Annual Review 2010

CONTACT DETAILS

New South Wales Head Office 121-127 Harrington Street The Rocks NSW 2000 Ph: 61 2 8249 5000

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NEW DIMENSIONS ANNUAL REVIEW 2009/2010

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Contents

CEO’S MESSAGE

LOCAL REVIEW

Major Awards

2009 Hall of Fame Inductees

CLIENT PROFILES

Sinclair Knight Merz

Blue Care

Australian Rugby Union

Smart Service Queensland

GLOBAL REVIEW

Highlights from Dimension Data’s other Regions

TRENdS & PREdICTIONS

Staying in Control

To Cloud or not to Cloud: IT in the “New Normal”

Innovation: It’s not just about Technology

Security of the Cloud: It’s up to you!

As you like it: Service Delivery from the Ground to the Cloud

Leave Nothing to Chance: Navigating to Goal State Architecture

We have the Tools - You have the Talent

IT FuNd FOR KIdS

IT Fund for Kids Turns 10

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CONTENTS

What is Tech’spresso?Dimension Data’s Tech’spresso free technical breakfast briefings have been running in Dimension Data’s offices around Australia for the past six years. However, with all of our offices located in the capital cities, the Tech’spresso program has not been easily accessible for IT professionals working in regional and remote areas.

Tech’spresso is now online!By connecting to our online sessions, you will participate in an in-depth discussion of the subject matter. With well-prepared presentations and demonstrations, experts are on hand to answer your questions in a dedicated e-forum where you can share ideas and experiences. These briefing sessions are free, but are offered on a strictly limited basis.

Who we areDimension Data has a long-standing reputation in the Australian IT sector for providing technical training on a range of topics. As an extension to the training provided through Dimension Data Learning Solutions, Tech’spresso is a series of technical briefings offered in our offices and also online to our clients. Tech’spresso sessions are aimed squarely at the more technically-minded and cover a broad range of highly topical issues and technologies delivered straight to you.

What we coverOnline Tech’spresso sessions will be run once a month with dedicated topics covering Unified Computing, Data Centre and Storage, Microsoft technologies, Converged Communications and much much more.

Register your interest at www.ddevents.com.au/TechspressoOnline.

http://techspresso.didata.com.auwww.ddevents.com.au/TechspressoOnline

tech’spresso

Register your interest now

www.ddevents.com.au/TechspressoOnline By registering your details online, we will arrange to have session details sent directly to you.

http://techspresso.didata.com.au

We’re online: register your details now!


STEVE NOLA

1

CEO

’s Message

available and the risks associated with these. David Hanrahan talks more about virtualisation on page 10, while Darren O’Loughlin addresses security aspects on page 14.

Cloud computing will significantly change the IT landscape; however there is a lot of work to be done before that can happen. As part of our ongoing commitment to innovation in this area, in 2008 Dimension Data made a strategic investment in an Infrastructure as a Service provider – BlueFire. This investment enables us to offer a range of new services including hosted backup/restore, hosted Exchange and hosted storage.

The second major area of interest is in IT operations, which falls into three categories. Firstly, clients are asking which tools will give greater management of the IT environment, especially in an increasingly virtualised world. The second category is based on core business focus: that is, enabling the IT team to concentrate its efforts on projects that add value to the business while someone else takes care of the day-to-day operations. As one of our healthcare clients articulated recently, “I want my IT team helping the clinicians to better use technology to improve care, not sitting in a server room looking at circuit boards”.

Finally, as an extension of the second category, organisations are increasingly looking to a strategic outsource of aspects or towers of their IT environment for business advantage.

Mindful of these changes in the way organisations are operating their IT infrastructure, Dimension Data has invested in services and solutions across all three categories. In terms of outsourcing, we are focused on three areas: network, desktop and contact centre. The renewal in 2009 of the South Australian Government’s managed network services contract and our 2010 five-year integrated service management contract with Woolworths Ltd clearly demonstrate our capabilities in delivering outsourcing services on a very significant scale.

I hope you enjoy this issue of New Dimensions Annual Review, and please contact your Account Manager if you have any feedback or would like more information on any of the articles.

Regards,

Steve Nola Chief Executive Officer, Australia Dimension Data

CEO’S MESSAGE

Welcome to the latest issue of New Dimensions Annual Review. In this issue we look back over the year that was 2009, and also ahead to where the industry is going in 2010 and beyond.

In 2009 we saw the full impact of the global financial crisis hit business investment plans. However, despite the tough climate, Dimension Data still managed to grow its business. We are privileged to have long-standing relationships with many of our clients. Dimension Data recognises the importance of understanding our clients’ needs, a task that is made easier by these long-standing partnerships. It is this focus on relevance and relationship that has underpinned our business for many years and certainly enabled us to have a solid result in a difficult year. I want to thank you for your ongoing support.

Two of the major current hot spots in IT relate to how you architect and how you operate your infrastructure. In the case of architecture, the word of the moment is “cloud”. But before you can reach for the cloud, you also need to reach a significant level of consolidation and virtualisation within your own IT environment. Once you have decoupled applications and data from physical infrastructure, it is then possible to look at sourcing options

New dimensions Annual Review 2009/2010

2

Local Review

MAjOR AWARDS

In other awards, Dimension Data was judged one of Hewitt’s “Best of the Best Employers” for 2009. The award rewards high levels of employee engagement, defined as the extent to which employees say great things about, and are committed to, their organisation and want to strive on its behalf. Two other IT companies, Microsoft and Express Data, shared the award with judges unable to split the winners. Dimension Data was also a winner in the BRW Client Choice Awards 2010, taking out Best NSW Professional Services Firm. The awards are based solely on voting by buyers of professional services, and covered all professional services industries.

Dimension Data was honoured to receive these awards, in recognition of our ability to not only meet and exceed client and partner expectations, but also to nurture and develop our staff.

2009 was an excellent year for awards for Dimension Data in Australia, across a range of areas of the business.

Dimension Data’s Data Centre Solutions (DCS) line of business had a very successful 2009. The year kicked off with Symantec Australian Enterprise Partner of the Year, which commended Dimension Data as one of Symantec’s prized channel partners for making an outstanding contribution to Symantec’s business in 2009. This was followed by VMware ANZ’s Regional Partner of the Year for our commitment to the VMware business, and VMware Asia-Pacific Solutions Partner of the Year 2009. Cisco also recognised the contribution of DCS with the presentation of Cisco Data Centre Partner of the Year for Asia Pacific.

More awards followed for our Customer Interactive Solutions (CIS) line of business, with Genesys’ Asia-Pacific Partner of the Year and Verint Premier Partner of the Year for 2009. Both awards are based on revenues generated, service excellence and approach towards partnering.

Our Security business also enjoyed success with the McAfee APAC Overall Partner of the Year Award for 2009. Accepting the award for the second consecutive year, Dimension Data was credited with continuing to deliver strong growth in McAfee solutions while demonstrating an ability to create new business opportunities from scratch. McAfee noted Dimension Data has

“embraced the true meaning of being a great partner namely by being focused, committed and executing effectively”.

The 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards in june 2009 was a busy night for our Microsoft Solutions line of business. Dimension Data Australia was chosen out of an international field of over 2000 top Microsoft partners as delivering market-leading client solutions built on Microsoft technology. The three global awards won were Licensing Solutions, Software Asset Management; Large Account Reseller Partner of the Year; and Information Worker Solutions, Office Deployment.

More accolades from Microsoft followed at the Microsoft Australia Awards, recognising Dimension Data as Microsoft’s Enterprise Partner of the Year, and also for wins in the desktop deployment, Office deployment and software licensing categories (Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Windows Desktop Deployment Partner of the Year; Information Worker Solutions, Office Deployment Partner of the Year; and Licensing Solutions, Software Asset Management Partner of the Year). Additionally, BlueFire Corporation, in which Dimension Data made a strategic investment in 2008, took out the award for S+S (Software and Services) Hosting Partner of the Year.

