DiData, NTT merge for the cloud

Dimension Data's Australian chief Steve Nola said he was excited by the combined capabilities the company would have with its new parent, Japanese telecommunication services giant Nippon Telegraph & Telephone (NTT).

In a statement to the media today, Nola said the companies have an "aligned vision for the market" and the opportunities that await them... are "very exciting".

"It's about growth," he said.

That vision, as stated by Satoshi Miura, president and chief executive at NTT, is about establishing a leadership role in the cloud.

Dimension Data and NTT "share the common vision to create new services and values to succeed in the coming age of cloud computing," Miura said.

In the meantime it's business as usual for the South African IT services company's local subsidiaries, including Express Data and Dimension Data Learning Solutions.

"Dimension Data will operate as an independent business with "virtually no overlap", Nola said.

DiData announced overnight that it had accepted a US$3.2 billion (A$3.62 billion) cash takeover bid from NTT with the deal expected to be completed by October after regulatory and governmental approvals.

NTT Australia declined to comment, referring enquiries to its Japan headquarters.

Markets

If completed, DiData would give NTT 6,000 customers across 49 countries, Bloomberg reported.

NTT stocks fell 1.6 percent to close at 3,705 yen (A$48.34) in Tokyo trading before the announcement. DiData, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange, rose as much as 22 percent in South Africa, according to Bloomberg. 

Comment

Chuck Hollis, vice president of global marketing chief technology at EMC, said in his blog today that the deal is "an early signpost in the restructuring of the IT industry: from IT as a product, to IT as a service".

He said the IT industry is getting "cloudified" and is "going to be built differently, operated differently and consumed differently."

Hollis said more acquisitions of this type large and proficient telco-style service provider acquiring a system integrator with customer-facing skills is

"I've even got a private list of who I think is going to want to buy who."