Cisco, Dimension Data Announce Joint Innovation Project

Cisco and longtime partner Dimension Data on Wednesday announced a multiyear partnership that includes collaboration around technologies such as 5G, internet of things (IoT) and blockchain, with the goal of creating a framework and solutions designed to help solve business challenges.

The two companies will leverage Cisco’s global network of co-innovation centers – there are a dozen worldwide – to innovate beyond traditional products to solve business and operational challenges. This is a strategy will allow both companies drive more ambitious projects and outcomes. The news coincides with the anticipated completed merger of NTT Corp.’s five subsidiaries, including Dimension Data, into a single provider of IT services.

Dimension Data’s Ettienne Reinecke

“This partnership means we’re in a stronger position to research, test and develop new offerings at a speed beyond the traditional market cycle,” said Ettienne Reinecke, chief technology officer, Dimension Data. “By creating a deeper collaboration environment, we will share and leverage our intellectual property, including products and code, allowing us to move faster with a focus on applied innovation to challenge the ‘art of the possible,’ which will result in some exciting innovations for our clients.”

“Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it requires diverse skillsets and multiple points of view,”  added Cisco CTO Dave Ward. “Co-innovation as a formal, structured process with our ecosystem, including partners and customers, is part of our foundation simply because the market demands it. It’s a way to speed the innovation, allowing us to move at the speed of digital and adopt startup methodologies to bring products and solutions into being.”

Cisco and Dimension Data launched Connected Conservation in 2015 to protect wildlife heritage, and more specifically to stop the poaching of rhinos in South Africa, through technology. The partners will expand the Connected Conservation effort, leveraging new sophisticated solutions from the new joint innovation project.