NTT Com buys control of Frontline Systems - UPDATED

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 11 May 2011 17:13

IT Industry - Deals

Japan's giant telco, NTT has bought 70 percent of Australian IT infrastructure, consulting and managed services provider Frontline Systems Australia, through its subsidiary NTT Com. (This article originally said that NTT Group had bought into Frontline - see comment from Dimension Data at the end)

NTT Group owns Dimension Data Australia though its purchase of the company globally last year and NTT Com said the alliance would enable it to expand its range of global ICT services and offer multinational companies "globally seamless, one-stop solutions for networks, infrastructure and cloud provisioning."

NTT Com said it would "integrate Frontline's server-related technologies with the NTT Group's network-integration, software-development and maintenance capabilities [and] accelerate cloud services development by utilising Frontline's subsidiary Harbour MSP's data centre-related technologies."

NTT Com already has a direct presence in Australia, NTT Australia that is responsible for business in the Oceania market. According to a recent press release, it "provides a world-class Tier-1 Internet backbone, secure closed networks, security, system integration, network and application management, managed hosting and global content-delivery services with partner companies globally." NTT Com has three point of presence for its Arcstar Global IP-VPN service in Australia: In Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Frontline was established in 1993 and now claims to be "Australia's largest, premier infrastructure solutions provider," with forecasted sales of $277m for the year to June 2011. The company has data centres, warehousing and sales operations in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Singapore.

* A Dimension Data spokesman told iTWire that it was important to stress that NTT Com and not NTT Group has bought into Frontline "because Dimension Data and NTT Communications will continue to operate separately as sister companies, along with Extend Technologies and Keane, in the Australian market." Keane is a US based IT services company acquired by NTT Data in January 2011. Extend Technologies is an Australian SAP service and solutions provider, also owned by NTT Data.