CenturyLink buys cloud infrastructure services firm • 9:17 AM

• CenturyLink ( CTL ) has acquired Tier 3, a provider of cloud infrastructure services for enterprises. Terms are undisclosed. ( PR )


• Tier 3 attempts to differentiate its services in a hotly competitive space - major rivals include Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, VMware, and Rackspace - by a focus on simplifying service management and making it easy to automate/provision services.


• CenturyLink asserts Tier 3's "innovative [cloud] automation and self-service platform" is "game-changing" for its enterprise clients. The startup's offerings have already been rebranded as CenturyLink Cloud, and its "products, roadmap, and vision" will act as "the foundation of CenturyLink's cloud strategy." Tier 3 founder/CTO Jared Wray will become the CTO of CenturyLink's cloud unit.


• The acquisition comes shortly after CenturyLink took a $1.1B charge for its data hosting business, which includes the cloud infrastructure services offered by its Savvis unit. On its Q3 CC ( transcript ), the telco stated its Q/Q data hosting revenue growth was weaker than expected due to one-time credits and the loss of "a few major [server] colocation customers" at its legacy Qwest data centers.

Info is from Seeking Alpha

...........bet some are thinking of VG