Iliad is said to be seeking external investment into its data center business.
l'Informé reports that Iliad has tapped investment bank RBC to find a minority investor for its recently formed OpCore data center colocation unit.
The company is said to be offering a stake in 14 of 15 OpCore data centers – reportedly eight in France and seven in Poland – but wants to retain overall control.
The Xavier Niel-owned telco is seeking ‘hundreds of millions of Euros’ in investment, potentially valuing OpCore at around €1 billion ($1.09bn).
OpCore was formed last year after Iliad separated its data center business from its Scaleway cloud unit. Today the company’s website says it operates eight data centers in France totaling 50MW across Paris, Lyon, and Marseille.
The four Paris sites were inherited from Scaleway, while the Lyon and Marseille sites were likely inherited from Iliad-owned MSP Jaguar Network (now known as Free Pro).
The Iliad group also operates around seven data centers in Poland through Play/3S, which are likely the seven Polish sites included in this new planned investment deal.
Iliad’s Irish telco Eir also operates two data centers in Dublin that are seemingly not part of OpCore or this investment.
Scaleway – formerly Online SAS/Online.net – was founded as a hosting company in 1999. The company launched a colocation division after acquiring Alice ADSL from Telecom Italia’s French unit in 2008.
The data center unit can trace its roots back to ISDnet in 1999. The company was first bought by Cable & Wireless in 2000, then Tiscali France in 2003. Tiscali’s French operations were then sold to Telecom Italia’s French subsidiary Alice in 2005, before being bought by Iliad three years later.
Rival French telco Altice recently sold a majority stake in more than 250 French data centers to Morgan Stanley, which has launched a new Edge data center colocation brand with the portfolio.
