Annual Review 2010

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NEW DIMENSIONS
ANNUAL REVIEW 2009/2010

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Our New Dimensions Annual Review
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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 are
Dimension 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 cover
Online 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.au
www.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’sMessage
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
LocalReview
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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LocalReview
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
4
ClientProfiles
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
ClientProfiles
Building a ‘Bluefield’
Infrastructure
wendy
balachandran
greg masters

6
ClientProfiles
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
ClientProfiles
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
GlobalReview
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 review
Highlights 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&Predictions
Staying
in Control Gerard Florian, Chief Technology Officer

10
Trends&Predictions
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

david hanrahan
Trends&Predictions
11
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
12
Trends&Predictions
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

1313
Trends&Predictions
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
14
TrendsPredictions
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

15
TrendsPredictions
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.

keith murray
TrendsPredictions
16
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 Cloud
Martin Aungle, Corporate Communications
Manager

www.dimensiondata.com/auwww.dimensiondata.com/au
17
TrendsPredictions
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.”
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.”

18
TrendsPredictions
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

19
TrendsPredictions
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 Wissam
Raffoul
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
info@didata.com.au.

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
20
TrendsPredictions
we have the tools –
You have the talent
David Gage,
General Manager, Dimension Data Learning Solutions

Captains
Starlight
Starlight:
Helping kids
smile again
21
ITFundforKids
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
michelle.robinson@didata.com.au or call 02 8249 5000.
Alternatively you can contact Kouhei Steele at Starlight at
kouhei.steele@starlight.org.au or call 02 8425 5914.

VOICE GOES
If 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 info@didata.com.au or go to www.dimensiondata.com/voicegoeswireless.
WIRELESS
In collaboration with:

This document was printed by a Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) Chain of Custody
certified printer on recycled paper using
non-genetically modified soy ink.
Our New Dimensions Annual Review
uses 385kg of paper (Monza Satin)
which has a post-consumer recycled
percentage of 25. The savings below are
achieved when post-consumer recycled
fibre is used in place of virgin fibre.
2 trees preserved for the future
2kg waterborne waste not created
2867 litres waste water flow saved
38kg solid waste not generated
75kg net greenhouse gases prevented
1,262,776 BTUs energy not consumed

Annual Review 2010

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