Secure Your Contact Center – May 2008
Contact centers process an immense amount of customer-sensitive information. As the primary point of contact with your customer, they are also the gateway to a wealth of confidential personal information and an attractive target for enterprising hackers and other security threats.

Managing the Security threat from within – March 2008
In late 2007 we commissioned independent research house, YouGov, to survey British employees who use digital technology to do their work to find out about their security practices both inside and outside the office.

Securing the Contact Centre – March 2008
Contact centres process an immense amount of customer-sensitive information. As the primary point of contact with customers, they are also the gateway to a wealth of confidential personal information and an attractive target for enterprising hackers and other security threats.

Be Proactive – Secure Mobility in the Workplace – March 2008
To be successful in a competitive business environment, organisations need to be more available and agile, and a mobile workforce plays a fundamental role in achieving this.

Seven Key Steps for Identity Management in a Unified Communications World – February 2008
Unified Communications enables people to use the most appropriate communication medium for the task at hand and to switch/merge channels as necessary. To do this in practice, organisations need to integrate systems, technologies and technology vendors to enable, for example, switching from email to voice, or IM to voice.

Eight Simple Steps to Effective Software Asset Management – January 2008
The need to comply with regulatory acts like Sarbanes-Oxley and ongoing legalisation initiatives to strengthen intellectual property protection has required many organisations to re-look their approach to software asset management.

The New 802.11n Wireless Standard – January 2008
It might not have the catchiest of titles, but the new 802.11n draft wireless networking standard has had its fair share of press recently. Indeed, you’d be hard pushed to miss the industry stories on wireless, the new 802.11n standard and how essential they are to your organisation’s plans to support its mobile workforce.

Contact centre salaries pricing SA out of the market – December 2007
South Africa may be heading for a contact centre industry disaster if rising salary inflation is not brought under control. Costs associated with staff retention are literally spiralling out of control to the point where South Africa may rapidly lose its status as a preferred offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) and call centre destination.

Multisourcing: The New Face of Outsourcing for Today’s Business World – December 2007
One popular new approach to outsourcing is “Multisourcing,” whereby certain functions are retained in-house, while others are outsourced to “best-in-class” Service Providers.

Unified Communications and Flexi-Work – October 2007
Perspectives from IT Managers and Users. Unified Communications enable flexible working patterns through the compression of spatial distances. Click on the link above to register to download this white paper.

Presence in the Contact Centre – August 2007
Presence is not a new concept in the contact centre – routing calls based on resource availability is an integral part of any sophisticated operation. This ensures the right calls get to the right agents.

Seven Steps to Successful Desktop Deployment – August 2007
Upgrading aging operating systems and applications holds many benefits for organisations – but only if completed successfully.

Global Services Philosophy – July 2007
This paper describes an approach to delivering services in the Information Technology domain. The purpose of the paper is to contextualise the hierarchical service layers to allow the reader to position their relevance, and understand how the Dimension Data services philosophy guides their adoption.

Addressing the PC Configuration Management Challenge – May 2007
This opinion piece addresses the major issues Gartner raised in their 2006 Magic Quadrant for PC Configuration Management. Dimension Data has also seen a number of challenges that organizations face in moving to a more comprehensive PC lifecycle configuration management strategy. Our Dynamic Desktop Deployment solution provides an answer.

Is your IVR past its expiry date? – May 2007
Self-service is a hot topic in contact centres today, with many organisations looking to take advantage of the promises of speech technologies. However, many of the factors that have helped to make speech work in its successful implementations can be applied to your traditional DTMF IVR.

Considerations for Designing Next-Generation Communication Infrastructures - November 2006
Making sense of controlled admission and adaptive security in a period of rapid industry development and change. This document investigates various options for implementing an adaptive, secure communications infrastructure, and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses.
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Dynamic Desktop Deployment - November 2006
This document provides an overview of Dimension Data’s Dynamic Desktop Deployment solution. It focuses on the approach, services provided and processes and technologies used to ensure the smooth deployment and ongoing management of desktop PC infrastructure using the Microsoft Windows operating system and networking environment.

An Introductory Guide to Speech Recognition - August 2006
Speech recognition is becoming increasingly prominent as a cost-cutting and value-enhancing solution for customer care and service enablement. This paper, by Datamonitor Analyst, Daniel Hong, provides an overview of the technology, the vendors and the market.

Mr Bell would have been pleased - June 2006
Perhaps there is something significant about centuries. It appears that each century man invents a means of communication that revolutionises the daily lives of people.

Can outsourcing lead to bad security? - Dwaine van Vuuren, July 2006
This whitepaper explores the history of security outbreaks and the role outsourcing suppliers can play in coping with the advent of increased risk. It also provides recommendations on the proposed content of an outsourcing contract and guidelines for the selection of a partner.
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Securing IP Telephony – Can you hear me now?
The rapid adoption of IP-based telephony has raised concerns about security vulnerabilities and threats have increased proportionally.

