QTS Buys Government Cloud Heavyweight Carpathia for $326M

Data center provider QTS Realty Trust has agreed to buy Carpathia Hosting, a colocation, cloud, and managed services provider that does a lot of business with U.S. government agencies, for $326 million.

Growing its government cloud business has been a major focus for QTS in recent years. The acquisition will strengthen that part of the strategy and enhance overall geographic footprint and variety of services the Overland Park, Kansas-based company can provide.

Carpathia, based in Dulles, Virginia, has a number of authorizations necessary to provide cloud and other data center services to federal agencies. It also acts as a provider of VMware vCloud Government Service through a partnership with VMware.

Carpathia also has a partnership with one of its new parent company’s biggest competitors: Digital Realty. Through this partnership the two companies provide solutions that combine Digital’s data center space and the range of services Carpathia provides.

Carpathia has data centers in Virginia, Arizona, California, and Canada, as well as U.K., Holland, Hong Kong, and Australia. It leases space from data center providers in those locations, including from QTS competitors Digital and Equinix.

QTS representatives were not immediately available for comment.

The current QTS footprint consists of 12 data centers across the U.S., including facilities on both coast and the Midwest.

“Joining QTS means leveraging common strengths and continuing the development of innovative hybrid cloud solutions for enterprise and public sector customers,” Peter Weber, CEO of Carpathia, said in a statement.

QTS provides its government cloud services out of its massive data center outside of Richmond, Virginia. Called QTS Federal Cloud, it is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering designed specifically for U.S. government agencies.

QTS received FedRAMP certification for the offering late last year. The certification indicates to federal agencies that the service meets the government’s security standards for third-party cloud services.

In 2013, QTS launched a data center lab in the Richmond facility to develop solutions tailored for its government cloud customers.