Dimension Data MEA CEO Derek Wilcocks took up the position in May after previous CEO Allan Cawood announced his intention to pursue other interests. A Dimension Data and Internet Solutions veteran, Wilcocks has been with the group (starting at Internet Solutions) since 1995 and, after a month (when we speak), he's already feeling right at home.
His plans centre very firmly on the company's customers.
The industry is in a transitory phase, he says. “This brings threats and opportunities. The threat is to an industry model that has remained largely unchanged since we entered the client/server era of computing. This has been the dominant model for a long time, but we're seeing a new industry characterised by a new way of producing the necessary computing environment, mainly via cloud computing, and marked by new ways of consuming computing resources and services, which is being driven by a new wave of devices, mobile devices in particular, which allow end-users to access corporate resources wherever they are.”
The opportunities, he says, are in how companies innovate as the models change.
“We have to innovate to become more efficient and drive the last few drops of productivity and quality improvement. The focus there is on selective outsourcing. Many of our clients are looking at it - which shows that outsourcing has matured and that organisations are comfortable doing it.”
Wilcocks says Dimension Data is starting to dip its toes in the water of this new model with its early-adopter clients on the journey to cloud and enterprise mobility.
“This requires a clear strategy in terms of how you manage the two different compute paradigms,” he notes. “It affects the company culture, business models and other aspects of what an organisation does.
“We're fortunate to be part of NTT, globally, as the company is making investments in acquiring intellectual property, not earnings, in this arena. Two significant recent acquisitions were OpSource and Xigo.”
OpSource is an enterprise cloud and managed hosting solutions provider, acquired in June 2011, and used as the base for Dimension Data to launch its Global Cloud Services unit in February this year.
Xigo, purchased in February, reduces and controls mobile, fixed and global telecommunications costs for organisations of all sizes through providing a range of enterprise communications expense management requirements.
Wilcocks says these are the company's first two forays on a drive to have globally relevant intellectual property at an early phase of the cloud and enterprise mobility market.
Rollout
Deployment into Dimension Data and the company's client base is going well, he says.
“We launched the OpServe managed services platform here two months ago and are seeing interest and participation from people looking to do niche things like Q&A testing, overflow capacity management and such.
“It is important for us,” he continues, “to develop the necessary services journey to let people migrate their compute paradigm from the current model to the new one over a few years.”
Wilcocks says commentators querying what makes Dimension Data different from other cloud players, like Amazon or EC2, are missing the point.
“What we've bought is not so much the intellectual property underpinning the technology, but rather the knowledge of how to run mission-critical environments in the cloud, and the processes around that. We've also bought the systems that make management identical whether you're running a private or public cloud and that enables a seamless way of keeping some client workloads in private cloud and others in public cloud. That ability to be able to wrap that into a service and take clients from here to the cloud is a key differentiator,” he states.
Market moves
Dimension Data can do two things today to help its client with this computing paradigm shift, he says. “Firstly, we're building an efficiency model in terms of how they procure and provide basic deployment and maintenance services around their technology. We need to develop the tools and automation and offer maintenance contracts that let our clients consolidate and manage their risk across multiple vendors - 17 major infrastructure vendors are already on board,” he comments.
The second thing, he says, which is very important, is how Dimension Data works with the people it has and those that it wants to join them to make this a reality.
“We've been investing in HR best practices over the past few years, and are identified as a leading employer, partly due to our culture and partly due to the electronic learning environment we use to develop comprehensive job frameworks to help our people manage their careers and progress them in the current and future computing paradigm.”
Wilcocks adds that the company has done a lot to reinforce its culture, from its brand relaunch, to its CSI initiatives, and, in SA, its transformation programme. “We're looking at BBBEE, and not just the letter but the substance of how we remain relevant to and representative of the society we live in,” he says.
Everything the company does has to be relevant to its offering and its jobs need to evolve as the market does. “Remaining relevant and attracting and retaining the right people is what gives us our competitive advantage,” says Wilcocks. And he seems determined to ensure it stays that way.
First published in the August 2012 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine.
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