturyLink's president and CEO, in a statement. "We look forward to working with the Savvis team to leverage CenturyLink's significant scale and scope to fully realize the potential of Savvis' capabilities for our combined customers."

CenturyLink said it intends to integrate its existing hosting business and those of Savvis into a single business unit, which will be based in St. Louis, where Savvis is headquartered, and led by the Savvis management team. Savvis CEO James Ousley will run the unit.

"We believe that combining our proven capabilities in cloud infrastructure and managed hosting with CenturyLink's hosting assets and large base of business customers will create powerful opportunities to accelerate growth," Ousley said in a statement. "We also look forward to making the full resources of a much larger network infrastructure available to our customers."

With the combined entity, CenturyLink said it will operate 48 datacenters throughout North America, Europe and Asia, totaling more than 1.9 million square feet of datacenter floor space.

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.

Featured

  • Report: Cost, Sustainability Drive DaaS Adoption Beyond Remote Work

    Gartner's 2025 Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service reveals that while secure remote access remains a key driver of DaaS adoption, a growing number of deployments now focus on broader efficiency goals.

  • Windows 365 Reserve, Microsoft's Cloud PC Rental Service, Hits Preview

    Microsoft has launched a limited public preview of its new "Windows 365 Reserve" service, which lets organizations rent cloud PC instances in the event their Windows devices are stolen, lost or damaged.

  • Hands-On AI Skills Now Outshine Certs in Salary Stakes

    For AI-related roles, employers are prioritizing verifiable, hands-on abilities over framed certificates -- and they're paying a premium for it.

  • Roadblocks in Enterprise AI: Data and Skills Shortfalls Could Cost Millions

    Businesses risk losing up to $87 million a year if they fail to catch up with AI innovation, according to the Couchbase FY 2026 CIO AI Survey released this month.