Orange is set to acquire Norway-headquartered cloud computing company Basefarm Holdings, a move the operator said marked a major milestone in its Business Services division’s international development.

Basefarm operates cloud-based infrastructure systems for businesses, including critical application and data analysis services across a wide European footprint including Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria.

In a statement, Orange said the €350 million acquisition of Basefarm would “complete” its geographical footprint for enterprise cloud services and enable it to become a “leading player” in the sector within Europe.

Orange Business Services CEO Helmut Reisinger said: “The company’s integration will enable us to significantly extend our big data and critical application management services on a rapidly consolidating market.”

“In addition to our ability to offer access to public or private cloud infrastructure, it is above all our capacity to propose enriched, automated services to our customers, wherever they are in the world, that will enable us to support companies as they transform onto new, digital models based on cloud-computing, big data and artificial intelligence,” he added.

The deal is expected to close in Q3, subject to regulatory approvals, and is the latest move to expand the Orange Business Services division in scope and footprint.

It follows the acquisition of a majority stake in consultancy and system integration company Business and Decision in October 2017.