KELLIE REEVES, DIRECTOR OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE

kELLiE rEEVES


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Local Review

2009 HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES STEVE NOLA, CEO, AUSTRALIA

DArrEN rObiNSON

Darren does more than just make the technology work – he is passionate about identity management itself. He gets into the inner workings of the technology, seeking to understand the whole process, its integration with other applications and systems, and its impact on the whole business.

Identity management is one of the foundation elements in any IT environment, and his successful projects invariably form the basis of ongoing engagements with our clients.

Dimension Data’s second inductee in the Technical Hall of Fame for 2009 is Paul Asdagi. Paul joined our business as a Security Engineer in 2000, and is now a Senior Architect and Consultant for our Security practice. Over that time, he has set the bar for his colleagues as to how we can build relationships with our clients and vendors, and develop a “trusted advisor” status.

Paul has demonstrated the highest consistency of technical excellence delivery and a deep understanding of our clients’ evolving information security concerns for technology, infrastructure, and architecture.

His unique insight and thought leadership for information security strategies in our largest enterprise customers have also helped ensure that Dimension Data is well-established as a partner of choice for Security solutions.

Paul has made significant contributions to the development of intellectual property for the Security line of business as well as the development of consulting best practices and engagement methodologies. He has maintained numerous technical certifications across our major vendors, and continually develops his professional qualifications.

Congratulations Darren and Paul. You are both fine examples of the key talent we have within our organisation.

PAuL ASDAgi

Two more exceptional team members from our technical ranks have swelled the number of Dimension Data Australia Technical Hall of Fame inductees to nine.

Dimension Data’s Technical Hall of Fame was established in 2006 to recognise the outstanding contributions of individual staff members to enriching Dimension Data’s industry reputation, intellectual property and commercial success through sustained technical innovation and creativity.

Since then, nine staff members have been inducted, and our latest recipients are also worthy winners. Not only do they embody the criteria for entry; they also display fantastic attitude, and personal and professional commitment in their roles and to Dimension Data.

Our first 2009 inductee, Technical Consultant Darren Robinson, has been with Dimension Data for more than 13 years. During this time, Darren has not only demonstrated incredible technical capabilities, but has also developed business nous and great people skills, both of which are crucial for success in his specialist field.

Darren’s speciality is identity management and identity lifecycle management (ILM). He has been responsible for many of Dimension Data Australia’s biggest identity management projects over the years at some of our largest clients. He recently switched on an Active Directory design and ILM implementation for 120,000 identities at a NSW university, which is also being leveraged by the university’s wireless network. Another large project involved consulting to a NSW Government agency, and building an ILM and middleware solution with auto-provisioning out of its human resources systems into Novell eDirectory, Microsoft Active Directory and a corporate ‘White Pages’.


TONy yOrTiS

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Client P

rofiles

TAKING GREAT STEPS

WITH A GLOBAL FOOTPRINT

When Tony Yortis joined Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) in 2008 as Group Manager – Information Systems, the Australian-based engineering, sciences and project delivery firm was in the midst of a major growth phase.

“SKM has completed over 50 mergers and acquisitions in the past 12 years,” explains Tony. “Our global workforce in that time has jumped from 600 to 6500.”

One of Tony’s first major challenges was to change the mindset of the organisation with regards to IT systems and applications.

“For a start, being an engineering house, the IT team always wanted the ‘Rolls Royce’ and didn’t care about the cost, and secondly, we wrote and supported a lot of our own systems.”

Tony established how his department could add value to SKM, by aligning its role to SKM’s business strategies and assisting the organisation achieve competitive advantage. One of the first things he did was change the name of the IT department to IS

– “Information Systems”.

“The name change was important. We needed to build our capabilities in project management, business process and organisational change management, rather than be known for technology. We needed to provide the business with governance and risk management — establishing clear lines of responsibilities and disciplines.”

Over the past two years, SKM’s IS department has set about rebuilding the IT environment to support the global growth of the organisation. It has streamlined its partners and suppliers; developed centres of excellence and standardised its global applications with sufficient flexibility to accommodate regional sensitivities; increased the capacity of its global and regional WAN connections to enable better video collaboration and sharing of 3D modelling data; provided business intelligence tools and a new intranet platform for greater access to information; and started consolidating its data centres and completed disaster recovery and business continuity planning across all regions.

One of Tony’s key goals has been to support SKM’s key business strategy to attract and retain staff. SKM has also set a target to reduce its carbon impact by 30 per cent by 2011.

“We believe that if we invest in technology that enables employees to operate at their peak, and collaborate with one another better, they will stay motivated and happy, and consequently, will remain with our company for many years.”

One area of focus has been SKM’s visual communications strategy, which has seen the organisation deploy hundreds of video end points across the organisation. SKM now conducts approximately 2500 videoconferencing sessions per month.

“Visual communications enables us not only to cut our carbon footprint by reducing the need for corporate travel, but also to become more agile and reduce our time to market for new solutions and deployments.”

Another tool provided to staff is a professional social networking application developed in both English and Spanish on SKM’s intranet. This has given SKM a better way to share and find information about its staff internationally, allowing it to quickly capitalise on the new skills base available via its acquisitions.

“I believe that we have made great steps in supporting the global, competitive needs of our organisation balanced with the regional and cultural differences that exist across our business, and there is a lot more we plan to do to be more responsive to our clients, industries and business strategies,” concludes Tony.


In December 2008, Blue Care began a major refresh of its ICT infrastructure and the deployment of enterprise-wide applications under the oversight of its Chief Operating Officer Greg Masters and newly-appointed Chief Information Officer Wendy Balachandran.

Blue Care is one of Queensland’s most recognisable and best-loved organisations, thanks to its carers’ distinctive uniforms and almost 60 years of delivering health and aged care services to the community. The organisation had its origins in 1953 as the Blue Nursing Service, an outreach program established by a Methodist congregation in inner city Brisbane, and developed as a series of nursing centres across the State. With over 10,000 staff and more than 260 care centres and residential facilities across Queensland and northern NSW, it became increasingly important for Blue Care to adopt an efficient communications infrastructure consistent across all services.

Since assuming the CIO role in late 2008, Wendy has driven the consolidation of Blue Care’s IT infrastructure and improved the IT group’s financial management capabilities, based on delivering high-quality customer service to Blue Care users. With the support of Dimension Data, Blue Care has consolidated its telecommunications contracts, moved to a new Microsoft Enterprise Agreement for software licensing, upgraded its WAN from frame relay to faster BDSL, and established data centre hosting and storage capabilities to support the enterprise-wide rollout of community care and residential care management applications.

However, Blue Care’s ICT spend needed to be carefully balanced with the organisation’s primary function as a community health and residential aged care provider.

“The important thing for us is that we’re totally aware that we only have a defined amount of funds to invest in ICT, so we certainly adopt a ‘just enough’ approach to ensure that we’re not over-investing, and just investing at the right level, at the right time,” explains Greg.

The investments Blue Care is making in building a common infrastructure are paying off in efficiency gains and overall cost savings for the organisation.

“We have invested in upgrading the foundational aspects of our IT infrastructure, examining what collaboration requirements are needed in order to enable integration and interoperability,” says Wendy.

Blue Care’s new infrastructure has given the organisation the scope to consider how best to use ICT to create innovation at the point of care. For example, Blue Care’s staff currently travel over 30 million kilometres a year in a fleet of nearly 1500 vehicles. The organisation is examining how it can minimise the distances travelled and the time its carers spend on the road, particularly through the adoption of mobility solutions.

