On Wednesday, TierPoint announced their acquisition of Cosentry, a colocation and cloud data center operator located in the Midwest. The move increases TierPoint's market footprint and services to their now over 6000 customers. TierPoint has acquired multiple data center operators throughout its history, but has seen significant growth over the last two years. A little over a year ago, TierPoint owned and operated seven data centers. Since then, TierPoint has seen over 500% growth, owning and operating 38 data centers in 24 different markets. That growth is due to five major acquisitions:

• December, 2014. TierPoint acquires Xand – Xand was a privately held colocation, cloud, disaster recover, and managed services provider with six data centers in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. This expanded TierPoint's data center offering to 13 data centers and nearly 300,000 SF of commissioned space, with the ability to expand by an additional 150,000 SF. The acquisition gave TierPoint a legitimate presence in the northeast


• July, 2015. TierPoint acquires CxP Data Centers – This merger with CxP Data Centers, a data center provider based in Jacksonville, FL, provided TierPoint with an additional 65,000 SF of commissioned data center space. This also allowed TierPoint to provide colocation, enterprise-grade cloud, and managed services to the southeastern market


• December, 2015. TierPoint Acquires AlteredScale Data Center – The tenth acquisition in TierPoint's history strengthened their presence in the Midwest. AlteredScale was a Chicago based data center provider with 25,000 SF of commissioned space in a 107,000 SF facility. The building underwent extensive renovations in 2011, and TierPoint had already begun installing infrastructure for a major long-term client in that building at the time of the sale


• December, 2015. TierPoint acquires Windstream data center assets - Adding 14 data centers and roughly 179,000 SF of data center space across 5 new markets, the $575 million deal was a major step forward for TierPoint. The reciprocal agreement between the two companies also gave TierPoint access to Windstream's 121,000-mile fiber infrastructure. This allowed Windstream to focus on their core telecom services, and provided TierPoint a presence in data center markets like Bethlehem (PA), Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Little Rock, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Raleigh


• January, 2016. TierPoint acquires Cosentry – the most recent announcement for TierPoint is the Cosentry acquisition, adding to their services suite. This large acquisition added nine data centers across five different Midwest markets. TierPoint will now offer colocation, cloud, and managed services in 38 data centers in 24 markets from the East coast to the West coast

Here are three key points from TierPoint's latest market activity:

• Growth through acquisition. TierPoint is growing through acquisition, which comes with its advantages and challenges. Speed to market is a plus, and buying assets with existing revenue in place makes sense. Transitioning existing customers from the previous provider can be a challenge, but TierPoint's integration experience with previous acquisitions should provide a smooth transition
  
  
• Secondary market expansion. TierPoint's latest acquisition of Cosentry includes data centers in Omaha, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Saint Louis, and Sioux Falls – all secondary markets. Interest continues to grow in cities like these and others, including Nashville, Denver, and Minneapolis (Where Data Center Professionals Searched for Colocation in 2015). TierPoint's focus on providing services in these cities allows them to be closer to their customers.
  
  
• Broadened Services. Each TierPoint acquisition strengthens their services to an evolving data center user market. Most companies want and need hybrid infrastructure solutions (Year of Cloud and The Data Center Operator Evolution), and TierPoint's mix of colocation, cloud, and managed services is now more relevant to the needs of the market.

TierPoint has quickly and strategically increased their offerings through organic growth and acquisitions of several data center operators. Over the last year they have efficiently expanded and rounded out their data center portfolio to offer services to a variety of markets across the US, and will likely expand to more in the future.