Ericsson, one of Sweden’s largest telecommunications companies, is now offering help to other telcos that wish to become providers of cloud-based services, the company said earlier this week.

The range of its new data center services includes everything from consulting to data center construction to optimization of existing IT environments for cloud.

Paolo Colella, head of consulting and systems integrator at Ericsson, said telcos were ideally positioned to provide cloud services to enterprises.

“We bring telecom-grade thinking to the cloud space, focusing both on availability and security of the services, as well as cost and efficiency gains for enterprise customers,” Colella said.

Ericsson said its entry into the data center market strengthened its position in the ICT space.

Telcos are thought to be well-positioned to provide cloud services because of their existing wide-reaching network assets. Cloud requires network and telcos naturally have a leg up in this market over others.

Many have entered the cloud and IT-services space in the recent years through acquisition. The biggest examples included Verizon’s acquisition of Terremark, CenturyLink’s acquisition of Savvis and Windstream’s acquisition of Paetec.

Read a DatacenterDynamics FOCUS magazine feature on the telco/cloud consolidation trend.