QTS Realty Trust (QTS) has acquired a Dallas, Texas-based data center from Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) for $50 million. HCSC will remain an anchor tenant in the facility with a one megawatt lease.
It sounds like QTS has big expansion plans for the data center. The facility currently features 40,000 square feet of built-out raised floor available and 8 megawatts of gross power. Ultimately, including adjacent land, the site can support more than 300,000 square feet of raised floor and 60 megawatts of gross power, QTS said.
QTS has grown both organically and via M&A in recent years. QTS owns, operates or manages more than 5 million square feet of data center space and supports more than 1,000 customers in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The company focuses heavily on federal government, financial services, healthcare and high tech industries.
QTS also has software know-how. The company acquired VMware vCloud Government Service, a FedRAMP compliant cloud solution. QTS and VMware had previously partnered on the service. But QTS will have complete control over the government compliant cloud going forward.
Data Center M&A
M&A activity across the data center sector has accelerated in recent months. Among the recent deals:
- Peak 10 acquired a Kentucky data center in January 2017.
- United Internet acquired Strato AG in December 2016.
- Equinix acquired Verizon’s cloud data centers for $3.6 billion in December 2016.
- CenturyLink sold its data centers for $2.15 billion to an investment group in November 2016.
More deals could be coming. For instance:
- Digital Bridge Holdings may acquire Vantage Data Centers Management from Silver Lake Partners for more than $1 billion, according to Reuters.
- IBM may buy Lloyds Banking Group’s data centers, according to reports earlier this month.
