Verizon Sale of Data Center Assets Imminent

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said the sale of the company's data center assets could be announced early in the fourth quarter. Verizon is expecting to sell its cloud hosting and data center business "early in the fourth quarter." CFO Fran Shammo, speaking on Verizon's third quarter earnings conference call, said the company is in negotiations with one party to sell its data centers, which have been floated on the market this year. "We are proceeding with the sale of our data centers. We are currently in negotiations and we should have something to formally announce to everyone here early in the fourth quarter. So more to come on that but we are progressing with the sale of our data centers," said Shammo. Shammo gave an update on the data center sale process in June. Verizon has a bevy of colocation assets and roughly 48 data centers. The hang-up has been that investors wanted to see revenue and costs by data centers. Analysts have speculated that the data center deal should close soon. Verizon acquired Terremark in 2011 and made a splash in the hosting and cloud market. Recent earnings reports from Verizon have barely mentioned cloud hosting. The most likely buyer for Verizon's data center assets would be Equinix.