Colocation provider Evoque Data Center Solutions is acquiring Foghorn Consulting, a cloud consulting and engineering services firm based in San Francisco.

The deal — the terms of which were not disclosed to Bisnow — marks a transition for Dallas-based Evoque from simply a provider of server space and connectivity to a company that can help clients design data infrastructure solutions utilizing both colocation and the cloud.

Acquiring Foghorn brings this advisory function in-house, which Evoque CEO Andy Stewart believes will differentiate the company from other colocation providers.

“It was clear that as a pure retail colocation business we didn’t have a differentiated go-to-market strategy,” Stewart told Bisnow.  “It was purely about selling space and power in the markets where we operated — so we made a conscious decision that we wanted to move into the earlier stages of the conversations the CIOs and CTOs are having, as opposed to trying to win deals that have already reached the stage when the customer had already determined what was going to go into colocation.”

This marks a fundamental shift in approach for Evoque, according to Stewart. He said the goal is to provide the most flexibility possible between their data centers and the cloud and across different generations of technology — a dynamic version of hybrid models that have become standard across the industry.

“What it really means is that we’re taking an application-first approach to infrastructure,” Stewart said. “Instead of  trying to force-fit whatever we can into our data centers, we want to work with the decision-makers and help them make better decisions so they can have predictable costs and predictable performance.”

Created in 2019 after Brookfield Capital Partners purchased AT&T’s data center infrastructure for $1.1B, Evoque currently operates 25 data centers around the globe.

While Stewart said the acquisition of Foghorn won’t lead to any immediate changes to the company’s physical footprint, he expects the deal will accelerate Evoque’s need for data center facilities as the company grows and moves some of Foghorn’s solutions in-house.

“In the midterm, we do think we will end up supporting some of those workloads inside of our data centers in more of a private cloud or a private outpost,” Stewart said. “This isn’t going to change that at our core we’re a data center company. We’re going to keep building data centers and grow our data center footprint.”