The Canadian channel community could soon have a new name in its competitive landscape: NipponTelegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). Japan’s NTT, one of the world’s largest telecommunications service providers, has made a US$3.2 billion offer to acquire South African IT services and solution provider Dimension Data.
The two companies have reached agreement on an all-cash deal for NTT to acquire Dimension Data’s share capital, and its board is recommending acceptance of the offer. The two companies hope to close the acquisition by the end of October, pending regulatory approvals.
In a statement, NTT indicated cloud computing was a major driver of the bid for Dimension Data.
“By leveraging the complementary strengths of both companies, we’re confident that we’ll provide end-to-end, global-one-stop and high quality ICT services. Dimension Data and NTT share the common vision to create new services and values to succeed in the coming age of cloud computing,” said Satoshi Miura, president and CEO of NTT. “Our combined strength will allow us to accelerate execution of our strategies to achieve our shared vision.”
Jeremy Ord, executive chairman of Dimension Data, added that NTT’s network carrier capabilities and assets coupled with Dimension Data’s global system integrator expertise will make it easier for them to help global companies move to managed infrastructure services and cloud computing.
“We believe our alliance with NTT will now allow Dimension Data to accelerate the execution of our medium and long-term strategy at a rapid pace,” said Ord. “The combination of NTT’s global resources and Dimension Data’s system integrator capabilities is an extremely powerful combination.”
Dimension Data opened its Canadian subsidiary, Dimension Data Canada, in 2007 and hired former NexInnovations vice-president Wendy Lucasto be its area vice-president. Unified communications has been a key focus area for the company in Canada, which is one of Cisco System’s largest partners in the country.
There’s no word on how the acquisition could impact Dimension Data’s Canadian operations. Globally, the company, which is headquartered in London, has 11,500 employees and 6,000 clients.
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