Dimension Data boosts Microsoft services offering

IT services provider Dimension Data has bolstered its Microsoft offering to big business clients with a major investment in Microsoft's Services Ready program, a set of best-practice consulting packages around key technology areas.

Microsoft launched Services Ready last year to help partners accelerate their services businesses with proven guidance and resources on deploying Microsoft products in “bleeding-edge” services.

Dimension Data has since achieved certification in the areas of collaboration, desktop management, systems management, unified communications, and virtualisation.

Carlos Gouveia, Sales Manager for Microsoft Solutions at Dimension Data South Africa, says the new offerings will save his team the time and expense it would have taken to ramp up their own consulting practices on these services.

“We've got an excellent track record, of planning, deploying, and managing Microsoft solutions for our clients, and Services Ready gives us the ability to enhance our area of specialisation, better mitigate risks and manage projects and help our clients exploit each solution to its fullest,” said Gouveia.

“By the same token, we can fold the Services Ready capabilities into our own unique offerings, enabling us to constantly innovate for clients by applying proven tools in ways that are closely aligned with our particular specialisations.”

In a study commissioned by Microsoft, a leading analyst firm, IDC, estimated the current market opportunity for services on the Microsoft platform to be $383 billion and expects it to grow to more than $490 billion by 2012. Much of this growth will be fuelled by businesses looking for ways to improve their performance while also reducing costs.

Microsoft South Africa's Services Lead, Steve Morgan, said being Services Ready means that partners are equipped to lower client risk by using best practice verified in the field and re-using client assets.

“Services Ready goes a long way toward ensuring our customers have a consistent, high-value experience with partners who are armed with Microsoft's own tested and proven tools,” said Morgan.

“This is all about making it as easy as possible for clients to get the full value from their Microsoft products, both in terms of enabling business innovation and reducing the risk of IT implementations and the subsequent reliance of a business on its IT systems.”

Microsoft Services Ready areas of specialisation include systems management, identity and security, virtualisation, portals and collaboration, unified communications, business intelligence, application life cycle management, software development, and application integration. Partners are certified on a regional or global basis, enabling regional offices of global organisations such as Dimension Data to offer market-specific solutions.