ITWire

Outlining the plans and vision for the Australian company today at the Kickstart vendor and IT media forum on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Steve Blunt, executive general manager of unified communications solutions, NEC Australia, said priorities for NEC this year included growing the company’s  IT solutions development business, particularly customer experience and mobility solutions, as well as increasing vendor partnerships to expand its multi-vendor communications and IT solutions and services capabilities to manage complex ICT environments.

“NEC Australia has a strong heritage in managing communications technologies, so with our recent shift to IT services, our greater focus on meeting customer needs throughout their business lifecycles and the enhancement of our partner ecosystems delivering multi-vendor capabilities, NEC Australia will continue to expand services offerings that support our customer’s business outcomes.”

According to Blunt, Australian businesses are demanding more tailored ICT solutions to deliver and support their unique business requirements, in a range of business environments.

“With increasing take-up and greater demand for individualised business applications, NEC Australia has identified this as a focus area in the market and is investing heavily into its applications development services.”

Blunt said that NEC Australia was also investing in customer experience solutions, specifically developing “innovative digital marketing solutions to help customers communicate aligned and timely messages to staff and customers and address concerns about security or management of individuals with leading edge identity management solutions.”

“Continued downward pressures on IT budgets are forcing CIOs to reconsider their IT funding mix from Capex to Opex annuity purchasing models and investigating outsourcing and offshoring options.  This move creates opportunities for NEC Australia to develop innovative responses that are aligned with these changing needs,” Blunt added.

Blunt also said that expanding multi-vendor capabilities was NEC Australia’s other key growth objective in 2013, including:

•    Becoming a member of the Authorised Apple Systems Integrator community, offering the capability to deliver enterprise solutions with mobile functionality using Apple products

•    Expanded partnership with Microsoft, which already included IT solutions capability across the full Microsoft stack to include Microsoft Lync integration capability

•    Building on the global Cisco/NEC alliance locally with Cisco Gold Partner certification in Australia.