South Africa-based Dimension Data has acquired Ceryx, a privately-owned Toronto-headquartered company, for an undisclosed sum.
The Canadian firms offers a suite of services across the Microsoft Messaging and Collaboration Suite, including Office 365, Exchange, Sharepoint and Skype for Business.
Dimension Data, a $7.5 billion ICT services and solutions provider, was acquired by Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) in 2010 in a £2.1 billion deal.
Ceryx will reside within DiData's ITaaS Service Unit. Dimension Data will combine Ceryx's offerings with its Microsoft Services to deliver a full services portfolio that spans on-premises, private cloud and public cloud, Office 365 - or a hybrid of any - for Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint and Skype for Business. This includes the group's private cloud offering called cloud services for Microsoft.
Ceryx's focus is on Fortune 500 clients, mainly in Canada and the US, with recent wins in Europe. When combined with DiData's global client base which covers many industry verticals, this accelerates Dimension Data to a dominant global position in this market.
"We've seen strong adoption of our private cloud offering for Exchange, Sharepoint and Skype for Business," says Ettienne Reinecke, Dimension Data's group CTO. "This strategic acquisition fast-tracks Dimension Data's hybrid offering, and positions the combined entities as one of the few companies globally that can offer the full suite of different delivery models that allows organisations to provision, manage and optimise these workloads through single management portal, irrespective of platform or location.
"Dimension Data's clients are on a journey to migrate various workloads to the cloud. In most instances, the optimal fit for them is not one underlying platform, but rather a combination - or hybrid - of platforms for Microsoft Office 365, Exchange, Sharepoint, and Skype for Business. The combined capabilities of Ceryx and Dimension Data's end-user computing suite of services accelerates our time to market, and facilitates the client's journey to the cloud," explains Reinecke.
"We're thrilled to join Dimension Data and the wider NTT Group. Our combined technology offerings and approach to end-user computing strengthens our ability to support businesses across the world on private, public and hybrid technology platforms," says Gus Harsfai, founder and CEO of Ceryx.
MEA prospects
Tony Walt, group executive for end-user computing at Dimension Data, says the acquisition presents opportunity for the company in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.
"The acquisition of Ceryx will extend the portfolio of services in MEA to a comprehensive hybrid portfolio. This will, therefore, allow organisations to migrate specific workloads to either public or private cloud, as well as maintain workloads in their on-premises environment," says Walt.
"We would seek to couple the new management capability that Ceryx provides - provisioning and managing - along with our broader enterprise services capability for the MEA market," he adds.
According to Walt, there has been a massive uptake of both public and private cloud for, in particular, the Exchange and Sharepoint workloads in SA.
"When it comes to Skype for Business, be it enterprise voice, there is a tremendous demand and we will be releasing a service that is coupled with our cloud services for Microsoft platform within the next few weeks that will provide full, resilient Skype Enterprise Voice Capabilities on our private cloud.
"Organisations we have engaged with in South Africa have expressed a need to also split workloads across both private and public - and in many instances on-premises as well. The South African market, as well as the broader Sub-Saharan market, presents a tremendous opportunity. We will work closely with Microsoft locally to ensure we provide organisations with the most appropriate suite of services as they journey to the cloud."
Shopping spree
In October last year, DiData announced the acquisition of the remaining 60% stake of Britehouse from a consortium made up of Remgro, Convergence Partners and Britehouse management. Dimension Data had held a 40% equity in Britehouse since 2007 when the company was established.
The Britehouse buyout followed the acquisition of iFACTORY in August. Other acquisitions include Agile Business Solutions, Xpedia Fusions and NextiraOne.
Dimension Data's parent company NTT Group recently said it hopes to grow its overseas revenue to $22 billion by 2018, and acquisition activity seems to be a big part of its strategy to achieve that goal. In the past five years, the company has spent the equivalent of $547 million on acquisitions outside of Japan.
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