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Enhancing Multi-Vendor Collaboration with Tech-based Solutions

“Dimension Data manages multivendor collaboration solutions including voice, video, messaging, presence, and conferencing with on-premise, hosted, cloud, or hybrid deployment models. Data is in resonance with the vision of Digital India that aims to transform the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It would ensure that government services are available to citizens electronically. It would also bring in public accountability through mandated delivery of government’s services electronically”, said Lux Rao, Director & Leader Solutions, NTT Ltd. in conversation with Poulami Chakraborty of BW SmartCitiesWorld

Global Tech Integrator, Dimension Data launched Unified Managed Services Offerings earlier this year. Would appraise us on this solution and how can this be leveraged?


Our platform-delivered managed services are designed to simplify the management and operation of our clients’  end-to-end hybrid IT estate. Enhancing IT and business functions through improved agility and scalability. Our investment in people, automated tools and processes together with analytics-driven insight and reporting, ensures globally consistent service level delivery, mitigates risk and ensures delivery of the business outcomes that our clients’  businesses demand now and in the future.  The Managed Services Platform now offers near real-time insights and reporting, managing over 9,000 IP networks and supporting over 13 million users across the globe. Meeting increasing client demands, the platform liberates IT and operations teams to focus on more strategic, value-add tasks such as improving the customer experience, maximizing cost efficiencies, and exploring emerging technologies.

Managed Network Services are designed to ensure consistent service availability across legacy and programmable (SDN) infrastructure, from the core, to the edge of the network. Automated tools and processes have been designed to increase operational efficiency, and analytics-driven reporting and insight provide management information as needed on demand.

Managed Collaboration & Productivity Services Effective collaboration and communications require streamlined operations and tools to drive adoption and evolve the user experience. As a leading provider of modern collaboration technologies, Dimension Data is uniquely positioned to advise, design, deploy, integrate, manage, and co-innovate for clients in complex multivendor environments. Dimension Data manages multivendor collaboration solutions including voice, video, messaging, presence, and conferencing with on-premise, hosted, cloud, or hybrid deployment models.

Managed Security Services:   Organizations face a complex threat landscape with an increasing rate of cyberattacks. Mobility, BYOD, virtualization, the cloud, and social media have opened new doors into organizations. Dimension Data provides Enterprises with the cybersecurity expertise and experience that they need to secure their organizations. With a comprehensive range of digital security solutions that span IT infrastructure, on-premises and in the cloud, Enterprises are tuned to respond swiftly to any security incident.

Managed Customer Experience Services : Dimension Data’s CX platform enables ultra-connected experiences across client touchpoints. Enables Enterprises to embrace digital and improve their customer experience to differentiate in the market. Dimension Data’s Managed Customer Experience (CX) Services provide clients with the right combination of people, processes, and technology to support their business objectives. The platform evolves and supports contact centers to deliver exceptional customer experiences. The design, build, and operation of customer experience solutions is powered via a single platform – the Managed CX platform, so that clients can focus on their core business.

Please appraise us on how is Dimension Data leveraging its tech solutions for India’s government pilot projects as Smart City, Digital Transformation etc?

Dimension Data all over the globe is enabling Governments to deliver ease of living to its citizens and also roll out future e-service on the backbone of this infrastructure. We are enabling Governments in delivering the following on-premise smart living features for the project: Smart Grid, Smart Parking, Smart Metering, Smart Roads, Surveillance, Command, and Control Center.

It helps the Government in providing the direct benefit of government schemes under its e-governance initiative to its citizens. The government is also able to offer better safety and ensure law and order adherence in a more effective way due to surveillance capabilities and infrastructure. Smart Grids prevents theft and efficient metering cuts down losses and provides real time monitoring. This prevents power pilferage and hence prevents the increase in cost of power for the State as well as the consumers.


What challenges has Dimension Data experienced during its tryst of operation in Indian market? What methods have Dimension Data adopted to mitigate these challenges?


The Indian market is a developing market that’s constantly showing growth and potential. The revenue of the Indian ICT (Information and Communication Technology) sector is expected to reach an approximate value of about US$ 225 Billion by the end of 2020, growing at CAGR of about ~11.1%, reveals the ASSOCHAM-RNCOS study. 


Indian businesses have reservations when it comes to security and compliance concerns, cost of investment, concerns about migration issues, managing the complex multiple IT environments, governance and control and lack of technical skills. Helping Enterprises in India open to emergent technologies has been the biggest challenge for us. However, with our continuous efforts, we were able to help our client make the transition to Intelligent Infrastructure emerge as one of the largest dominant ICT players in the country. 


