Seelan Nayagam (DXC Technology)
“Our priority in 2018 will be to guide our clients on their digital transformation journeys, multiply their capabilities and help them harness the power of innovation to thrive on change.
"DXC Technology has recognised the importance of combining innovation and collaboration to accelerate digital change in today’s rapidly changing market.”
For Nayagam, one the provider’s most significant initiatives to reflect this evolution is the opening of Digital Transformation Centres in Australia.
Unveiled in October 2017, the first two facilities will be in Canberra and Melbourne and co-located with universities, allowing for research between industry and academia.
“The Centres provide clients continual access to advisory services, present new and effective ways of working, and help clients design and develop digital solutions to solve business challenges,” Nayagam explained.
“This unique offering in Australia draws on collaborative minds and home-grown partnerships across industry, academia, community and government, and fosters a new culture of innovation in a digital world.
“We will also continue to harness the brightest talent and best ideas to bring innovation to our clients, and are focused on creating value to the local economy.”
Insights
In examining the changing face of the technology industry, Nayagam shared DXC’s own vision of how the future market will shape up within A/NZ.
Specifically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the provider outlines six major trends capable of feeding the next wave of disruption and productivity.
“We see an aggressive move to common IT platforms and a major shift in skills and the war for digital talent,” Nayagam outlined.
“Also, the emergence of quantification as a driver of digital transformation; an emphasis on cyber resilience; business growth by extending digital capabilities and an explosion of opportunities with AI and neural networks.”
Nayagam believes such trends will serve as “critical guideposts” for organisations implementing digital strategies in the year ahead, as businesses attempt to overcome barriers associated to ageing technology solutions.
“One of our key priorities this year is helping our customers make the shift from legacy to digitally enabled solutions,” Nayagam said. “This is something that most of our customers will address within the next two to three years, if they haven’t already.
“Our challenge is highlighting the importance of adapting or running the risk of being left behind.”
Risk, in the context of increased security threats, is a different challenge however.
“Protecting our customers from cyber threats will always be paramount to our core objectives,” Nayagam added. “These threats to businesses are on the rise, and having sophisticated systems in place is more important than ever.
Credit: DXC Technology “We are always keen for our customers to be more versed in cloud technology and the efficiencies which can be gained as a result.”
Specific to technology, Nayagam said cyber security will continue to be a “huge focus” going forward for the business, with regulations and compliance “sure” to provide challenges to organisations during the next 12 months.
“We have to remain one step ahead of those behind such cyber threats,” Nayagam said. “I would say all technology providers are facing similar challenges at the moment — cyber threats, operational costs and disruption from unexpected market forces.”
Vendors
From a global standpoint, DXC has established more than 250 partner network relationships, including 14 strategic partners, defined as having significant co-investment for engineering of offerings, sales and client delivery.
Specifically, vendors include Amazon Web Services, AT&T, Dell EMC, HCL, Hitachi, HPE, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Micro Focus, Microsoft, Oracle, PwC, SAP and ServiceNow.
“We also have a significant number of global and regional solution partners, critical to digital transformation, such as Mphasis, RedHat, Citrix, Symantec and Veritas,” Nayagam added.
“And recently we announced our partnership with BluePrism, as part of the launch of our Robotic Process Automation practice.
“We lean-in together with our partners and treat them as part of DXC Technology. We co- sell, co- solution and co-deliver.”
Such a strategy is designed to allow DXC to provide a “vendor agnostic” view of the digital world, creating “best of breed” platform choice in the process.
“Yet at the same time, irrespective of which platform our clients choose, we bring very deep, locally-based expertise to the table,” Nayagam qualified.
Locally, with the acquisition of UXC over 12 months ago, Nayagam said DXC is now positioned to assist across the best of breed platforms, with fully integrated ‘build- sell- deliver’ capability aligned to a single partner technology.
“Whether it be Oxygen for SAP, RedRock for Oracle, Fruition for ServiceNow, Eclipse for Microsoft Dynamics, Connect for Microsoft Azure, Professional Solutions for IBM, and our AWS practice for AWS,” he explained.
Furthermore, the provider’s Integrated Practices maintain close relationships with respective vendors, and have attained the highest levels of certifications in country for both reselling and services.
“For other partners not covered by these Integrated Practices, we are currently working with our global offering leads to identify the technology stacks that are in our 84 offerings – and which certifications are required within Australia and New Zealand, and which can be drawn upon from global resources,” Nayagam added.
“For example, our latest Workplace Offering has significant VMware components and we are currently running bootcamp training with them across our Build and Deliver business.”
Following a sizeable investment round internally, Nayagam said DXC has “really bet the farm” on vendors in a bid to leverage R&D capabilities, while also creating new routes to market across the technology spectrum.
“We don’t approach partners as a sub-contractor – many of our clients can’t differentiate us versus our partners because of that attitude,” Nayagam added.
