DartPoints acquires Metro Data Centers in Dublin, Ohio; interconnection in edge markets
This is a guest post by Phil Shih, Managing Director and Founder of Structure Research.
DartPoints acquired Metro Data Centers (MDC), a Dublin, Ohio provider of colocation, interconnection and hosting infrastructure services. The acquisition follows DartPoint’s round of funding in May 2020 and a stated strategy of “build and buy” to facilitate its expansion.
Details: MDC has a single data center facility outside of Columbus, Ohio. The facility has about 0.5MW of power. DartPoints acquired the data center as part of its larger strategy of building out carrier-neutral, interconnection-oriented data centers in underserved and emerging markets.
Strategy: The Midwest is a target region for DartPoints and it has already started to build out a footprint in Iowa. DartPoints is looking for markets that do not have a mature carrier hotel or connectivity hub. It will look to build one either organically or through acquisition. One of the main criteria for a site is proximity to fiber hubs and then DartPoints goes about getting ISPs and carriers to set up PoPs in the data center. From there, the goal is to build spokes out of the hub.
DartPoints is agnostic when it comes to the deployment model, but it does anticipate rolling out its micro data center capabilities as the connectivity in a market matures. This might involve a single micro data center at a given site or multiple micro data centers on land it leases or acquires.
The end game is hub and spoke coverage of an edge market that will attract CDNs, content providers and clouds as they reach further out to underserved locations. The leg work to get this off the ground is challenging, but the potential payoff could be big when a level of critical mass is reached; especially if there is minimal competition.
b: DartPoints is taking an agnostic and flexible approach to deploying at the edge. The strategy enables different pathways to its ultimate end game and this should allow it to pivot and optimize efficiency at the same time. The value of connectivity hubs in edge locations is definitely climbing as various platforms are looking to acquire carrier hotels and connectivity-rich data centers in markets just outside the main tier. DartPoints is going further out to get first-mover advantage.
About the author:
Phil Shih is Managing Director and Founder of Structure Research, an independent research firm focused on the cloud, hosting and data center infrastructure service provider markets. (more)
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this contributed post are that of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the views of EdgeIR.com. Contact us if you want to contribute a guest post.
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Article Topics
aggregation edge | DartPoints | edge data center | interconnection | Structure Research
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