Barney sets up Turbidite to buy Asian data center operators

Bill Barney has formed a new company to buy data centers, primarily in Southeast Asia and primarily from local telecommunications companies.

The new company, called Turbidite, is backed by Hong Kong real estate group New World Development, and its CEO, Adrian Cheng, will chair the board.

Barney (pictured), who was CEO of Global Cloud Xchange (GCX) until a year ago, targets what he calls “orphan data centers”, mostly below 10MW, that are out of the box. field of large-scale enterprises.

They are missing an opportunity, he said Capacity in an exclusive interview. “If you look at the Asia-Pacific region, there are a large number of people, especially the 30-45 year olds, who are underserved by infrastructure. Not only are they underserved, but “they are the sweet spot” in terms of service attractiveness, he added.

The new company, announced in Hong Kong on March 3, is called Turbidite, a geological term for an underwater landslide. “We believe that we will revolutionize the submarine cable industry,” he told Capacity, in the interview, which will appear in the February / March issue of the magazine.

He is joined at the company by Wilfred Kwan, who was COO at GCX, and a former Morgan Stanley executive, Don So, who is CFO of the new company as well as head of business incubation for New World Development, which is quoted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with a market cap of HK $95.59 billion (12.32 billion USD).

Barney believes the Big Five – Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft – have largely ignored many markets, such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. These emerging markets have potential “not only for data centers but also for networks,” he said.

Turbidite is already talking about three potential acquisitions, he told Capacity, and hopes to make an announcement within days, the others later in the year.

The target is data centers with 50 to 100 racks. “We will be a network of international data centers, first in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East: Egypt later.”

It is recruiting a sales force in Asia, Europe and the United States, although there are no staff announcements yet.

“We’ll be in M&A mode for the first 12 months,” he said, with “a focus on underserved growth. We want to focus on as many eyeballs as possible. “

Turbidite’s decision to be based in Hong Kong will be seen as a vote of confidence in the Special Administrative Region of China, which has faced challenges from mainland China and also the United States due to its relationship with China. Barney said: “Hong Kong is probably one of the most resilient cities in the world. It’s a financial center, it’s diverse, it’s got a lot of energy, and there’s a lot of talent here.