“[With our ICT infrastructure], we have opportunities to make the routes more effective and again, if our carers have to spend less time coming back to base, it’s only of benefit to our clients in the future,” says Greg.

Fundamentally, Blue Care’s business is based on the care services it provides in the community, and that concept is something of which neither Greg nor Wendy loses sight.

“We’ve certainly been innovative in the different types of care solutions that we offer to our clients. Now what we are trying to do is to ensure that we are giving all of our care providers the tools that they require to be able to provide these services effectively,” concludes Greg.

5

Client P

rofiles

BUILDING A ‘BLUEFIELD’

INFRASTRUCTURE

wENDy bALAchANDrAN

grEg mASTErS


6

Client P

rofiles

When the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) wanted to centralise and overhaul its technology functions, it turned to Paul Templeman. In August 2008, Paul stepped into the newly-created role of Head of Online Business and IT Services at the ARU, a non-profit organisation that manages rugby union across the country.

Paul was previously Online Services Manager at Football Federation Australia (FFA), where he worked under current ARU CEO john O’Neill and Deputy CEO Matt Carroll. At FFA, Paul developed the online platform, including 10 new websites over three months to support the then new A-League national football competition.

In his new role, Paul was charged with getting ARU’s separate IT infrastructure, application development and digital marketing teams to work as a single unit, reduce costs and improve efficiency.

“FFA was a greenfield site – we started from scratch,” says Paul. “ARU was a little different. I had to replace old infrastructure and get the IT platform running effectively for the entire sport from the flagship team, the Qantas Wallabies, to the community-based clubs in each Australian state and territory.”

Paul led a project team that deployed a new consolidated IT environment which the ARU and its member unions could all use. This enabled all end users, particularly remote staff, to share information easily.

Paul believes sporting organisations lag behind other industries in their use of quality IT processes to achieve commercial success. “One of the challenges with sport is that the emphasis on sophisticated IT processes and methodologies has yet to reach the same levels as you would experience in the wider corporate community,” he says.

“Previously, our application development team would work using a traditional ‘waterfall’ process where projects never seemed to be complete because they were so big,” says Paul. “Today, the team is more agile because all development is done in two-week cycles and our achievements are easily measured.”

Under the previous regime, each member union would develop and run its own website, which typically provided information about rugby, local competitions and tipping. Since Paul joined, the ARU’s digital marketing team has realised the advantage of having a collaborative approach to website development.

“It benefits everyone if they all work together to develop new websites because it saves on costs and encourages innovation,” says Paul. “With the global financial crisis, there is always pressure to reduce costs but it is just as important to identify where there is wastage or inefficient use of resources. We are now doing more with a little less.”

Ultimately, Paul has introduced a culture where previously separate IT teams now work together to deploy successful IT projects. “IT staff now know that if a project doesn’t get delivered on time, the whole team is responsible,” says Paul. “At a simpler level, we now have a central place to log all service requests; it’s a small thing but everyone can view and track who is responsible for these requests.”

Training has also been a big part of the change at ARU. During the consolidation project, Paul engaged Dimension Data engineers to work onsite and impart their knowledge to ARU’s infrastructure team.

“We have a mentor coming in two days a month to assess the team’s progress over the previous month,” says Paul. “If you want to stay ahead of the game, you have to be innovative and invest in your staff. This doesn’t mean sending them on a five-day course, it requires a long-term process change.”

AUSTRALIAN RUGBY UNION’S

IT TEAM IS ON THE BALL

PAuL TEmPLEmAN


7

Client P

rofiles

This year the Queensland Government is opening a new contact centre facility that has the highest Green Star design rating of any office building in Australia, scoring 92 points out of a possible 100 from the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA). As at 7 April 2010, this achievement had not been surpassed*. The project is a great example of building and information technology management working collaboratively to create the country’s most ecologically sustainable office environment.

The planning, coordination and design of this project has been undertaken by Queensland’s Department of Public Works’ Queensland Government Accommodation Office and Project Services in cooperation with Smart Service Queensland (Smart Service) and Queensland Police. The project is an important example to other government agencies and industry that projects can achieve ecologically sustainable development at a commercial cost, as part of the Queensland Government’s “Towards Q2: Tomorrow’s Queensland” vision for the state. The vision for 2020 embraces five ambitions that address current and future challenges. From a green perspective, the Government has set a 2020 target to cut Queenslanders’ carbon footprint by one-third with reduced car and electricity use.

Located in the Brisbane suburb of Zillmere, the new contact centre is a shared facility between Smart Service and Queensland Police, and is expected to handle more than four million contacts annually. The joint Contact Centre will provide a 24 hour, seven day a week contact centre with its primary function to provide a breadth of services for all Queenslanders, including being the central point for the community to report non-urgent police matters.

While a key focus of the contact centre’s Green Star rating is on the building design and materials used, as well as water usage, lighting and cooling, IT has played a complementary and critical role in achieving the power reductions needed to achieve the ratings. For example, with Dimension Data as the lead integrator, Smart Service has adopted all the necessary infrastructure to run a contact centre – including specialist contact centre systems from Genesys, Spectrum, NICE and Ciboodle – but is deploying all its hardware, desktops and applications (corporate and contact centre) fully virtualised.

The efficiencies gained in the IT systems deployed in the joint Contact Centre will reduce the burden on the facility’s power and cooling infrastructure, allowing technologies – including a photovoltaic cell array for electrical generation onsite, sub-metering to manage energy use, and other energy recovery devices – to be used to full effect.

For Smart Service, the joint Contact Centre project is also an important component of the organisation’s mandate to be the front door to the Queensland Government, whereby customers are able to conduct a range of transactions or get information through one phone number, one website or one integrated service counter. In 2009, Smart Service was providing over 200 Government services. By 2013, the target is to double that to 400 services, primarily delivered from three large contact centres, including the Zillmere facility.

The joint Contact Centre project is also important in supporting Smart Service’s positioning as an “employer of choice” – to attract and retain staff by establishing and maintaining Smart Service as a rewarding place to work. The positioning is based on the concepts of wellness; social; environment; innovation and awards. The new green contact centre addresses all of these.

* See further GBCA Fact Sheet, “joint Contact Centre”, at

http://www.gbca.org.au/resources/joint-contact-centre/2897.htm

THE GREENEST CONTACT

CENTRE IN AUSTRALIA

ThE JOiNT cONTAcT

cENTrE iN ZiLLmErE, briSbANE


brETT DAwSON

8

Global R

eview

Gartner recognises dimension data as a Magic Quadrant “Challenger”

Analyst firm Gartner has ranked Dimension Data as the leading Challenger in its Communications Outsourcing and Professional Services Magic Quadrant Worldwide 2010 report. Compiled by Gartner analysts, the Quadrant examined 17 vendors of IT services for business communications systems worldwide.

Global Dimension Data CEO, Brett Dawson, said, “We are pleased to be evaluated by Gartner for our completeness of vision and ability to execute. There are hundreds of service providers in the worldwide market, yet only a handful of designated Challengers. We are delighted to be one of the few.”

“Our Group focus is to deliver high-quality, cost-effective communications and professional services that enable our clients’ businesses. We believe being positioned by Gartner in the Challengers Quadrant therefore underscores our ongoing drive to deliver a superior level of client satisfaction.”

BusinessWeek Info Tech 100 List

Named Dimension Data on its Info Tech 100 List Dimension Data was named in BusinessWeek’s Info Tech 100 list, which recognises the 100 top-performing technology companies across the globe of 2009, placing Dimension Data at position 21.