Evolution of Security Management - January 2006
Considerations for defining corporate strategies in managed services for security.
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The Virtualised Data Centre - Kris Domich, Dimension Data, November 2005
This document discusses Dimension Data’s view of the primary drivers of today’s data centre design methodology. The areas of virtualisation, consolidation, service-oriented architectures, and convergence make up the bulk of the business drivers behind data centre design and will continue to influence this process for the foreseeable future. This document will discuss those paradigms and how they may be leveraged to create operational efficiencies in the modern day (and future) data centre.

Collaboration in a Converged Communications Environment - November 2005
Dimension Data provides senior business and information technology managers with perspectives and insights on the rapidly evolving area of collaboration in today’s converged communications platform.
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Solutions Spotlight on CiscoMeetingPlace - November 2005
Dimension Data provides senior business and information technology managers with perspectives and insights on contemporary business communications applications and technology.
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Converged Communications White Paper - Ettienne Reinecke, Dimension Data, May 2005
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Converged Communications White Paper (Condensed) - Ettienne Reinecke, Dimension Data, May 2005
The journey to the converged network future.
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Self Service in the Contact Centre White Paper – extract from the Technology Environment chapter of the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2005
There is much controversy about using self-service. Some centres have promised customers they’ll never use self-service, others have forced their customers to interact with poorly-designed systems that are difficult to use. There is definitely a middle ground: self-service systems that automate suitable processes and meet customer needs.

Contact Centre Financials White Paper - extract from the Financial Rationale and Management chapter of the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2005.
The drive for service efficiency and cost containment in contact centres is evident in many of the key industry trends that have emerged in recent years. Although financial management controls are becoming increasingly evident within contact centres, there are still major gaps in capability in relation to the financial targeting and measurement of key financial indicators.

Agent Appraisal, Retention and Satisfaction White Paper – extract from the Organisation chapter of the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2005
Many contact centres claim staff are their key focus. With agent attrition and absenteeism constant challenges, it seems that efforts to improve staff satisfaction are not delivering the promised returns. Do organisations integrate and link their staff appraisal, satisfaction and retention policies and practices

Contact Centre Operating Models White Paper - extract from the Strategy and Development chapter of the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2005
Many organisations are exploring different operating and ownership models including hosting, consumption-based models and outsourcing. The attraction of these models is reduced capital expenditure and better capacity utilisation as organisations only pay for their usage.This paper is an and discusses current trends in different operating models being evaluated and adopted.

Outbound Campaign Intelligence White Paper - extract from the Performance Measures and Metrics chapter of the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2005.
With the increasing legislation to limit outbound telemarketing and telesales, the advent of “do not call” lists, and consumer frustration at poorly targeted campaigns, it seems that outbound is set to disappear. Yet, intelligent and measured use of outbound campaigns to customers can result in positive results for businesses and customers alike.

A Laymans Guide to the Impact of LCS – Gavin Hill, Dimension Data
I’ll be in the Himalayas or Timbuktu, but don’t worry, you can reach me: A layman’s guide to the impact of LCS on corporates.

Death, Taxes and Worms White Paper - Dwaine van Vuuren, March 2004
The characteristics of the MyDoom worm and how it sets the trend for future expectations and threats.

Multilayer Perimeter Security White Paper - Dwaine van Vuuren, October 2003
Dimension Data’s view of Perimeter Segmentation & Patch Management - introducing WormScout and other desktop strategies.

Intrusion Management Architecture White Paper - Dwaine van Vuuren, September 2003
Next Generation Intrusion Management.

Catalyst Projects White Paper – Menahem Fuchs, May 2003
iBOSS for IP VPN Service Fulfilment

Broadband Security Solution White Paper
Dimension Data offered a robust network traffic detection and prevention system that matched Korea Telecom's requirements exactly.

Telecommunications Fraud White Paper
The single biggest cause of revenue loss for telecommunications providers.

Deploying a Network Resource Management System – Calvin Menyennett, Dimension Data
This white paper outlines Dimension Data's perspective an approach to deploying a Network Resource Management

Natural Language Speech Recognition White Paper (Part 1)
Once the Holy Grail of call handling, speech recognition is now the business tool of the future. For ten years and more, speech recognition has played a teasing game with the hopes of businesses and their customers. Afflicted by a fatal combination of low recognition accuracy levels and high deployment costs, it seldom failed to disappoint, garnering an unfortunate reputation among much of its potential market. The promises of speech recognition, high-flown as they were, have stayed firmly on the ground. Until now.

Natural Language Speech Recognition White Paper (Part 2)
Speech recognition is a reality – and businesses are hearing the message loud and clear. The first article in this series explored the recent emergence of speech recognition as a mature, robust technology. Its benefits are compelling: for consumers, a highly attractive new way of communicating with business, and for businesses themselves, enhanced customer satisfaction and dramatic cost savings. Now we look in more detail at the market and business case for speech recognition, and how this exciting new technology is transforming the way enterprises communicate internally and talk to their customers.

Speaking of User Centred Design White Paper
Creating a speech application may seem like a totally different task to creating a web front end, but on the whole the central theme is the same: organisations that offer speech self-service to their users need to keep the user at the centre of their design. Creating robust technology and applications is important, but if users don’t like and don’t use the system, all that effort is wasted. Effective speech solutions rely on a thorough understanding of what users are trying to accomplish and how to create engaging dialogue that helps them achieve their objectives.