We made strategic investments in India (and acquisitions - Nihilent) and invested heavily in the expansion of our portfolio and innovation to bring together the world’s best technologies, from consulting, technical and support services to a fully managed service, to our client base. In a competitive space what sets us apart is the trust that our clients bestow upon us. They have been able to trust us with their business because we focus on quality and only offer the best technology, best solutions and best people. Our robust ecosystem of leading partner vendors ensures that the client gets the top-end services and solutions through seamless experience and with efficient outcomes.

Would you please share with us the plans of expansion of Dimension Data in the Indian market?

Currently, we are in the phase of integrating 28 global companies to form one of the top five global technology and business solutions providers – NTT Ltd. With this, we will have more experts, more foot print across geographies, full range of solutions capability, stronger partnerships with vendors and better access to clients. This integration will be done in multiple phases throughout the next 18-24 months. 

Is India 5G ready? Your opinion.

5G has tremendous potential for India with potential use cases covering key verticals such as citizen services, city safety, health, agriculture, environmental monitoring, manufacturing, customer engagement models for Retail et al. 

Bearing in mind India’s penchant to ‘leapfrog’ technological generations and to cover for the inadequacies of physical infrastructure, 5G bodes well. A combination of 5G, artificial intelligence, smart platforms and the Internet of Things forms a potent combo and the ‘perfect storm’ that can deliver benefits for Governments and its citizens and Enterprises & their consumers/customers. 

India could very well aspire to see the pivotal role of 5G as the enabling connectivity layer. The Indian government’s 5G High Level Forum has stated a clear 5G vision for India, including the following: ‘5G technology has the potential for ushering a major societal transformation in India by enabling a rapid expansion of the role of information technology across manufacturing, educational, healthcare, agricultural, financial and social sectors. India must embrace this opportunity by deploying 5G networks early, efficiently, and pervasively, as well as emerge as a significant innovator and technology supplier”

Your views on Digital Transformation Bill

As per a McKinsey report,  Digital applications could proliferate across most sectors of India’s economy. By 2025, core digital sectors such as IT and business process management, digital communication services, and electronics manufacturing could double their GDP level to $355 billion to $435 billion. Newly digitising sectors, including agriculture, education, energy, financial services, healthcare, logistics, and retail, as well as government services and labour markets, could each create $10 billion to $150 billion of incremental economic value in 2025 as digital applications in these sectors help raise output, save costs and time, reduce fraud, and improve matching of demand and supply.

The productivity unlocked by the digital economy could create 60 million to 65 million jobs by 2025, many of them requiring functional digital skills, according to our estimates. Retraining and redeployment will be essential to help some 40 million to 45 million workers whose jobs could be displaced or transformed.

The government can also help by creating and administering public data sources that entrepreneurs can use to improve existing products and services and create new ones; by fostering a regulatory environment that supports digital adoption and protects citizens’ privacy; and by facilitating the evolution of labor markets in industries disrupted by automation.

India’s own data localization policy, which advocates for keeping a mirrored copy of critical data locally, would speed up decision making and set a framework for multiple vendors to define the right use of data.
 

What solutions is Dimension Data providing in lines with Government of India’s Digital Transformation mandate?

Data is in resonance with the vision of Digital India that aims to transform the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.   It would ensure that government services are available to citizens electronically. It would also bring in public accountability through mandated delivery of government’s services electronically.

As the country’s leading ICT provider, Dimension has a significant role to play in any Digital transformation initiatives by its clients in both private as well as government sector.

Government of India has lately pulled Digitization to the top of the agenda to leverage the huge transformation that has come about in Information Technology. This is the only to ensure that the government-initiated services reach our 1.3 billion people efficiently and rapidly. There are multiple programs initiated to boost digitation in the country. i.e. Banking for the unbanked with financial inclusion programs et al (National scholarship portal, Swach Bharat mobile app, eHospital, BharatNET, etc), Center of excellence for IOT, eSign (Aadhar), Wi-FI hotspot, etc.

Dimension Data has successfully completed many large projects that are motivated by the Digital India Initiative. 

  1. Network modernization of public sector banks to enable Digital banking & enhance the user experience at the branches besides increasing efficiency 
  2. Built the world’s biggest private cloud infrastructure to deliver core banking services in a secure and reliable manner
  3. Provided end-to-end networks-as-a-services to over 3000 Regional rural banks sponsored by SBI, Syndicate Bank and PNB as part of Financial Inclusion Initiative
  4. Set-up 250 fully automated digital branches for State Bank of India using remote expert technology
  5. Successfully setup state-of-the-art security operations center for over 6 public sector banks


In addition to the above, Dimension data is engaged in multiple project where clients are using our skills to build Data Lake infrastructure (AI), Software defined Datacenter/ WAN/ Storage etc.