Verizon paying $1.4 billion to buy Terremark; officials say deal won't affect Culpeper site
Date published: 1/28/2011
Verizon Communications will purchase Terremark Worldwide, a data storage company that is a large and growing employer in Culpeper County, the two companies announced late yesterday.
News of the $1.4 billion, $19-per-share, all-cash buyout sent Terremark's stock shooting up nearly 36 percent in after-hours trading. Verizon's stock was little changed after the announcement of the deal, which is expected to close by the end of March.
A Terremark spokesman said the deal won't affect the company's Culpeper operation or jobs there.
Terremark has prospered off the trend toward "cloud computing," in which people store their photos, files and other data on computer servers that are accessible from any device with an Internet connection.
Rather than store their own data, customers from the private and public sector hire firms such as Terremark to keep it safe.
In 2008, the Miami-based company opened its first data center building in Culpeper on 30 acres off McDevitt Drive near Germanna Community College's branch campus.
The company--which operates 13 data centers in the U.S., Europe and Latin America--decided on Culpeper in part because it was just outside the Washington blast zone but still close enough to the nation's capital for easy access. Miles of fiber-optic cables link Terremark with the Washington area.
A 72,000-square-foot headquarters building and two more data centers have been built at the Culpeper campus since it first opened.
The company last year paid $5 million for another 27 adjacent acres on which it can expand the highly secured campus, where hundreds of people work to protect the sensitive data of Terremark's customers.
One of Terremark's larger customers will now be its owner--Verizon, which said the deal will accelerate its "cloud strategy."
But Terremark spokesman Xavier Gonzalez said the deal won't affect the Culpeper operation. Terremark will keep its name and management team and operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon.
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2011/012011/01282011/603683
No comments:
Post a Comment