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The upcoming holiday season certainly seems to have brought some festive cloudy cheer in one corner of the world, with two Australian cloud and data centre companies being acquired by Oracle and Equinix respectively.
Aconex, a Melbourne-based cloud software provider which aims to manage teams in the construction industry, has been bought by Oracle for $1.2 billion US (£899m) to create ‘the world’s most comprehensive cloud offering for managing all aspects of construction projects’, as Oracle puts it.
The Redwood giant already has offerings in this space under the umbrella of the Oracle Construction and Engineering Cloud. Oracle acquired Primavera, a project portfolio management (PPM) software provider, in 2008, with the company’s applications being used in a wide range of industries, including construction, while added to this mix last year was Textura, acquired by Oracle for $663m.
Leigh Jasper, Aconex founder and CEO, said the Aconex and Oracle businesses were ‘a great, natural fit and highly complementary in terms of vision, product, people and geography.’ “With the addition of Aconex, we significantly advance our vision of offering the most comprehensive cloud-based project management solution for this $14 trillion industry,” said Mike Sicilia, SVP and GM of Oracle’s construction and engineering global business unit.
A bit further up, in Sydney, data centre provider Metronode is to be acquired by Equinix for $1.035 billion AUD (£594m). The company has 10 data centres in seven locations across Australia, from Adelaide, to Brisbane, Canberra and Illawarra, with two in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.
Equinix already has a presence in the latter two, with the company saying the acquisition will ‘further strengthen the leadership position of Equinix in the Asia-Pacific region and support its ongoing global expansion.’ The deal will bring the total number of global Equinix sites to 52 across five continents.
“With this acquisition, companies operating across Australia will have access to the largest network of highly interconnected data centres in the world,” said David Yuile, Metronode CEO. “Metronode is excited to become part of an industry-leading company and further help our customers to build their digital infrastructure and drive competitive advantage in the digital age.”
According to the most recent study from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA), Australia dropped a place to be the fourth most cloud ready Asia Pacific nation. The country scored well in terms of privacy, broadband connectivity, freedom of information and intellectual property protection, but struggled in terms of international connectivity. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and New Zealand had overtaken Australia for data centre risk.
Both deals are expected to close in the first half of 2018. You can find out more about the Oracle/Aconex deal here and the Equinix/Metronode acquisition here.