In assembling the list, BusinessWeek examined the financial results of tens of thousands of publicly listed companies. To qualify, organisations had revenues of at least US$500 million, and were ranked on return on equity, shareholder return, revenue growth and total revenues.

dimension data commended for climate change disclosure

For the second consecutive year Dimension Data was commended by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), with a position in the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI), which represents 475 institutional investors with US$55 trillion in assets under management, for its approach to climate change disclosure.

The CDLI is a key component of CDP’s annual FTSE 350 Report, highlighting the constituent companies within the FTSE 350 Index that have displayed the most professional approach to corporate governance in respect of climate change disclosure practices. High scores indicate good internal data management and understanding of climate change-related issues affecting the company.

GLOBAL REVIEWHIGHLIGHTS FROM DIMENSION DATA’S OTHER REGIONS

“We’re extremely proud of being included in the CDLI for the second year in a row. Dimension Data’s strategic approach to climate change covers both risk and opportunities and has as its focus three pillars: Licence to Operate, Employee Engagement and Go to Market. We are delighted with the recognition for the work we have undertaken to date, and will continue to ensure that our corporate governance in respect of climate change is transparent and one of continuous improvement,” said Brett Dawson.

Changes in the global dimension data family

February 2009 – Dimension Data acquired Teksys, a UK Microsoft infrastructure and licensing services company.

July 2009 – Dimension Data sold 49 per cent of its Tanzanian operation to WiA Company Ltd, a wholly owned Tanzanian ICT operation.

October 2009 – Dimension Data’s Middle East & Africa (Pty) Ltd business acquired a 51 per cent stake in Telcom (Morocco).

April 2010 – Dimension Data acquired a majority interest in Magenta Computacion SA, a leading systems integrator based in Santiago, Chile. The transaction allows Dimension Data to further extend its global footprint into the fast-growing Latin America market and better serve the Group’s multinational clients. Dimension Data Americas now has operations in five countries: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Chile.


A common thread across our Trends and Predictions articles in this year’s Annual Review is that the decisions we make in IT, and the impact those decisions have, are no longer predominantly technical. Commercial differentiation, cost reduction, transformation of existing business practices, organisational change, efficiency and productivity gains, and environmental impact are all factors given greater prominence in the big IT projects today.

Helping the shift in approach, we are increasingly abstracting the service layer from the technology underpinning it. We are sharpening the discussion on how new services will support business strategies and goals – rather than focusing on the “speeds and feeds” of the software and hardware that may be part of the solution.

This abstraction is providing the IT organisation with the opportunity to take greater advantage of virtualisation, unified communications and collaboration, cloud computing, and outsourced services; but with these approaches comes the potential to lose control of your environment.

We know there is greater activity in these technology approaches, based on the increase in demand for our Dimension Data Learning Solutions training courses in virtualisation and unified communications. Also, the popularity of our ITIL courses points to the growth of outsourced and “cloud”-based services, with organisations ensuring that there is a common language and expectation for service delivery (read control) being used across the business and with third party providers.

Control works in a number of ways. In his article, Ettienne Reinecke speaks about ensuring we have a platform for innovation, by integrating and re-using existing resources. Ettienne points to the examples of identity management and presence as two foundational elements that ensure we maintain operational efficiencies and gain the full productivity benefits from deploying collaborative applications. Dr Wissam Raffoul takes us through the five strategies to employ when assessing the organisational impact of a major IT project and its effect on other parts of the IT infrastructure. While Wissam draws on the example of a data centre consolidation project, his approach can be applied equally well if you are evaluating the use of, say, cloud-based services, Cisco’s Unified Computing System or even the Australian Government’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

Cloud computing represents a specific challenge, because the model is not conducive to maintaining control. For example, does the Software as a Service (SaaS) application you are considering integrate with your unified identity management layer? It actually goes much further than this, writes Darren O’Loughlin. There are implications in terms of data management, privacy and disaster recovery to name a few. Darren’s advice is to remember that security is always your responsibility, so ensure that you fully understand your own security requirements and, based on this understanding, thoroughly assess the third party service provider before signing up.

Throw into this mix outsourced services, where it is possible to centralise support across multiple different platforms from different vendors, with a common set of service levels in line with ITIL and other best-practice measures. Keith Murray explains in his article that this is the key to maintaining a clear view of what is required, and best managing restoration to full service in a cohesive fashion.

gErArD fLOriAN

9

Trends & P

redictionsSTAYING IN CONTROL GERARd FLORIAN, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER


10

Trends & P

redictions

There are three elements in this strategy:

Consolidate: to reduce management complexity

Optimise: to improve efficiency

Automate: to improve speed and reduce risk

Many organisations have made significant progress with server virtualisation but asset utilisation still remains low. IDC estimates that approximately $140 billion of under-utilised assets currently exist in Australian organisations. Poorly-planned server virtualisation initiatives are not delivering on the promise of better asset utilisation and virtual server sprawl is contributing to systems management problems.

By understanding the cost equation for virtualisation, planning for savings and modifying operational controls as part of the server virtualisation process, we can avoid these problems and deliver the desired outcomes of better utilisation, higher availability and improved performance. While we recommend virtualising as the default option for new service deployments and upgrades, other factors such as software licensing, maintenance, and performance requirements must also be considered. Without proactive management, virtual infrastructures risk becoming as expensive and inflexible as the services they are designed to replace.

Where to begin

At Dimension Data we have been working with virtualisation, network, storage, security and other technologies for many years. We have taken advantage of our broad range of capabilities to devise what we think is the most flexible, robust, future-proof and cost-effective way to ensure network and storage infrastructures are ready for the demands ahead.

At the network layer it is time to standardise on 10 Gigabit Ethernet to prepare for the ever-growing demands for more bandwidth. The data centre today is converging on a unified fabric that will allow that 10 Gigabit network to deliver data, voice, video and storage traffic over a single wire. Network and server management functions must also converge as virtualisation blurs the lines of responsibility in these areas.

At the storage layer, the tremendous growth in digital content is causing companies to look at more efficient ways to store information and reduce capital and operational costs. Shared storage is fundamental to virtualisation; storage tiering enables organisations to put the most critical data on high performance storage and less critical data on high density storage, reducing the number of drives required.

It may be a brave new world for IT, but the same old questions keep on arising. Storage, security, and manageability are still key concerns – but virtualisation just might be the answer we’ve all been looking for.

Undoubtedly it has been a tough couple of years. While Australia managed to avoid a recession other economies are struggling, which has repercussions for Australia. More importantly, in the long term some things have probably changed for good. Organisations around the world are re-aligning their operations to cope with lower operating budgets, a process McKinsey has called “the beginning of a ‘new normal’”. This process is characterised by “fundamental changes in the use of leverage, trajectory of globalisation, nature of consumption patterns and appetite for risk-taking”*.

This means, in part, that IT projects that create business value or reduce the cost of delivering IT services – without reducing service levels – will be given priority. The IT function has a real opportunity to transform itself from a reactive support function to a proactive deliverer of IT services. This is a strategic capability that will enable organisations to respond quickly and cost-effectively to new market conditions and opportunities.

Interacting with real-world leaders in the IT space gives Dimension Data the luxury of understanding the forces that are driving IT decisions today. Our clients are re-evaluating their own customers’ expectations in an always-connected world, where technology is available on demand in the home and on the mobile phone. They are planning for continued instability in the market and for questions from the business as a result of the hype about cloud computing.

The best way for organisations to achieve these goals is to deliver IT as a service. Rather than investing in hardware, software and training for products on a project-by-project basis, we believe the way forward is for organisations to architect their IT infrastructures to leverage the compute power, bandwidth, storage and services they need, as they need them. By abstracting the infrastructure underlying the required functionality (by virtualising the entire stack, not just servers), organisations are freed from the constraints of physical networks, servers and applications that can hold them back.

