Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/10/29/ntt_communications_cloud_amazon_acquisition/

NTT Comms snaps up US cloud players in £540 MILLION swoop

Look out Amazon, Japanese giant wants a piece of the cloud too

By Phil Muncaster

Posted in On-Prem, 29th October 2013 06:28 GMT

Enterprise ICT business NTT Communications has taken a big step towards expanding its global cloud computing footprint with the $US525 million (£326m) acquisition of US provider Virtela and a $350m (£217m) swoop for 80 per cent of datacentre firm RagingWire.

The Japanese firm said its deal with RagingWire would more than double its datacentre space in the US – an important strategic market which NTT said accounts for more than 50 per cent of global demand.

RagingWire currently has 650,000 square feet of datacentres at facilities in Sacramento and Asburn, Virginia, with plans afoot to expand this by a further 1.5m square feet.

“We are rapidly expanding our capabilities to provide cloud and telecommunications solutions worldwide and the deal with RagingWire is critical to increasing our overall capacity, providing data centre infrastructure management tools which enhance colocation service’s reliability and efficiency,” said NTT CEO Akira Arima in a canned statement.

“RagingWire leads the data centre industry in availability, innovation, and customer experience, and that will enhance our global cloud solutions significantly.”

One example of this innovation is RagingWire’s patented 2N+2 design, which apparently offers twice the redundancy of normal datacentres at lower cost, and will be rolled out to NTT’s facilities across the globe.

The Japanese firm’s global cloud expansion plans will also be boosted by its acquisition of Denver-based Virtela, a 400 employee-strong business specialising in IT infrastructure, app acceleration, cloud-based security and managed network services.

In particular, Virtela’s expertise in “virtualised networking services” should help enhance NTT’s global network services offerings as well as expand their reach from 160 to more than 190 markets, it said.

The combination of Virtela’s managed and cloud network services with NTT Communications' global ICT infrastructure will be introduced from next year.

The deal should help the Japanese comms giant expand a major cloud push only begun in 2011, but which already includes APAC datacentres in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Australia, alongside its home country.

The firm also took a majority stake in UK datacentre services provider Gyron for an undisclosed sum last year. ®