Savvis Takes the Bharti Express Into India

Savvis (news, filings) [a subsidiary of CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL, news, filings)] has made a move on South Asia via a partnership announced today with Bharti airtel.  The company will soon be offering managed hosting and cloud services on the Indian subcontinent, starting at Bharti’s Bangalore facility and then expanding into New Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Chennai.  It’s generally best to partner your way into India, else you’ll never get anywhere.  Just what the scope of their investment (and opportunity) in the region will be is an open question.  As for Bharti airtel, partnering their way into cloud services rather than building their own will get them to market quickly with solutions that Savvis has seen some success with elsewhere.

Savvis reports its Q4 earnings tomorrow morning, and this suggests there will be an international flavor to their outlook.  However, much of the immediate attention Savvis is getting right now from the market relates to speculation they may be the next target of a large telecom looking to boost its managed services and cloud capabilities.  I’m on the fence on this subject though.  Of the public companies in the hosted/managed/cloud spaces, Savvis does fit the profile of what those large telecoms would be looking for.  I have no doubt they could get an offer if they wanted one.

But I’m not convinced that they want one.  Savvis was beating the drum on the cloud when it was still called utility computing and by other unsuccessful buzzwords.  They’ve spent the last few years getting less credit for their colo footprint and construction projects than their peers due to their exposure to the financial sector during the recession.  Now the stars are finally aligning with the corporate profile they have cultivated, and they’re going to sell out to the likes of AT&T?  Well, maybe Welsh Carson is ready to cash in, but I’m guessing they won’t do it cheaply – which may reduce the likelihood of a deal.

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Categories: Cloud Computing · Datacenter