TierPoint, a St. Louis-based national provider of cloud, cloud, colocation and managed services, has agreed to purchase Windstream’s data center business in an all cash transaction for $575 million.
As part of the deal, Windstream will establish an ongoing strategic partnership with TierPoint, allowing both companies to sell their respective products and services to each other’s prospective customers through referrals. This structure will allow Windstream to focus capital on its core telecom offerings while continuing to offer traditional data center services to enterprise customers across a broader data center footprint.
"Data center services will remain an integral component of our enterprise service offering." said Windstream CEO Tony Thomas in a statement. “We expect the divested data center business to continue its significant growth under the leadership of TierPoint, and we look forward to partnering closely with them to provide advanced data center services to our enterprise customers.”
The deal is expected to close in the next two-to-four months.
TierPoint is part of Cequel Data Centers, an arm of cable veteran Jerry Kent’s Cequel III. Kent has been chairman of TierPoint since 2014 and in July was named the company‘s CEO. Kent also serves as chairman and CEO of Suddenlink Communications, a St. Louis-based cable operator with about 1.2 million customers. In May, European telecom giant Altice agreed to purchase a 70% interest in Suddenlink for $9.1 billion. That deal is expected to close before the end of the year, upon which Kent has indicated he will exit the company.
In a statement, Kent said the Windstream data centers are a good fit. “Windstream Hosted Solutions and its employees have earned a reputation for providing excellent customer service and innovative enterprise-class solutions,” Kent said in the statement. “We value these team members as a key asset in the acquisition and their expertise adds to our strength and focus on providing a superior level of customer care. We’re also very pleased to enter into a long-term strategic partnership with Windstream, allowing both companies to leverage the expertise and respective strengths of our organizations.”
