Hivelocity Acquires UK's Heficed, 9 Data Centers

Data center and cloud provider Hivelocity has acquired UK-based competitor Heficed, the company announced Monday.

Heficed and its portfolio of nine data centers will be folded into the significantly larger Hivelocity, which offers colocation, cloud and other digital infrastructure hosting services at more than 40 global data centers in 29 markets. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

"This acquisition represents a fantastic opportunity for our clients old and new," Mike Archietto, CEO and co-founder of Hivelocity, said in a written statement. "By combining Heficed's impressive list of data center locations … with our own global network of data centers and premium bare metal hosting, our world-class infrastructure solutions will now reach an even wider audience of users." 

Based in Tampa, Hivelocity specializes in so-called bare-metal cloud, in which tenants lease specific servers in Hivelocity’s data centers, as opposed to buying a set amount of computing power with traditional cloud services or leasing space for their own equipment at a colocation data center. The company also offers cloud and traditional hosting, with 13 colocation data centers in eight U.S. markets and Amsterdam. 

In acquiring Heficed, Hivelocity is significantly expanding its footprint in a number of international markets. Heficed — which operated as Host1Plus until a 2019 rebranding and, like Hivelocity, offers bare-metal, cloud and colocation — owns data centers in Frankfurt; Milan; Lagos, Nigeria; São Paulo; and Johannesburg, as well as Chicago; Reston, Virginia; and Los Angeles in the U.S. 

"With the addition of Brazil, South Africa, and Nigeria data center locations, our customers can now instantly deploy bare metal servers across 6 continents," Hivelocity Chief Operating Officer Steve Eschweiler said in a statement. 

Experts tell Bisnow they expect more of this kind of M&A activity in the months ahead, with widespread consolidation driven by operators’ needs to offer truly global platforms and growing investment in managed services like those offered by Hivelocity and Heficed. 

“Consolidation in the data center space will continue,” UPSTACK Managing Director Jake Cummins told Bisnow last week. “Expect to see some small regional players get acquired by larger entities … I see the larger entities looking to gain more revenue share from managed services.”