TO CLOUD OR NOT TO CLOUD:

IT IN THE “NEW NORMAL” dAVId HANRAHAN, GENERAL MANAGER, VIRTUAL DATA CENTRE


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Deduplication must also play a role, as a crucial control on the exponential growth in data all organisations are experiencing. Deduplication allows us to successfully backup and restore data even as virtualisation further shrinks backup windows. It also helps enable effective disaster recovery (DR) solutions, greatly minimising the amount of traffic that must be synchronised.

Thin provisioning of storage is also a key factor in achieving the utilisation goals discussed earlier, as it provides the ability to delay physical storage provisioning for applications whose storage consumption grows predictably over time.

In a highly virtualised environment, service mobility either for capacity management or DR and high availability is a desirable outcome but this has an impact on both security and systems management. From a security perspective, many of the risks are the same as those faced in the physical world – including unsecured accounts, unnecessary services and mis-configurations. But there are additional risks unique to virtual systems that must be addressed, such as protecting offline machines and the potential for rapid propagation of infected or mis-configured services.

This is not because virtualisation is inherently insecure – as it isn’t – but rather because too often it is being deployed without sufficient regard to its unique security requirements. Reviewing security and compliance processes to address the changes that come from virtualisation will address these problems. (See Darren O’Loughlin’s article on page 14 for more about ensuring security of the cloud.)

From an enterprise management perspective the ever-growing complexity of infrastructure (storage/network/server; virtual/physical; internal/external) means that management must break out of the silos that make it difficult to see where problems are occurring. And when there is a problem, what is the root cause? Is it the network, the server, the storage, the application – or the virtualisation? To do this we must monitor the environment across all technology domains and identify the root cause not just within the silos, but across the entire stack.

Ultimately, we see a fully-integrated virtual infrastructure as the best option for most organisations. There is no doubt that when not properly implemented, virtualisation can cause headaches. However, when properly implemented, virtualisation can be the answer to a lot of prayers.

* “The New Normal”, McKinsey Quarterly, McKinsey and Company, Dec. 2009

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_new_normal_2326


ETTIENNE REINECKE

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For some time, I’ve spoken at conferences and written papers on the concept of “innovation through integration”. My basic position is that the IT organisation should first consider enhancing utilisation of existing resources through integration and re-use, rather than buying something new.

By looking for opportunities for integration and re-use, it is also possible to see beyond the technical discussion and begin to envisage the transformational impact these changes might have on our business models and processes.

In my view, organisations are primed to use IT to make transformational changes to business models and processes. Reading The Australian IT’s Predictions 2010*, it is clear that there are two key IT agendas at work this year. First, businesses are once again focusing on productivity, but are planning to achieve this without large, up-front capital expenditure. Second, the

“disruptive convergence of technologies”† is giving organisations a far greater opportunity to transform their businesses.

In Gartner Research’s 2010 CIO Agenda Survey, which gathered data from 1600 organisations worldwide, the top technology priorities for businesses are virtualisation, cloud computing and Web 2.0‡. IT leaders are focusing on productivity, collaboration and innovation. CIOs see the transition that IT is making over the next three years from being “a technology service provider to a source of competitive advantage”§.

Collaboration (or unified communications (UC)) projects are a great example of this transition from technology service provider to a source of competitive advantage at work. The ability of the IT organisation to innovate through integration quickly becomes apparent.

One of our clients, a financial institution in the United States, was looking to acquisitions in emerging markets in South America for its growth strategy. The company had two metrics for successful acquisition: operational efficiency and speed to market with new products. One of the key parts to its growth strategy was building a UC environment across the organisation.

A data centre and UC platform was established in South America, with new acquisitions “plugged into” the system. One method the company used to get its financial products into these new markets was to expose the teams in the different regions to each other by setting up communities in Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS). As a result, they achieved unheard of adoption rates for these new products.

INNOVATION:IT’S NOT jUST ABOUT TECHNOLOGY ETTIENNE REINECKE,

GROUP CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER


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The financial institution was also innovative in the way it ran its UC project. It was operated on a return on asset basis, rather than the traditional return on investment model. This was significant because return on assets is a core metric reported by the institution, aligning the IT investment directly to its financial performance.

For most large organisations, many of the foundational elements for collaboration or UC are already in place. We have email, telephony, intranet, office applications, user directory and access systems, and most organisations have some form of videoconferencing. In the past, these have all tended to function in silos. However, while most of the vendors who operate in this UC space will say “we can do it all for you”, the reality is that unless you are a greenfields site you are unlikely to rip out a perfectly good email system or telephony environment and replace it with one vendor’s complete UC stack.

Also difficult is taking a single vendor approach if you are considering the adoption of, or you are already utilising, cloud computing and Web 2.0 applications and services.

To really tackle the challenge of collaboration, and re-use and build on components of your existing communications stack, there are two core foundations: unifying identity and presence.

It is important to take a service-oriented architectural approach and expose the functions of identity and presence as a service across the entire infrastructure, and integrate these services into vertical applications. There is an opportunity to reduce tremendous costs by abstracting the service layer, particularly with a single directory service. Managing identity efficiently and without repetition has a major impact on your operational costs and also on security, by separating the management of user information from the specific resources being utilised. Organisations are also better able to manage risk by shutting down access when people leave.

Building a presence layer on top of identity opens up endless possibilities for collaboration. For one, you give your users the ability to communicate with colleagues within the organisation, and even across federated organisations using whatever channel is preferred or convenient. Additionally, by incorporating presence and identity into applications and business systems, staff can collaborate on tasks or files, and you can innovate business processes, such as approval workflows.

We have also seen some great UC examples at work in Australia, notably in the engineering industry. One client is now able to provision its collaborative tools from one source, bringing new people into production much more quickly than before, a distinct

competitive advantage when ramping up for new opportunities or projects. Another engineering client, in addition to deploying conventional UC technologies, has built a Web 2.0 professional social networking application on its Microsoft SharePoint platform that combines up-to-date user data from a range of sources, giving users a holistic view of people across the entire business. Similarly to the US financial institution mentioned earlier, this has enhanced the company’s growth (also in South America), allowing it to quickly capitalise on the new skills base available through acquisition and to quickly build teams across regions.

With this renewed focus on innovation and productivity, the IT organisation is increasingly moving to virtualisation as well as considering cloud-based services, both of which abstract the IT resources and services from the underlying infrastructure. This provides the organisation with strategic agility, scale and on-demand capacity combined with speed-to-market and a relatively low up-front capital expenditure. However, how do you integrate this cloud-based world to take advantage of the gains you have made in collaboration? There is a danger that you could revert back to the world of siloed applications, duplication and lack of automation and federation, which all drive up operational costs and eat into the productivity gains you have made through collaboration.

Innovation is only valuable if it creates economic advantage. One can look at this in a few ways: innovation delivers the greatest value if one’s clients are willing to pay a premium for the resulting service or product, thus true differentiation; it helps neutralise a competitor’s advantage; and it helps improve productivity and, as such, improves profitability. In my client examples above, one can truly see that these organisations benefited from all three of these “innovation” qualifiers. There is no doubt that “innovation through integration” can unlock significant business value in most organisations.

* see http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/predictions-2010

† Ibid., j. Percy, Managing Director, Accenture Australia

‡ Ibid., I. Bertram, Managing Vice President, Gartner Asia Pacific

§ M. McDonald, Group Vice President and Head of Research,

Gartner Executive Programs, see

http://www.gartner.com/it/products/newsroom/index.jsp?v=1

DArrEN O’LOughLiN

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SECURITY OF THE CLOUD:

IT’S UP TO YOU!

