CenturyLink is selling its data center and colocation business for $2.15 billion in cash to a consortium that includes Medina Capital Advisors and Longview Asset Management.

The company plans to use the net proceeds from the sale to partly fund its acquisition of Level 3 Communications that was announced in October.

Glen Post, chief executive officer and president of CenturyLink says that after conducting a thorough review process, they're pleased to have reached an agreement with BC Partners.

"We believe this transaction will benefit customers, employees and investors. Both CenturyLink and BC Partners have a strong customer focus and are committed to ensuring a seamless transition of the customers and their colocation environments,” he says.

CenturyLink will instead put extra focus on offering customers a wide range of IT services and solutions - including network, managed hosting and cloud.

And, while it won't actually own the data centers, CenturyLink will continue to offer colocation services as part of its product portfolio.

Justin Bateman, a managing partner at BC Partners, says they're excited to be acquiring CenturyLink's portfolio of data center assets.

“CenturyLink has built and maintained an impressive global footprint of colocation data centers that is unparalleled for a portfolio of assets of this size. Led by Manny Medina and his management team at Medina Capital, these data centers will become part of a new, global secure infrastructure platform that will meet the growing and changing needs of customers today and for the future,” he explains.

“We thank Glen Post and the entire team at CenturyLink for their partnership, and we look forward to working together to offer all the data centers' existing customers, as well as new customers, unrivaled datacenter and colocation services."

Under terms of the agreement, the BC Partners/Medina-led consortium will assume ownership of CenturyLink's portfolio of 57 data centers at closing.