CenturyLink has been alive with activity as of late. It has positioned itself as a prominent telecom in its market with a series of acquisitions and has expanded its presence as a holder of enterprise-class data centers. To show for it, now the telecom has another mention as a Gartner Magic Quadrant “leader.”
It was only this past May that CenturyLink made the Gartner Magic Quadrant list as a global provider of cloud infrastructure-as-a-service. This time around, it is showing its position as a leader (among “visionaries,” “niche players,” and “challengers”) in Europe as a provider of cloud-enabled managed hosting. Richard Warley, the managing director of CenturyLink's Europe, Middle East, and Africa operations, commented that his company has made an impression by offering a number of services in many geographic regions at once.
“CenturyLink continues to focus on Europe to meet growing demand for colocation, managed hosting, cloud, and network services,” Warley said. “We believe being named a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, Europe, reinforces our commitment to delivering a complete portfolio of technology services and differentiated hybrid IT innovation through our advanced cloud services and complementary infrastructure, network, and managed services.”
In a nutshell, CenturyLink is reaching far and wide with its capabilities. It has begun this recent expansion with a few acquisitions which TMC has covered. These include DataGardens, which specializes in data recovery, and Orchestrate, which focuses on managed database services. Of course, absorption of these two entities gave CenturyLink a head start by bringing skills to its overall team that may have been otherwise lacking in its previous standing as just a telecom.
CenturyLink has still kept to its roots while expanding the basic entertainment services market such as in Salt Lake City where it recently launched its fiber optic Prism TV service. This has led to growth in several areas of the company and free cash flow in the millions. Many new customers are also jumping on board its expanded set of services. For all these reasons, it appears appropriate that CenturyLink would have made a strong standing in the Magic Quadrant once again. Signs point to this not being the last.
Edited by
Dominick Sorrentino