Cloud computing is likely to create significant savings for organisations that choose to buy software, infrastructure, or a platform from external vendors on a pay-as-you-go basis. By tapping into the cloud they can gain fast access to best-of-breed business applications or drastically boost their infrastructure resources, at negligible cost.

According to an IDG survey of 100 security executives around the world, upwards of 30 per cent of large businesses have some enterprise applications in the cloud. More than a third of businesses have increased their use of cloud computing in the past two years.

Interestingly, however, two-thirds of the surveyed organisations did not have a security strategy for cloud computing.

And therein lies the major problem with cloud computing, because security of the cloud is actually more complex and involves more areas of risk than is the case with traditional IT set-ups.

The biggest risk is that, in the cloud, the customer organisation is not in control of where its data resides, or how it is processed, destroyed, or accessed. And despite the fact that the customer organisation is not in control of either the technology in the cloud or the management of that technology, the onus for mitigation of risk still falls on the customer organisation.

Furthermore, the lack of generally accepted specific cloud computing standards means that customer organisations cannot rely on their providers to achieve a basic minimum of security – or on an industry body to regulate cloud security. Organisations must do their own policing of their vendors’ security.

don’t outsource what you don’t understand

Cloud providers are unlikely to change their security environment on request. So the customer organisation needs to understand its own security requirements up-front, in order to select the provider whose environment best suits its needs.

The customer organisation needs to do an assessment of its inherent risk, paint a scenario based on the required organisational changes as well as its appetite for managing additional risk for the sake of business benefits — and then use the results to make sure that its own internal security is up to scratch.

At the same time, the assessment will show what security the provider will need to have in place in order to keep the customer’s data safe. Then it’s a question of mapping the organisation’s security needs to provider capabilities.

The checklist

In assessing security requirements, there are three overarching groups that must be considered:

Governance, risk, and compliance; including legal and e-discovery, compliance and audit, business continuity and disaster recovery, and incident response, notification, and remediation.

Architecture and operations; incorporating security architecture, information lifecycle management, portability and interoperability, data centre operations, storage, and virtualisation.

Identity and access control; through key management and encryption, and application security.

Steps towards control

In making an assessment, start with the basics and avoid technical detail too early. Ask tough questions and consider getting a security assessment from a neutral third party before committing to a cloud vendor. An assessment should cover the following areas:

dARREN O’LOuGHLIN, GENERAL MANAGER, SECURITY


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Business continuity

In terms of business continuity and disaster recovery, the cloud providers’ technology architecture will naturally differ. But they must all be able to demonstrate comprehensive compartmentalisation of systems, networks, management, provisioning, and personnel. And, of course, ensure your own business continuity plans address the impacts and limitations of cloud computing.

Application development

For application security, remember that Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) create differing trust boundaries for the software development lifecycle and they must be accounted for during the development, testing, and production deployment of applications.

Identity

Have a robust federated identity management architecture and strategy internal to your organisation. Insist that the vendor operates according to federation-enabling standards such as SAML, WS-Federation, and Liberty ID-FF. Consider implementing Single Sign-on (SSO) for internal applications and then leveraging this architecture for cloud applications.

In addition, cloud-based IaaS providers may be a useful tool for outsourcing some identity management capabilities and facilitating federated identity management with cloud providers.

Virtualisation

Finally, although your organisation should augment virtualised operating systems with third party security technology to provide layered security controls and reduce dependency on the platform provider alone, virtualisation does offer many security advantages. Virtualisation can create isolated environments and better define memory space, which can minimise application instability and simplify recovery.

Practice first

Perhaps the most basic cloud security measure of all is to opt for a private cloud first – virtualising the organisation’s internal operations and using internal and therefore already authorised personnel – in order to establish a working cloud methodology that can then be extrapolated to a public cloud if and when it becomes necessary.

Due diligence

Perform an extensive, in-depth due diligence on your preferred cloud provider.

Contracts

Contracts are the key legal enforcement mechanism and must, therefore, be negotiated to reflect the organisation’s unique needs as well as the dynamic nature of cloud computing. Plan in the contract negotiations for both expected and unexpected termination of the relationship and for an orderly return or secure disposal of assets.

E-discovery

Ironically, while cloud providers are custodians of primary data assets, their customers, who own the data assets, are legally responsible for preserving the data and making it available in legal proceedings (e-discovery).

Therefore, have a clear mutual understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities related to e-discovery, including such activities as litigation hold, discovery searches, and the provision of expert testimony.

Standards

Ensure your providers comply with, at a minimum, the SAS70 auditing standard and ISO27001, which is designed to provide the foundations for third party audit and implements OECD principles governing security of information and network systems.

Classify your data and systems in order to understand compliance requirements and your data locations – specifically, the copies of data and how they are controlled. Maintain a right to audit on demand, as regulatory mandates and business needs can change extremely rapidly.

Privacy

Understand the privacy restrictions inherent in your data, as there is the possibility that the cloud provider may not be permitted to hold the data without very specific partner designations.

Be aware that, when it comes to privacy, it may be easier for the cloud provider to demonstrate data retention but not data destruction.


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Delivering services to our clients is what Dimension Data does. And with both the enterprise space and the technologies that serve it going through significant evolutionary changes, the only way to succeed is to understand our clients and how best to meet their needs. It sounds simple (and in principle it is simple), but as Keith Murray explains, the journey is one of many steps.

“Technology is just a tool that businesses use to achieve success in their chosen markets. If you think about our clients, they’re using technology to leverage competitive advantage – for example to create a commercial differentiation versus their competition, to reduce the business’s input costs, or in many instances, both.”

Keith Murray, in his capacity as Dimension Data’s Director, Managed Services, is responsible for shaping and executing our service delivery strategy, and it’s clear that he’s given the “why” of service delivery, not just the “how” and “what”, considerable thought.

“To do that in the enterprise space – where organisations have hundreds or thousands of users – can be challenging, and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. That’s why organisations choose to work with specialist integrators who have invested in developing a skills base across a number of best-of-breed technologies.”

Know your strengths

“An organisation may have a clear vision of an area of technology whereby it believes it can leverage substantial advantage by doing things in-house,” Keith says. “For example, it may have developed a proprietary application that’s a key commercial differentiator. In such a case it makes good economic sense to maintain that advantage in-house.”

“On the other hand, operating technologies like email and servers is probably better handled by a specialist partner. Are these functions a source of competitive advantage? In the vast majority of cases, the answer is ‘no’.”

Dimension Data helps organisations identify which systems, platforms or processes should best be domiciled on client’s premises, and those which might better be held elsewhere – for example, in the emergent cloud architectures. Some form of hybrid model is usually the best approach.

For example, in the case of an ERP implementation, it might make sense to have the core server and storage platforms centralised. However, there are obvious benefits to leveraging cloud-based or hosted services to implement backup and disaster recovery/business continuity across multiple, geographically-separated data centres.

“Technology gives us options and, as bandwidth becomes further commoditised, there is an enormous opportunity to abstract the physical complexity of servers, SANs, routers, firewalls and the like from the business benefits that organisations are striving to achieve.”

AS YOU LIKE IT:SERVICE DELIVERY, FROM THE GROUND TO THE CLOUDMARTIN AuNGLE, CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

www.dimensiondata.com/auwww.dimensiondata.com/au

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Dimension Data’s advantage in the service delivery space is twofold. Firstly, we don’t force the utility model on our clients. We offer packaged, standardised solutions that have been created in response to common needs based on our long experience as an integration specialist. These solutions provide a familiar framework, are easy to implement, and benefit from the economies of standardisation and scale.

We also offer bespoke solutions, specifically created to meet particular client needs. Drawing on our experience in the market, our qualified and certified project, technical and support teams, and our wide and deep array of vendor relationships, we can offer the best technologies in the best configurations.

