Dimension Data Dives Deeper Into Cloud With OpSource Buy

The details of the acquisition were not revealed Thursday.

Dimension Data, a $4.7 billion integrator headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT Holdings, has launched a centralized Cloud Solutions Business Unit which will tie in OpSource's technology. Tokyo-based NTT bought Dimension Data last year in a cash deal worth more than $3 billion.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based OpSource, founded in 2002, offers cloud computing and managed hosting services, and most recently OpSource teamed up with VCE to offer cloud computing to solution providers, a pairing that was made available through Dimension Data.

The Dimension Data acquisition is also an extension of OpSource's strategic alliance with NTT, which started in 2008. The following year, NTT Investment Partners made a 5 percent investment in OpSource and NTT pushed its collaboration with OpSource to build a global cloud business.

Currently, the OpSource public cloud platforms are hosted in NTT America's data centers in Virginia and California, with expansion into one of NTT Europe's data centers expected in the third quarter of 2011.

According to Dimension Data, the combination of data center operations and direct access to one of the world's largest internet backbones has strengthened OpSource's services delivery model.

Dimension Data's massive move to the cloud comes as the cloud computing market is expected to reach $241 billion come 2020, according to Forrester Research. According to Dimension Data, the OpSource buy adds more momentum to its growing cloud strategy.

“Market readiness for cloud services is being enabled by technology maturation, along with clients' needs for more flexible services-centric, IT sourcing options," Dimension Data CEO Brett Dawson said in a statement. "Our decision to accelerate our focus on cloud services aligns to our long-standing strategy to become a services-led business. Over the past few years, Dimension Data has been building cloud-related skills and capabilities in the areas of virtualization, data center and storage, managed services and hosting, and IT outsourcing -- all critical to enabling cloud architectures for our clients."

Dawson continued: "OpSource brings a rich set of services, a sound cloud architecture, and extensive experience in cloud services that will meet immediate client needs -- in addition to a cloud infrastructure, which supports development and growth in this space. We believe OpSource provides us with an accelerated time-to-market as their infrastructure and services are well-established and tested. Dimension Data is now well-positioned to provide our clients with services that help them at each step in their journey toward cloud architectures."

The new cloud group, into which Dimension Data will wrap OpSource, is expected to help Dimension Data bolster its cloud computing services and integration plays across all markets.

OpSource CEO and co-founder Treb Ryan, said the Dimension Data acquisition will give OpSource access to Dimension Data's understanding of IT infrastructure and architecture and help it attack the cloud market more aggressively.

"An understanding of IT integration across disparate multi-technology, multi-geography, IT environments is critical to evolving toward cloud-based architectures," Ryan said in a statement. "We believe that as part of Dimension Data, OpSource will be better able to capitalize on the global cloud computing market opportunity. We're thrilled to be a part of the Dimension Data family."