Equinix boosts Asia-Pac data center presence by acquiring Asia Tone for $230.5M

Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) is bolstering its Asia Pacific data-center holdings by acquiring Hong Kong-based data center provider Asia Tone for $230.5 million.

By purchasing Asia Tone, Equinix immediately adds five data centers and one disaster recovery center, in addition to one data center under construction in three markets: Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. Asia Tone's current customer base includes a number of existing Equinix customers.

The deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2012, will expand Equinix's global footprint to 104 data centers in 38 markets.

When the new data center facility in Shanghai is complete in Q2 2012, the Redwood City, Calif.-based provider will have an additional 80,000 square feet of capacity.

Asia Tone generated approximately $30 million in revenue in 2011, and has been growing at a greater than 50 percent CAGR for the past three years.

"The acquisition of Asia Tone will be an important milestone in establishing market leadership for Equinix in Asia-Pacific," said Steve Smith, president and CEO of Equinix, adding that China "is highly desirable for multinational customers looking to expand into this high-growth market."

This deal is well timed, with the overall growth taking place in both the overall Asia Pacific and China data market, as recent reports by both Frost & Sullivan and Gartner Inc. forecasted growth in these two data center markets.

A recent Frost & Sullivan report revealed that Asia-Pacific data center market generated revenues of over $2.55 billion in 2010 and has forecast it to grow to $9.25 billion by 2017.

China, argues Gartner, will become the second largest market in the world for data centers by 2015.

For more:
- see the release

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