IT service provider Dimension Data has announced that three new data centers will go live in the next four weeks, with its managed cloud platforms (MCP) being hosted in Toronto in Canada, Auckland in New Zealand and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Dimension Data now has 13 public MCPs across the world, in the Americas, EMEA, Asia Pacific and Australia regions.

Its stated intention is for each MCP to provide regional endusers low-latency access to enterprise-class public, private and hosted private cloud services.

The announcement coincides with Cisco’s statement of intention to use Dimension Data’s MCP and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering in order to sell mid-market cloud services to its customers and resellers.

Dimension Data will manage and operate an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) arrangement for Cisco, which will be bundled to deliver hybrid cloud services.

The MCPs will host the service provider’s own public cloud (IaaS) and its managed hosting services.

Dimension Data’s CEO of IaaS business unit Steve Nola said significant milestones have been passed in the cloud to make this possible, such as the acquisition of comms service provider Teleris, and the appointments to provide cloud services for SAP and Microsoft.

“Adding seven MCPs in 12 months has almost doubled our footprint,” Nola said.

“Expanding to 13 MCP locations gives Dimension Data the largest enterprise-class cloud presence in the world.”

Quocirca  senior researcher, analyst Clive Longbottom, hailed the service provider’s rapid expansion, but advised caution.

“DiData has gone from a pretty bland organization to a driving force in the markets over just a few years but it needs to ensure that it has rock-solid IT lifecycle management processes in place,” Longbottom said.

What, he asked, will the company do if all its platforms come to the end of their life at the same time?

“It needs to ensure that it can maintain a set of platforms that meet its customers’ needs - not just today and in the near-term future, but when its competitors build completely new platforms in one or two years’ time,” Longbottom said.

While Dimension Data has the capacity to manage now, maintaining 13 data centers will be a massive challenge, he warned.

“Unlike colos, who only have the facility to worry about, DiData is having to deal with a mix of service offerings and customer demands,” Longbottom said.

“It will also need to work closely with Cisco.”