CenturyLink announces expansion into China

The business arm of American telco CenturyLink has announced the expansion of its managed services availability into the Chinese market. The announcement marks a potentially significant step for Western businesses moving into the worlds’ second largest economy.

Managed hosting, security, cloud and networking solutions will be available to customers based in China, via a dedicated data centre in Shanghai. The telco believes that having a localised presence will help to enable international businesses enter what has traditionally been a very closed market.

CenturyLink has partnered with IT service provider Neusoft and data centre vendor GDS to deliver its managed hosting, colocation and cloud services in China. Neusoft is already well established in the market, with an extensive customer base and market shares in various industry verticals throughout the country. Citic Telecom CPC, meanwhile, will continue its long-standing partnership with CenturyLink in the APAC region, and will act as the network provider for its services.

Angela Wang, who is a Senior Vice President at Neusoft, believes that the collaborative effort between all parties will stand to benefit companies looking to emerge into the Chinese market, and help to break down market entry barriers typically associated with the country.

“This collaboration offers clients a unique opportunity to expand their IT presence into China by leveraging the resources of two world-class global IT providers to help simplify the complexities inherent in China,” she said.

Meanwhile, David Meredith, who is Senior Vice President and General Manager for CenturyLink Technology Solutions, believes that recent expansion in the USA and Europe, as well as China, will help the telco better serve global business customers.

“IT leaders tell us the road to cloud often starts in an outsourced data centre,” he said. “With this global rollout, we’re on an ambitious course to deliver carrier diversity, interconnectivity and managed hybrid services at pace with the market’s appetite for access to flexible and secure IT infrastructure”.

The growth into China comes as CenturyLink begins the conclusion of its global data centre expansion, with eight new sites being developed in North America and Europe this year. All eight are due to be open and functional by the end of Q3 2014, with completion marking the conclusion of an aggressive global expansion by the telco.