Its Official: NTT Acquiring Dimension Data

By Charlene O'Hanlon

The bid by Japanese telecom provider NTT for solution provider Dimension Data has cleared all of the necessary regulatory hurdles and been approved by DiDatas shareholders, paving the way for the two companies to join forces to create an international IT services company with a presence in more than 150 countries on five continents.

The two companies announced the acquisition in July. As of Oct. 11, 93 percent of DiDatas shareholders had approved the transaction, leaving the acquisition uncontested.

Jere Brown, CEO of Dimension Data America, said the acquisition wont change the way Dimension Data does business. It will run as a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT and continue to offer the same product and service offerings as it did pre-merger, but with the opportunity to incorporate NTTs technologies into its portfolio.

We are looking to see where we can leverage NTT technologies and help NTT in their expansion of their Japanese multinational clients,” he said. We think the combination [of the two companies offerings] can be pretty powerful.”

Dimension Data is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, with offices in more than 50 countries including the United States. Its global footprint will help NTT move into new markets and better support its existing Japanese clients that have multiple locations.

Dimension Data was built brand on its ability to support clients globally,” Brown said. The bulk of NTTs business is based in Japan, but outside of Japan we are bigger than they are. Our capabilities, experience, systems and processes we have for doing business allows them to aggressively grow and manage their footprint globally and support their Japanese clients with multiple locations.

We built our business around the infrastructure space so they see us as the ability to deliver with excellence for our multinational clients,” Brown added.

Dimension Datas relationships with its existing clients wont change because of the acquisition, Brown said. If anything, the addition of NTT technologies into its portfolio will expand the scope of its customer offerings and create a richer palette.

There is a bit of portfolio overlap but no there is no business redundancy between the two companies,” Brown said. We focus on infrastructure, and they do data center, hosted and managed solutions. Its pretty complementary our initial meetings have been great because its been how we can work together rather than how our technologies overlap.

Our customers are pretty excited, particularly the global multinational clients. Weve been a partner of NTT for the past three years, so clients are looking at this favorably,” he added. Theyre glad to hear Dimension Data will continue to operate as its own brand, a wholly owned subsidiary. Ive made many calls to clients advising of the acquisition steps and the feedback has been positive. Of course, the proof is when we go to market together, but so far clients have been supportive.”