Didata claims cloud leadership with major services rollout

Integrator claims global reach gives it the edge as it makes land-grab move with range of consulting, integration and CaaS offerings

Dimension Data has claimed its global clout gives it the upper hand against rivals after making a major move into the cloud arena.

In June, Didata significantly deepened its footprint in the cloud arena by acquiring specialist player OpSource. Yesterday the integrator unveiled the Dimension Data Cloud Services suite, comprising consulting and integration services, as well as compute-as-a-service offerings (CaaS). Also in the mix are managed hosting, managed services, backup and disaster recovery and application services.

All cloud services are being provided through Didata's in-house managed cloud platform (MCP) and can be deployed in public, private, hosted or managed delivery models. Didata will also be looking to supply its services through the service provider channel.

Calvin Goom, UK managing director of Dimension Data told ChannelWeb that several tier-two and -three service providers are already in discussions about working with the integrator. He added that the services unveiled yesterday -which are all fully functional already - position his firm as one the UK channel's leading cloud experts. This a "massive" statement of intent for the coming years, said Goom.

"This is not an intention to deploy cloud, as many people have put out in the press recently," he added. "Every client I meet wants to know what is our view, what is our position [on the cloud]. Prior to this announcement, I was limited in what I could tell them. We can demonstrate that we are now an emerging leader in this market."

Goom claimed that competitors, such as Logicalis, Insight, 2e2 and Computacenter, are "all very capable companies". But the breadth of Didata's footprint and the global nature of yesterday's rollout gives it a competitive edge, he asserted.

"Having that global infrastructure is key," said Goom. "As of today, we are delivering the compute level. But we have a detailed roadmap. [We will look to provide] infrastructure as a service offerings, [such as] Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, storage and desktop management. A lot of over-the-top services, and things around config management and patch management.

"One of the unique features of our architecture is the way we have embedded the network management within our MCP architecture. That has allowed us to significantly enhance the level of security and provide service-level guarantees."