CenturyLink Inc. is buying Savvis Inc. in a deal valued at $3.2 billion, as the phone company that serves customers in Northwest makes a big investment in cloud computing and data center services.

CenturyLink recently closed on its acquisition of Qwest, and there was no immediate word on how the Savvis purchase might affect CenturyLink customers in Washington. But the purchase of Savvis will speed up CenturyLink’s ability to provide cloud computing services to its business customers, CenturyLink said in announcing the Savvis deal.

In material provided to investors, CenturyLink said the deal brings together CenturyLink’s enterprise network services business with the Savvis managed hosting capacities.

CenturyLink operates 16 U.S. data centers, and Savvis operates 32 data centers in North America, Europe and Asia. Savvis is based in suburban St. Louis. CenturyLink, the third-largest telecommunications company in the U.S., is based in Monroe, La.

CenturyLink’s deal follows moves by other regional phone companies that have made investments to offset the loss of land-line customers who are opting for cell phones and internet service.

Verizon Communication recently spent $1.4 billion to buy data center company Terremark Worldwide, according to Reuters.