Wellington provides US$8.75 million financing to PE-backed Digital Fortress

This week’s financing was provided to Seattle-based Digital Fortress, a prominent data centre operator and cloud management provider serving the Pacific Northwest market. Digital Fortress was formed in early 2012 through the combination of two successful Seattle-based data centers: Digital Forest and Fortress Colocation Centers. The company manages 63,000 square feet of space featuring a diverse-network designed to support a mix of private, public and managed infrastructure with scaling capacity to maintain data speed and access for hybrid IT organizations. Recently, the company added cloud infrastructure management capabilities to support its clients on both Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s AWS.

Although the vast majority of our financings involve us partnering with VC-backed firms, Digital Fortress counts Halyard Capital of New York as its sponsor. Halyard is a US$600M mid market private equity shop with an expertise in tech-enabled businesses, data analytics, cyber security and so forth.

Digital Fortress is the third portfolio company to be added to our new $300M Fund V, and our first in the State of Washington in far too long. Our team has been getting around, however, and our capital is committed/drawn in 14 different States and Provinces at the moment.

A warm welcome to DF CEO Matt Gerber and his team. Just so you know, there’s no truth to the rumour that we did the deal to give us an excuse to travel out to Seattle on a regular basis in the hopes of seeing a Pearl Jam concert or two (see prior post “What entrepreneurs can learn from Pearl Jam” July 15-12).

MRM