Launched by Liberty Global (NASDAQ: LBTYA, LBTYB and LBTYK) and DigitalBridge (NYSE: DBRG) last September, AtlasEdge Data Centres has obtained a strategic minority equity investment from US colocation operator Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR).

As part of the deal, Digital Realty will be able to extend the scale of its presence across the European continent by offering AtlasEdge locations to its customers.

The transaction, whose financial details have not been detailed at this point. is anticipated to close by the end of the year. 

AtlasEdge has a footprint of more than 100 sites across Europe close to consumer and enterprise end-users, at the edge of the last-mile network.

The company aims to serve the growing demand from cloud providers, streaming services and enterprises for high-performance, scalable and secure facilities through which they can distribute low-latency applications and services such as 5G, gaming and IoT.

Digital Realty Chief Technology Officer Chris Sharp, said: “AtlasEdge is quickly becoming a key partner to businesses across Europe, and we are pleased to partner with them to meet the needs of this important region and to advance our edge strategy as the market develops.

“Our global edge strategy includes partnering with key players around the world, and we are excited for AtlasEdge to accompany us on the journey with their unique assets and strong market position.  We are also pleased that Giuliano, who has been a key contributor to our global strategy, will lead AtlasEdge’s promising growth trajectory going forward.”

In conjunction with the investment, Giuliano Di Vitantonio, Executive Vice President, Strategy & Business Segments at Digital Realty, will join AtlasEdge as Chief Executive Officer, effective January 2022. 

Di Vitantonio was Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at European data centre operator Interxion before the company was acquired by Digital Realty in 2020.

He has more than 25 years’ experience in the technology sector, across a broad range of roles including R&D, strategy, consulting, business development, and marketing.

He has also spent 17 years at Hewlett-Packard and four years at Cisco Systems as Global Vice President of Marketing for Data Center & Cloud.

AtlasEdge new CEO Di Vitantonio said: “It has been a privilege to help develop and strengthen Digital Realty’s customer relationships and industry-leading innovation, and I’m excited to continue working alongside the company, leveraging its unparalleled data centre expertise to fuel AtlasEdge’s growth.” 

Partnership ecosystem grows continent-wide

In addition to the Digital Realty strategic investment and the appointment of a new CEO, AtlasEdge has also formed a collaborative partnership with fibre operator Zayo Group.

Under the agreement, Zayo will connect its carrier-neutral, fibre-based network with AtlasEdge technical facilities in support of customer requirements.

Zayo operates today a Tier 1 network backbone, with a 126,000 route-mile fibre network across North America and Europe, and more than 13 million miles of fibre serving thousands of office buildings and data centres with high bandwidth optical- and packet-based services.

Jesper Aagaard, President, Zayo Europe, said: “We are excited to work with AtlasEdge in enabling the Network(ed) Edge ecosystem in Europe. This collaboration demonstrates Zayo’s commitment to building the Edge architecture that is critical to support customers’ demand for high-capacity, low-latency connectivity solutions.

“We are aligned with AtlasEdge in their goal to deliver a next-gen edge platform in Europe and are committed to investing in our European network infrastructure to support this goal, which will help drive our customers’ digital transformation initiatives globally.”

AtlasEdge has been establishing partnerships across the continent including with Virgin Media O2 in the UK, Virgin Media in Ireland, Sunrise UPC in Switzerland and UPC in Poland.

Josh Joshi, AtlasEdge Executive Chairman, said: “Our collaborative approach is accelerating with today’s announcements and the arrival of Giuliano, who has played a critical role in some of the most successful data centre growth strategies in the industry.

“We believe that demand is quickly moving to the edge to support the requirements for the digital economy, and AtlasEdge will be the default name in European edge infrastructure.”

AtlasEdge has recently also named Zahl Limbuwala as Chief Operating Officer, Ron Huisman as Chief Financial Officer and former Googler Mark Sokol as Chief Technology Officer.