Talk about reversing course. Verizon may be looking to sell its enterprise cloud business -- a move that could potentially unwind the $1.4 billion buyout of Terremark from 2011. Both Verizon and CenturyLink appear to tipping their hats in multiple ways to Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and IBM SoftLayer -- the big four public clouds that manage and own their infrastructure.
According to Reuters:
"Verizon Communications Inc is exploring a sale of its enterprise assets which could be worth as much as $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, as the largest U.S. wireless carrier seeks to focus on its core business. The sale would include the business formerly known as MCI, which provides landline and Internet services for large business customers, as well as Terremark, its data center unit, the people said this week. The businesses have struggled to keep up with advances in cloud computing, and face fierce price competition from players such as Alphabet Inc and Amazon.com Inc."
In a somewhat similar move, CenturyLink is trying to sell off 59 data centers scattered across the globe. But while Verizon may completely exit its enterprise cloud business (the former Terremark), it looks like CenturyLink wants to sell off its real estate while holding onto the cloud and managed services that run inside those physical data centers.
Running for the Public Cloud Exits
Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will shut down its own public cloud in January 2016, and is instead helping partners and customers to plug into the top-tier cloud providers like Microsoft and Amazon -- which continue to gain even more momentum. Amazon Web Services now generates $2 billion in quarterly cloud revenues and is growing roughly 80 percent annually.
At first glance, AWS's growth looks unstoppable. But take a closer look and there could be some Amazon cloud risk involving unicorns and venture-backed IT startups as customers.