Our second area of advantage is simple, as Keith notes: “Others do this. But we do it at scale, and have done so for many years. We offer breadth and depth of platform expertise – we have detailed, in-depth knowledge of around thirty major platforms, and significant implementation experience in many more.”

Best of all, our knowledge base is always expanding as we take in more and more technologies.

“We don’t try to pick winners. We look at trends and make our technology and skills investments based on the weight-of-the-evidence in a trend. Over the longer timeframes, history has proven that the cycle of innovation can shift from technology to technology and therefore from vendor to vendor. Our vendor-neutral stance enables us to provide sound, unbiased, practical advice targeted to the client’s needs.”

The evidence is in the execution

Once Dimension Data has helped an organisation decide which functions to keep onsite and which can be handled elsewhere, two more considerations arise: how best to operate them, and how to ensure the functions reliably deliver the services that are required.

“We offer three options for out-tasking,” Keith says. “We can take over the operational tasks of the IT infrastructure and service desk in their entirety; we can provide a hosted service, where we take over specific parts of a task; or we can augment a client’s staff and provide skilled technicians onsite. This flexibility is a key benefit – and we can offer any combination of the three options for our clients.”

AS YOU LIKE IT:SERVICE DELIVERY, FROM THE GROUND TO THE CLOUD

Once the best service delivery model for the client has been architected, the question becomes one of execution. Supporting the range of technologies present in any enterprise is a constant challenge. Vendor support is typically excellent on a per-device or per-vendor basis, but for a larger organisation, other considerations arise.

“We have one great advantage over vendor support,” Keith says. “Different vendors are not harmonised in their approach to support, fault remediation, help desk services and contract management. We are.”

Different vendors deliver different support outcomes, which means the enterprise must juggle different service levels, different options and different philosophies.

“We remove that complexity for our clients and maintain systems in a consistent way. The first task is to monitor what’s going on. You need visibility if you’re going to manage anything. We have an extremely comprehensive set of capabilities through our remote infrastructure management offering, and all our Global Services Centres are expert in its use.”

Dimension Data’s “Insite” service provides online access to real-time status and performance data, meaning problems can be identified, diagnosed and resolved before they impact on day-to-day operations.

“So we can put a stethoscope on things with Insite. But what do you do when something breaks? How do you manage restoration to full service in a cohesive fashion?” Keith asks.

Strictly-defined service level agreements are the key to giving both client and Dimension Data a clear view and expectation of what is required from a maintenance perspective.

“Once we’re maintaining our client’s infrastructure, we can keep things running – across multiple different platforms from different vendors, in line with ITIL and other best-practice measures. We can help make sure that whatever level of service is needed, and however it’s delivered, it will be reliable, robust, and play its part in generating value and competitive advantage for our client.”


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In the current business environment many CIOs are being asked to re-examine and overhaul the IT infrastructure and operations that their organisations have come to depend on for successful business operation. The rationale is to ensure that IT contributes to business improvement initiatives and reduces the cost of doing business in the most cost-effective manner. Dr Wissam Raffoul recommends that CIOs should always evaluate five key strategies before making any critical IT infrastructure and operational investment decisions.

Market research indicates that IT organisations are increasingly looking to technologies and services that increase the speed of response to changing market conditions, and the ability to quickly adapt to any new environment. For example, virtualisation and, to a lesser extent, cloud-based services have emerged to address some of these business imperatives. Whether IT organisations are embarking on a virtualisation strategy, or looking to implement fabric-based revolutionary technologies such as Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), the approach to assessing and understanding the impact of these changes is critical and consistent.

Big decisions are not just technology-based. IT organisations should not implement anything which fundamentally changes the IT environment without understanding:

How will it affect the way the business is run?

Is the current organisational structure going to work?

What tools are needed to manage the environment? Can the current tools adapt to the target technology or do you need to invest in new ones?

What impact will it have on any outsourced arrangements? Do these outsourced services allow it, and what are the costs?

What transition strategy is needed to migrate to the goal state architecture?

It is best to illustrate each of these five strategies using a real-life scenario. For example, IT organisations wishing to transform their data centres to leverage the power and cost-effectiveness of the new technology offerings should consider:

How will it affect the way the business is run?

In this case, the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of a consolidation strategy should be explored. This includes the implementation of server virtualisation and converged networking. The implications this would have on the organisation’s WAN strategy and Quality of Service (QoS) needs should also be examined; the applications architecture’s suitability to exploit the new technology facilities should be assessed; vendor local support options should be carefully studied; and how the new technologies will enable the critical needs should be evaluated. Disaster recovery and business continuity implications are also crucial considerations in a data centre reform project to determine the investment’s size more accurately.

Is the current organisational structure going to work?

When client-server technology was introduced to supplement the mainframe environment, most IT operations established clearly defined organisational groups covering desktop, network and server. However, with technologies such as Cisco UCS, the resultant blurring of the boundaries means that the same organisational separation no longer applies. This is because server, network and storage are integrated into the same equipment. As a result, a new IT organisational structure should be established with service-oriented direction instead of technology line focus. This should include a determination on what roles and competencies would be required to support the new environment; assessment of the organisation’s process maturity and identification of opportunities to optimise these processes; and identification of changing requirements for IT governance.

What tools are needed to manage the environment? Can the current tools adapt to the target technology or do you need to invest in new ones?

With any major technology implementation, it is important that the existing enterprise system management tools are reviewed to determine how well they will support the new environment. This requires a current-state assessment; the impact the changes would have on the existing management system; and recommendations on changes required. Through this assessment process, improvements and rationalisation of the current tools can be identified.

LEAVE NOTHING TO CHANCE:

NAVIGATING TO GOAL STATE ARCHITECTURE dR WISSAM RAFFOuL,

GENERAL MANAGER, CONSULTING


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What impact will it have on any outsourced arrangements? do these outsourced services allow it, and what are the costs?

Industry research reveals that most IT organisations operate in a multi-sourced environment. Furthermore, some outsourced organisations do not control their architecture, so any major technology deployment is an opportunity to assess the existing sourcing strategies. In our scenario, the factors to consider are the impact on the organisation’s existing vendors and IT service providers; changes required to procurement processes; and recommendations on how the organisation should resource the design, build, implementation and support of the new data centre environment.

What transition strategy is needed to migrate to the goal state architecture?

Taking into consideration the previous four strategies, the final step is to build a roadmap, and investment estimates in order to achieve the goal state architecture. The IT roadmap should consider timings; dependencies; potential operating cost savings and additional business benefits; risks; key processes and people; key technologies; and initiatives required to address goal state architectures for the organisation’s key business systems.

When evaluating any major technology deployment, it is important to build a business case on the feasibility of the project, together with the implementation strategy. And, unless it is a greenfield site, IT organisations will be deploying technologies that need to co-exist with current technologies, organisational structures and service providers.

Conducting a thorough assessment of a proposed major technology implementation, particularly for those technologies that will have a transformative effect on IT infrastructure, gives a complete picture on the impact across the entire business. More importantly, it will give a great guided path to achieving goal state architecture.

In conclusion, new technology initiatives should be carefully planned, designed, built, deployed and supported. Nothing should be left to chance.

Dr wiSSAmrAffOuL

CLIMBING ABOVE THE CLOud

Dimension Data’s Consultants are increasingly being asked to provide clients with guidance on how best to adopt and take advantage of Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service and other cloud-based computing models. There is currently a great deal of uncertainty about cloud computing directions and trends, and the impact that these models will have, now and in the future, on IT architectures and on the organisational structure of the IT enterprise. In 2010, Dimension Data’s Consulting practice commenced a twelve-month research program on the current cloud computing market. The first deliverable from the program is “Climbing above the Cloud”, a research paper analysing the current state of the cloud services market and providing advice to organisations on how to take advantage of cloud services. To request a copy, please email [email protected].


