**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting merger and acquisition news from February.**

U.S.-based hybrid IT services provider Ensono is buying India-based Wipro‘s hosted data-center services business in a deal worth more than $400 million.

Wipro will transition eight data centers, and more than 900 employees from its hosted data-center services business, to Ensono. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. It should wrap in June.

Wipro is among the major vendors in the global enterprise artificial-intelligence (AI) market.

Ensono’s Jim Magnus

Jim Magnus, Ensono’s vice president of partner development, tells Channel Partners the acquisition is a “major step forward that will help us better serve enterprise clients, manage complex IT globally, and become a stronger partner.” Ensono’s partners include such companies as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM and Microsoft.

“Through the agreement, we are dramatically expanding our mainframe services which will greatly enhance our partnerships,” he said. “We saw this acquisition as an opportunity to take Ensono one step closer to its 2020 vision of being the recognized leader in true hybrid IT, from public cloud to mainframe, by expanding in size, scale and geographic reach.”

The acquisition nearly doubles Ensono’s revenue, increasing it to $550 million, Magnus said. It also enhances its data-center presence with expansion into Germany, provides coast-to-coast connectivity in the United States and expands its European hosting capabilities, diversifies and grows its client base to more than 200, and increases its U.S. and overseas support for mainframe operations, he said.

“Ensono has grown significantly in a short time, but our strategy remains the same: to enable clients’ business transformations,” he said. “We’re expanding our data-center footprint in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, and establishing operations in India. The expansion of our presence globally, diversification of our client base, and even larger infrastructure capabilities better position us as a leader in hybrid IT. This creates exciting potential for both new and expanded channel and business partnerships.”

Wipro and Ensono also have signed a long-term partnership agreement to jointly address the hybrid IT requirements of Wipro’s new and existing enterprise customers. As part of the agreement, Wipro will invest $55 million in Ensono’s combined entity.

Wipro has been providing comprehensive IT management solutions for large and midsize enterprises for more than 25 years, and operates data centers around the world. Hosted data-center services is one of the three businesses that became a part of Wipro when it acquired Infocrossing in 2007. The other two – Medicare and Medicaid services in health insurance, and ERP implementation services – have been integrated with other Wipro businesses and are not part of this divestment.

“As we embrace our strategy of focusing on newer digital areas of spend, our strategic investment and partnership with Ensono will enable us to remain committed to meeting the hosted data-center services requirements of our customers,” said Kiran Desai, Wipro’s senior vice president of global infrastructure services. “This partnership will enhance the global data-center footprint and expand the available talent pool, which will give us economies of scale and allow us to offer end-to-end capabilities in the infrastructure space, better than ever before.”