Ricoh increases IT services play in 2016
Imaging and technology company, Ricoh, will be focusing strongly on its IT services division in 2016, according to its IT services general manager, Matt Dixon.
Dixon was speaking in Sydney as part of imagineIT – a new business technology information series that delivers insight from industry experts and Ricoh solution specialists.
Over the past few years, the company was majorly involved with acquisitions, having acquired businesses such as IMC Communications and Print Solutions Group. Going forward, he said the main focus will be on providing IT services.
“We want to simplify the technology experience for our partners, so the capabilities Ricoh is now bringing to the table is also around IT services. This is an important diversification strategy for Ricoh here in Australia and globally.
“It is a simplified approach, with us managing a lot of the complexity around it. For some of our customers, we are the IT departments for them and for some others, our partners do that for them,” he said.
According to Dixon, on a global scale, there is a gap between the large service provider vendors and Australian integrators, which has provided Ricoh a niche to play in.
“There’s a gap there and an opportunity for us to offer solutions for both enterprise and SME. We’ve got more than 100 dedicated IT services people now and it enables us to provide a broad range of technical capabilities to the market.”
Dixon said there are three major streams in engaging with the company – managed IT services, professional and projects services, and procurement. He claimed its recently launched Cloud-based services has been slow to market, but will be a major focus moving forward.
“We’ve hired some capable people around that area and we’ve also built a Cloud of our own that we’re hosting a lot of our customers on. We’re offering new value to the market and we’re excited about the direction we’re working towards and the partnerships we’ve made.”
The company also expects to ramp up its operations in Adelaide this year.
“The move will set us up across the country and enable us to be agile and operate with a local mentality to service our customers across Australia,” he added.
Cisco Systems INSBU principal engineer, Joe Onisick, also took to stage at imagineIT. Onisick spoke about the concept of data – storing it, analysing it and transporting it.
“Data doesn’t matter – we are in the IT industry. What actually matters is the information. And information is what users care about. Data is simply self-stored on disk and is non-usable in its own format,” he mentioned.
“So the focus for businesses is to better enable customers to use information to drive their businesses. In doing that, the applications themselves are changing in terms of how users are using them. The demands users have from the services they use have changed the way IT delivery works.”
According to Onisick, IT data grows 25 per cent YoY, so the challenge lies in handling all that data and how businesses process it.
“Are you going to do virtualised workloads or physical workloads? Are you going to use a public Cloud or private Cloud, or both? These are things that need to be addressed and we need to be adaptable in IT because things are changing rapidly.”
Onisick said to get around this challenge, businesses should map out their plans on moving forward and work towards automation.
“It will reduce the risk of human error, increase the speed and agility of solutions, and do it in an open fashion with security embedded in the delivery of these systems because it can no longer be an afterthought,” he added.
