Global solutions and services provider Dimension Data said it will quadruple the size of its data center business to US$4bn by 2018.

Dimension Data’s existing $1bn data center business is looking to aggressively grow and scale businesses both organically and through acquisition.

The group said its access to a significant set of data center assets across its parent company, the NTT Group, differentiates the business.

Currently Dimension Data operates 12 public cloud locations around the world and has plans for further locations to come online in the next few quarters.

Dimension Data significantly extends its cloud locations through its OneCloud partners, which it said gives it one of the largest cloud footprints in the world.

Dimension Data’s group executive for the data center business unit, Steve Joubert said in all regions there is an urgent need to go undergo the transformation process.

“Although all our markets are targeting exponential growth, our analysis shows there'll be higher rates of growth in mature regions such as Europe and North America, given the legacy data centre investments in those geographies that require transformation,” Joubert said.

Dimension Data also offers its clients the benefits of its membership of the NTT Group.

NTT currently has 243 secure data centers globally; Dimension Data also has access to NTT Data's application and workload capabilities.

Joubert said the Cloud, virtualization 3.0 and software-defined everything have changed the data center landscape forever.

“New workloads, users, connected devices, and locations are compounding the pressure on the data center,” Joubert said.