DataBank is augmenting its traditional data center portfolio with a $30 million investment in EdgePresence.
Statesboro, Georgia-based EdgePresence is the owner and operator of multi-tenant, modular data centers that provide space, power, bandwidth, and interconnection across U.S. markets. Located at the base of cell towers, enterprise campus locations and key real estate locations, EdgePresence's modular data centers have a compact footprint that includes monitoring, physical security and cooling features.
"With the continued expansion of 5G and internet infrastructure, we are seeing the need for geographic-specific colocation solutions,” said DataBank CEO Raul K. Martynek, in a statement. “EdgePresence’s modular installations will allow DataBank to deploy these targeted solutions for specific applications and use cases where traditional data center options are not optimal. The combination of DataBank’s expanded footprint with zColo facilities and EdgePresence modular solutions will allow us to offer customers almost unlimited geographic flexibility for their IT infrastructure.”
By using EdgePresence's Edge Data Centers (EDCs,) DataBank is able to colocate its customer workloads at the "far edge" of a network to further reduce latency while improving performance.
“EdgePresence has been establishing an important beachhead at the ‘far edge’ since 2018,” said EdgePresence CEO and Founder Doug Recker, in a statement. “By joining forces with DataBank, we’ll act as a force multiplier for their edge data center strategy, helping to bring data centers closer to the data pools being created by users, enabling next-generation, data-localization strategies and applications for 5G and IoT.”
EdgePresence will continue to be run by Recker and his existing team, which will collaborate with DataBank’s leadership team to expand its modular data center solutions.
RELATED: DataBank to buy zColo data centers from Zayo
The investment in EdgePresence came on the heels of DataBank buying Zayo Holding's zColo data centers last month. The zColo data centers would bring 44 additional data centers into the DataBank portfolio, including 13 key interconnect facilities across 23 markets in Europe and the U.S.
That deal is slated to close by the end of this year once it passes customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Financial terms of the deal weren't available.
While the data center and colocation markets are led by giants such as Equinix and Digital Realty, DataBank has targeted secondary "NFL" cities. DataBank has 20 data centers in nine markets, including Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Salt Lake City.
DataBank was acquired by Digital Bridge four years ago. Digital Bridge is a communications infrastructure company that has a range of companies under its belt that cover cell towers, small cells, data centers and fiber. Digital Bridge investment firm Digital Colony and EQT acquired Zayo Technologies last year for $8.2 billion.
EdgePresence has partnered with fellow Digital Colony portfolio company Vertical Bridge, the largest private owner and operator of communications infrastructure and locations in the United States. EdgePresence is currently deploying at over a dozen Vertical Bridge locations.