Twenty years ago, Dimension Data established adedicated presence in Luxembourg, recognising the country as a business centre with high ambitions and potential. Thistwo-decade success story continues.

You have an impressive twentyyear story with your clients…

Yes indeed! For the past twenty years we’ve been helping companies in Luxembourg to access innovationmore easily, while also simplifying howto use technology. We have always wanted to be ahead of our time,but our interest in innovation lies in presenting solutions that will provide our clients with a real advantage. From the start we also bet on IP, which turned out to be a recipe for success.

What were the most important milestones of the past two decades?

The first step was for us to set up the Luxembourg office as an autonomous structure with its own strategy. We made this decision in the interest of our local clients. We planned for Dimension Data Luxembourg not to be a branch office, but rather a separate entity with its own board of directors making decisions appropriate to our particular business environment. A determining factor in our success over the past twenty years is that we took the importance of the Luxembourg market into consideration from the start.

1999 was a defining year in our evolution as it was then that Dimension Data acquired Comtech, a company that had a presence in Luxembourg. From being a start-up of engineers, we were able to structure our strategy thanks to the support provided by a multinational group: Dimension Data. Dimension Data decided to acquire Comtech not to maximise an investment, but to build a project. This added value to our regional offices, to the Luxembourg office and of course to our clients. We’ve achieved international recognition for our innovation and our ability to implement solutions. Gartner, a leader in information technology research and advisory services, once again recognised us as a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Communications Outsourcing and Professional Services (MQ for COPS). This recognition extends to our employees, our partners and also our clients.

Dimension Data Luxembourg has grown continuously over the past 20 years…

Yes, our growth in Luxembourg has been organic and we’ve managed to keep it under control. We chose not to target acquisitions in Luxembourg just to add capacity, as we wanted to guarantee a unique culture and an appetite for innovation amongst our teams.

How has Dimension Databecome a global IT service provider?

We earned our laurels as a credible IT service provider at an early stage in our development. This permitted us to offer outsourcing services based on the capacity we had put in place. We’ve become a trusted technology and service provider. This is an entirely different business model, not a competency we add on top of others. In 2010 we developed an Infrastructureas- a-Service (IaaS) offering for our clients as a package of security, computing, servers, storage and unified communications services. We built this infrastructure in Luxembourg so that we could address our local clients’ needs. We saw it as a natural evolution that built upon their trust. From then on, we were able to propose solutions that ranged from the ‘full solution’ to more specific solutions from a catalogue of services. This was so successful that the Group seized the opportunity to develop a global cloud offering. Later, the Group reinforced its cloud capabilities by acquiring OpSource, a cloud specialist.

To what do you attribute Dimension Data Luxembourg’s success?

We have the best talent in Luxembourg! Our managers and teams have built a successful business that is recognised abroad. It’s a pleasure to work with them every day.

What are Dimension Data’s future plans?

About four years ago, we put in place an IaaS solution. Delivering this service to our clients means that we have to understand their needs and be as close to them as possible. Our success relies on services. We want to propose a business model for IT applications today that will support clients into the future. We are already well equipped because we have set up governance and metrics that differ from an integrator’s classic activities.

What kind of cloud services will you offer?

From the ‘full service’ to automated services, we have the required modularity in place. The IaaS platform relies on our building capacity: this is the beauty of the solution. As a PSF, Professional of the Financial Sector, we have to be able to demonstrate the quality of what we do. Our clients trust us because we have reliable procedures in place and can deliver and end-to-end solution.

Will you continue bringing innovation to your clients?

Innovation makes no sense without the ability to explain what can be done with it. We aim to support technology innovation and make it accessible and concrete for our customers. This is why we trust our partners that provide reliable solutions, for which we are certified.

According to you,what is the future of IT?

Now more than ever, whether in a small or large organisation, IT is vital to success. The availability and criticality of systems and applications are essential. We’ve acquired a strategic position with our clients by progressing our outsourcing and IaaS culture. We now have an entire range of competencies at our disposal, which we use to provide services to our clients. Our future lies in becoming a ‘one service’ provider

And what kind of people will be with you to make this a reality?

When we talk about Generation Y at Dimension Data, we really mean it. This is not an extraordinary revolution, it’s simply the times in which we’re living. Five years ago, we put in place a talent management programme. Our future managers are here. We have, for example, created a particularly interesting programme together with the IE Business School in Madrid. Our evolution also allows our teams to find personal challenges that are interesting enough for them to grow with us. We want to support them in their career development.

What about collaboration with the NTT group?

We’ll be taking our development to the next level when we start to collaborate with NTT. The current structure gives us long-term stability as well as access to incredible innovation. I’d like to invite you to discover the vision of NTT 2020 and come and meet with Dimension Data some time in the future. That world will be extraordinary…