DAViD gAgE

The message is clear: stay in school! For both organisations and individuals, keeping skills up-to-date has never been more important.

With the unemployment rate falling sharply in the past few months the “war for talent” has intensified. Organisations have identified that in order to retain their best and brightest they need to focus on staff training and career development. IT has been nominated as one of the strongest-performing areas of employment growth, suggesting retention will be one of the key challenges for businesses in 2010*.

People are also recognising that in order to maintain relevance in the IT industry their skills must evolve. It is important to realise, however, that not all certifications are viewed equally. Certifications gained years ago in old technologies are viewed less favourably as new technologies emerge. To stay ahead of the pack, people are investigating the skills that will ensure they maximise the value they contribute to their organisations. The key areas that will deliver the best return on any training investment are: virtualisation, unified communications (UC), ITIL, business analysis and project management.

Virtualisation is a hot topic in IT at the moment. Businesses are looking for potential employees with the expertise to manage and optimise virtualised environments, helping them reduce costs,

become more agile, and improve application service levels. Even during the economic downturn in 2009 the demand for those with virtualisation skills remained strong, commanding premiums of 15 to 19 per cent above base IT salaries. This trend is set to continue through 2010 and beyond.

UC is another hot area. UC specialists are one of the top growth areas in IT organisations, requiring expertise with networking, user devices, and collaboration applications. In years past, networking, server, administration, and application administration were considered different disciplines but with UC, people demonstrating a grasp of all these skills will be highly sought after.

ITIL qualifications dramatically enhance anyone’s employability. IT professionals with ITIL certifications provide employers with evidence of service management capability that can be applied with best practice to an organisation’s IT service management efforts.

However, without doubt the hottest area of focus right now is in the area of project management and business analysis.

Why do organisations need business analysis and project management training?

These skills are becoming more important for all organisations, which is not hard to understand why when you look at some cold, hard facts:

44 per cent of IT projects are late, over budget, and/or do not deliver the required features or functions

24 per cent of projects fail, that is, are cancelled prior to completion or delivered but never utilised

Project failure is typically due to inadequate up-front work, including poor requirements, unsatisfactory documentation, insufficient communication and inflexibility †

Effective, efficient and highly trained business analysts and project managers will both ensure project success and enable organisations to exceed stakeholder expectations. Qualified personnel can set a company apart. These factors are a powerful advantage that can have a very positive, and measurable, impact on the way a company does business. Business analysis and project manager qualifications imply true professionalism in mission-critical corporate functions. A broad base of qualified practitioners gives an organisation a competitive edge, just as having these qualifications gives any individual a competitive employment edge.

* Olivier job Index, Feb 2009

† CHAOS Summary 2009, The Standish Group, 2009

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WE HAVE THE TOOLS –YOU HAVE THE TALENT dAVId GAGE,

GENERAL MANAGER, DIMENSION DATA LEARNING SOLUTIONS


cAPTAiNS STArLighT

STArLighT: hELPiNg kiDS

SmiLE AgAiN

21

IT Fund for Kids

Small wonder it takes 3000 years of training on Planet Starlight before a trainee comes to Earth as Captain Starlight. Winning a smile from a child suffering from severe illness or disability takes something special, not to mention diverse skills such as dinosaur dancing, football ballet and piloting rocket ships!

Captain Starlight has been an integral part of the Starlight Children’s Foundation for many years. Since 1988 Starlight has been well-known for brightening the lives of seriously ill and hospitalised children and their families throughout Australia. A range of programs provide diversion and laughter, and some much needed time out from the routine of hospitals and the long-term pressures of serious illness. These programs include medical-free havens within hospitals called Starlight Express Rooms, “once in a lifetime” Starlight Wishes, Starlight Escapes to bring respite for the whole family, and Livewire, an innovative and supportive online community for young people affected by illness or disability.

For the past 10 years, the IT Fund for Kids has galvanised the IT community to help Starlight, as well as Giant Steps, an independent special school founded to assist children with autism. Originally the brainchild of Starlight’s then-CEO jill Weekes and Dimension Data CEO Steve Nola, the aim of the Fund is to unite the ICT industry to help children in need. Specifically, it works to benefit the lives of children who are affected by serious illness, hospitalisation, disability and autism through technology.

Dimension Data’s CTO and IT Fund for Kids ambassador Gerard Florian explains: “The IT industry – pre-dot.com crash – had been a very lucky industry and forming the Fund was an important step towards giving back to the community. Previously, various charities had been supported in an ad hoc fashion, and this was a way for the industry to focus its support. Fundamentally, the Fund recognises the importance that technology plays in fulfilling the needs of many of these children through connection to family and friends, educational resources and positive distraction. And I think people see it as a really important thing for the industry to do.”

Naturally, the Fund has evolved over time. What began as a challenge to donate a day’s pay now includes the “Know IT All” Dinner, an intellectual battle to determine who is the ultimate ICT industry “know-all”. Teams from various companies face gruelling questions designed by Australian Mensa and enjoy a networking opportunity, all the while raising much-needed funds.

IT FUND FOR KIDS TURNS 10

Anne johnston of Starlight talks about the significance of the Fund, and its future: “To date the IT Fund for Kids has raised over $2 million, which is a massive achievement bringing significant benefit to seriously ill children and their families. What’s really exciting is the potential for the Fund to help with new technologies. For example, there are four new Starlight Express rooms opening in 2010 and we need to maximise their impact with leading edge facilities. There’s enormous opportunity over the next two or three years for IT professionals to use their skills to directly benefit the kids by working out which technologies can be used for maximum benefit.”

If your organisation is interested in joining the IT Fund for Kids, please contact Michelle Robinson at Dimension Data at [email protected] or call 02 8249 5000. Alternatively you can contact Kouhei Steele at Starlight at [email protected] or call 02 8425 5914.

VOICE GOESIf escalating local and international mobile costs, poor cellular coverage, multiple handsets and lack of control over employee mobile usage is decreasing your productivity and profit margins, then it is time to take advantage of Voice over Wireless LAN and fixed mobile convergence.

A fixed mobile convergence solution fuses telephony and location awareness to provide an advanced internal mobility service that enables cost-effective access to voice services, high-quality in-building coverage and greater accessibility. Complete with a dual-mode handset this solution allows employees to be in constant contact both at the office, through an internal wireless network, and off-premises via a cellular network.

Take advantage of Voice over Wireless LAN from dimension data. Backed by world-class technology, dimension data is a world-class partner that implements, delivers and supports first-rate networking solutions for your business.

dimension data – Wireless voice solutions to make your business heard.

For more information email [email protected] or go to www.dimensiondata.com/voicegoeswireless.

WIRELESS

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CONTACT DETAILS

New South Wales Head Office 121-127 Harrington Street The Rocks NSW 2000 Ph: 61 2 8249 5000

Victoria Ground Floor 11-17 Dorcas Street South Melbourne VIC 3205 Ph: 61 3 9626 0770

Queensland Level 1 139 Coronation Drive Milton QLD 4064 Ph: 61 7 3292 1300

South Australia 129 Greenhill Road Unley SA 5061 Ph: 61 8 8291 8600

Western Australia Level 4 218 St Georges Terrace Perth WA 6000 Ph: 61 8 9311 7111

Australian Capital Territory Unit 7 18-20 Brindabella Circuit Brindabella Business Park Canberra Airport ACT 2609 Ph: 61 2 6122 5100

[email protected] www.dimensiondata.com/au

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NEW DIMENSIONS ANNUAL REVIEW 2009/2010

Annual Review 2010

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