The transaction, first announced on 23 December 2024, and cleared by the Irish Competition and Consumer Protection Commission in August this year, reflects BT’s asset-light strategy internationally and, through partnering with globally scaled organisations, provides for a much more commercially scalable and flexible model.

Bas Burger, CEO of BT International, said: “We are delighted to conclude this successful transaction which represents the next step in our strategy to become a more agile and focused business. We look forward to our continued partnership with Equinix not only in Ireland, but globally.” 

Following the completion of this transaction and an earlier divestment of the Irish wholesale and enterprise business unit in September, BT continues to maintain a strong presence in Ireland with over 300 colleagues serving multinational companies and large organisations. This team will also continue delivering the Emergency Call Answering Service. In Dublin, BT also employs over 100 experts in its global procurement unit, BT Sourced.  

Under the terms of the agreement, BT hybrid cloud services will be based on Rackspace Technology’s cutting-edge solutions, which the company will deploy in BT data centres along with its Rackspace Fabric management layer.

Customers will benefit from the integration of Rackspace Technology’s cloud management expertise and automation, analytics, and AI tools with BT’s world-leading network and security capabilities.

This will enhance customer experience and enable BT to further evolve its managed cloud services.

Bas Burger, CEO of BT’s Global unit, said: “This innovative partnership with Rackspace Technology accelerates our plans to build a world-class hybrid cloud portfolio. It will deliver outstanding experiences for our customers and ensure they benefit from the best services, backed by our partner’s leadership in cloud.”

Kevin Jones, CEO of Rackspace Technology, said, “This exciting partnership with BT validates Rackspace Technology’s expertise in helping large, multinational enterprises in their cloud transformation journey and provides both companies with unique industry positioning. It highlights the enduring long-term value of a hybrid cloud model, as BT customers will now have access to the best of public cloud, private cloud, and traditional hosted environments alongside the speed, security, and resilience of BT’s worldwide networks.”

The companies have also committed to extend their partnership in the future to create new joint cloud offerings for their customers.