ICT services and solutions provider, Dimension Data is targeting to sell one million new seats of Microsoft Lync Enterprise Voice, delivered either on premises or in a private cloud, by 2017.
Microsoft Lync - one of the most popular unified communications tools on the market - is an application that provides presence, instant messaging, voice, video, ad hoc collaboration and online meeting capabilities through a single interface.
"While the Lync business for Microsoft is growing 30% year-on-year and advanced workloads like voice growing even faster, globally there are still millions of enterprise employees who would benefit from Lync," says Peter Menadue, Dimension Data's Group GM for Microsoft Solutions.
Tony Walt, executive for end user computing at Dimension Data Middle East and Africa, points out that Lync is an enterprise-ready unified communications platform and, thus, the initial focus will be on large organisations.
According to Walt, Dimension Data will focus on a global go-to-market strategy to address the needs of its clients. "Based on our client research, there is a need in the market to have a more people-centric focus in the way clients communicate with both their employees and their customers. This will help reduce decision-making cycles both internally and externally and furthermore reduce communication siloes.
"The obvious concern is - how do they do this in a secure and compliant environment? Dimension Data believes these needs are a common global thread and our campaign will focus on addressing these concerns and ultimately offering our clients business value," says Walt.
"We would align our approach depending on the communications maturity of both the region and the individual organisation."
Commenting on the South African market, Walt says Dimension Data has observed a significant increase in the procurement and subsequent activation of Lync in the country - picking up aggressively over the past two years in particular.
This being as a result of clients embracing the benefits of a unified communication tool, sitting across multiple platforms, across multiple devices, he points out.
"Another reason for the increased uptake of Lync is that if one considers the various replacement cycles of legacy PABX solutions and we couple this with what is currently available in the market today as alternatives with commercial and productivity benefits, it will continue to grow.
"As a region, we are still fairly on par with the rest of the BRICS countries. We have seen a significant increase in Lync sales and a steady growth of adoption regarding Lync Voice deployment. However, we do see the adoption rate within South Africa projected to increase exponentially over the next 36 months," Walt says.
Menadue notes that a 2013 study carried out by the T3i Group on the Impact of Microsoft Lync on the Enterprise Voice Market 2013 revealed that 93% of enterprises have plans or already using or trialling Microsoft Lync overall, which is up from 80% last year, while 59% of enterprises are planning or already deploying Lync Voice, up from 45% in 12 months.
With over 500 Lync projects completed globally, says Menadue, Dimension Data has deep experience in delivering end-to-end Lync deals including hardware, networking, deployment, adoption services, as well as managed services.
"While these target numbers are impressive, what's particularly exciting for Dimension Data is that we're targeting all delivery models as part of this initiative. Our experience, together with our long history of working with Microsoft over the past 10 years, ensures we'll meet the one million target," Menadue concludes.
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