Zayo Group gained two data centers in Denver to call its own after completing its $675 million purchase of Latisys Holdings on Monday.
Latisys, in Englewood, has eight data centers, including two in south Denver. Boulder-based Zayo, better known for its thousands of miles of fiber connecting buildings around the globe, now owns 45 facilities.
“It is very strategic, and it’s obviously big for Zayo as the second-largest acquisition in our history,” said Greg Friedman, Zayo’s vice president of zColo, which is Zayo’s colocation business. “It effectively doubles the size of our data-center business.”
The purchase boosts not only Zayo’s colocation business, which lets customers rent space inside a data center or hire Zayo to outsource IT operations, but Latisys helps the company expand a feature known as infrastructure as a service, allowing Zayo to offer add-on services to customers.
Latisys’ colocation services account for 75 percent of its revenue, with cloud services accounting for 25 percent. The colocation piece joins Zayo’s zColo business and “increases zColo’s proforma annualized revenue by 80 percent to approximately $183 million,” the company said in a statement. Stephanie Copeland, formerly Zayo’s president of Lit Services, becomes president of zColo.
While the two companies seem similar, Friedman said just 5 percent of customers overlapped.
“The secondary motivation Zayo has is to continue to grow as an employer in the Front Range,” he added. But Zayo is not saying how many Latisys employees will join the company.
In December, Zayo employed 1,600 people worldwide, including 500 in Colorado. Of those, 200 worked at its Boulder headquarters, and 125 were at a Denver office that opened in September.
Tamara Chuang: 303-954-1209, tchuang@denverpost.com or
