Kirk LaughlinSouth African IT services provider Dimension Data is currently in acquisition talks with 8-10 Latin American firms, the company’s CEO for the Americas, Jere Brown, told BNamericas.
“We have a short list of about 8-10 targeted companies, and we are in the process of accelerating discussions with those companies,” he said. “We are past the targeting stage.”
BNamericas previously reported that Dimension Data is interested in acquiring companies with a data center offering and presence in countries such as Argentina, Peru and Colombia.
Brown declined to comment on whether Dimension Data is specifically bidding on Chilean IT solutions provider Synapsis, which is being cut loose by parent firm Endesa.
Synapsis has a data center offering and a geographic presence in Argentina, Peru and Colombia, in addition to Chile, Brazil and Panama.
“There are companies that have a pan-Latin American footprint, and other companies that are strong within the key growth markets of Latin America,” Brown said. “We feel like we need to be bigger in Brazil.”
In April, Dimension Data acquired 51% of Chilean integrator Magenta, which has been subsequently rebranded as Dimension Data Chile.
NTT IMPACT
Dimension Data has also been on the receiving end of M&A action, as Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) announced plans in July to acquire the South African firm. The agreement is expected to receive shareholder approval this month.
When the acquisition receives the final go-ahead, Dimension Data will continue to maintain both its brand name and management team throughout Latin America, Brown said.
“We’ve already engaged with NTT in the Americas in a variety of topics and we can have access to some of the portfolio of offerings and capabilities that they have,” he said. “Many of the assets such as data center capabilities, the hosting capabilities, the bandwidth and the telecommunications that we have are complementary to the existing offering.”
Brown added that Dimension Data expects to roll out new cloud services in Latin America during the current fiscal year, which started October 1.
“The biggest area of focus is around cloud services and offering a variety of our on-premise solutions, in more of a cloud offering,” he said. “It could be unified communications, data center, data center hosting, or a variety of others.”
A US$4bn global IT firm, Dimension Data provides solutions such as unified communications, network integration, IT infrastructure outsourcing and managed services.
Add comment