CenturyLink Moves into Switch SUPERNAP in Vegas

CenturyLink announced it has signed a data center services deal with Switch Tuesday. CenturyLink will sell space in one of Switch’s Las Vegas facilities, while Switch customers will have access to the Monroe, Louisiana-based telco’s extensive data center services portfolio.

The Switch SUPERNAP campus in Vegas is well known for its sleek design, massive size and ex-military security personnel. CenturyLink has been expanding its data center footprint ever since it doled out $2.5 billion to acquire Savvis in 2011.

CenturyLink’s data center portfolio is now up to about 60 locations around the world. Among other recent expansions was the launch of its first data center in mainland China in September and the launch of its second site in Toronto in August.

The company uses a mix of data center providers to expand its footprint. They include another recently opened location by IO in Phoenix and a Compass building in Shakopee, Minnesota.

While keeping colocation services at the core, the company has been aggressively pursuing the role of one of technology leaders in cloud services. It has acquired an Infrastructure-as-a-Service company called Tier 3 and a Platform-as-a-Service company called AppFog and has been investing in developing its offerings in both flavors of cloud. Earlier this month it opened a new development center in Seattle that will focus on integrating its varied portfolio of services onto a single unified platform.

CenturyLink has significant network service business in Las Vegas, where it employs about 700 people.

“Partnering with CenturyLink, a company that many of our customers already leverage for network services, will benefit the local Las Vegas community and extend a world-class product to the global CenturyLink customer base,” said Rob Roy, CEO and founder of Switch.

This is a second high-profile customer win Switch has talked about publicly this month, following announcement of a 1,000-cabinet deal with the online photo editing and sharing service Shutterfly.

The Switch SUPERNAP campus has two buildings, together spanning more than 750,000 square feet. It is building a single 600,000-square-foot facility adjacent to it.

Its roughly 1,000 customers include eBay, Google, Cisco, VMware and Microsoft, which hosts its Xbox One cloud infrastructure there.