CenturyLink (CTL) is selling its data centers and colocation operations to multiple private equity and financial firms -- including BC Partners, Medina Capital Advisors and Longview Asset Management, the telco confirmed this morning.
CenturyLink had been seeking a buyer for those assets over the past year. BC Partners has been a rumored buyer for the past several months.
The move allows CenturyLink to double-down on network services. The company attempted and largely failed to compete head-on against Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and other major public cloud providers. Verizon is contemplating a similar data center sale, by the way.
CenturyLink: We're Not Exiting Cloud Services
Still, the CenturyLink insists it is not exiting the cloud services market.
According to a prepared statement:
"CenturyLink will continue to focus on offering customers a wide range of IT services and solutions, including network, managed hosting and cloud. Though it will no longer own the data centers, CenturyLink will continue to offer colocation services as part of its product portfolio through its commercial relationships to be entered into at closing with the BC Partners/Medina-led consortium."
CenturyLink also is in the process of buying Level 3 Communications. That massive deal furthers the company's network efforts.
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