Colt has announced that its newly appointed Chief Technology Officer Rajiv Datta is to be given the brief to drive the service provider’s future cloud strategy.

Datta’s duties are described as ‘the creation of next generation of products and services, including SDN-based networks and digital customer experience’.

Datta has joined Colt’s Executive Leadership team to be led by Carl Grivner who took over as CEO on 1 January. Datta was recruited from AboveNet Communications, where he was chief operating officer for the fibre infrastructure provider as its annual revenues grew from $190m to $500m. New Colt CEO Grivner said Datta was recruited for his track record of transforming business.

Competition from cloud-based services such as Skype has affected the revenues for all European telcos, according to Reuters, which reported how Colt exited the wholesale market for voice calls in 2014.

However, according to a recent report from the European Telecoms Network Operators’ Association (ETNO), the year 2016 should see a return to growth in this sector, thanks in part to a thinning out of players, such as Colt, which also took the decision to pull out of the IT services market.

With an estate of 34 carrier-neutral data centres in Europe and seven managed facilities in Asia Pacific, Colt is to concentrate on cloud and data centre services. However, the data centre market is entering its own phase of consolidation and in November BCN reported market leader Equinix had bought its rival TelecityGroup. In this climate the change management skills of Datta will be invaluable, according to Colt CEO Grivner.

“Rajiv’s track record of transforming business performance will be invaluable in creating the levels of focus, speed and innovation that we need,” he said.