No Money Down

I'm not sure if Carleton Sheets ever bought a data center. But current industry conditions have made it possible for providers in some markets to expand without paying cash for facilities. An example is ZooLink, a Vancouver, British Columbia hosting company that has acquired two finished Internet data centers by assuming the leases, with no cash changing hands.

This week ZooLink announced the acquisition of a former PSINet data center in Vancouver, which follows a similar deal last fall for a data center in Calgary. Both centers are less than 10,000 square feet, according to Zoolink's Samatha Haynes, who said that in each case the company paid no cash, but assumed the lease. ZooLink had always offered hosting, but began focusing on opportunities in the data center sector early in 2002.

"We are executing our acquisition strategy and meeting our goals in the time frame we have set," said Ali Shawkat, ZooLink’s President & CEO. "We will continue to expand aggressively into the colocation marketplace while providing a growing suite of managed services to our customers, concurrent with the implementation of our new business model.”

ZooLink started in 1998 focused on the wireless sector, and now offers wired and wireless broadband Internet services, managed Web-hosting services and managed data center services. The company says it has developed a franchise approach that seeks to " identify, acquire, convert and operate Intelligent Data Centers to transform them into profitable business units in Canada and the US."