E-Business
ICT Decision Makers Courting Trouble by Ignoring Internal Barriers to UCC
ICT decision-makers who ignore internal barriers to the adoption of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) are putting their company at a serious disadvantage.
That’s because the pace of change in the UCC market is heating up as enterprises are gearing up to adopt many UCC applications, despite depressed economies.
This news comes on the back of new UCC research released today by Dimension Data.
Earlier this year, Dimension Data commissioned research firm Ovum to conduct a global UCC survey across Australia, Asia, the USA, Europe, and South Africa.
Over 1 320 enterprise ICT decision-makers and 1 390 employees in a broad spectrum of industry verticals in 18 countries were interviewed.
The results of Dimension Data 2013 Global UCC Study were compared to primary research undertaken for Dimension Data in 2007, before the era of the smartphone, which looked at decision-maker and employee attitudes towards and perceptions of UC; current and future adoption patterns; and perceived benefits.
Tony Munro, Solutions executive: Dimension Data Africa said: “We wanted to look back at our previous research into enterprise adoption of UCC to see how the market has changed. The dramatic shifts which have occurred since 2007 are compelling.”
In 2007, only 35% of the large companies surveyed had deployed IP telephony, with companies in some geographies (in particular developing markets) reporting IP telephony (IPT) penetration rates in the low teens.
This is now over 75%, a dramatic increase considering the maturity of the PBX market and the reluctance of many decision-makers to replace equipment that is otherwise in working order.
In 2007, aside from cost, service and solutions reliability was considered a major inhibitor to investment, but today organisational and decision-making challenges present the biggest barriers. Little noise was made in the past about UCC enabling business process improvement.
Because smart devices had yet to come onto the market, they did not factor in any way in the 2007 research. Today these are major subjects of discussion, planning and management in all enterprise ICT organisations.
In 2007, just over 25% of respondents outsourced any aspect of PBX maintenance and management, and over 60% had no plans whatsoever to ever outsource any aspect of corporate telephony. In this latest research, respondents indicated that they currently benefit from some form of outsourced (managed) service in half of all cases, and over 70% state that they will seriously consider a managed delivery option (premise-based or cloud) in the next two years.
“IPT is now fully mainstream and mature; there are more delivery and management options than ever for organisations seeking flexibility when investing in critical UCC applications; employee-centric strategies are taking hold; enterprise mobility is more important than ever; and there is a new appreciation of the business process improvements which UCC can support,” added Munro.
On the downside, while the research results indicate that enterprises across the globe are evaluating and implementing UCC strategies and technologies with ardour, and seriously considering new deployment models at the level of the single enterprise, justifying and obtaining stakeholder support for a UCC business case may remain a challenge.
“Enterprises that don’t have – or have plans – to adopt UCC technologies, are increasingly finding themselves in a minority,” Munro said.
Transcorp Hotels Plc has delivered a stellar performance in the first half of 2025, recording a 60% year-on-year surge in revenue to ₦47.57 billion, up from ₦29.72 billion in H1 2024. Gross profit climbed 71% to ₦36.21 billion, maintaining a strong 76% margin despite inflation and operational headwinds.
The hospitality giant, a subsidiary of Transnational Corporation Plc, also announced an interim dividend payout of ₦1.024 billion — offering ₦0.10 per 50 kobo ordinary share to shareholders.
In a bold move, the company unveiled Nigeria’s largest corporate venue — the 5,000-seat Transcorp Centre — staking its claim as the new leader in event hospitality. Chairman Emmanuel Nnorom described the results as proof of Transcorp Hotels’ transformative strategies and unwavering investor commitment. MD/CEO Uzo Oshogwe attributed the success to relentless execution and a resilient business model.
Transcorp Hotels, renowned for iconic assets like Transcorp Hilton Abuja and its digital platform Aura, says it isn’t just leading Nigeria’s hospitality sector — it’s redefining excellence across Africa.
Chinese “threat actors” have hacked Microsoft’s SharePoint document software servers and targeted the data of the businesses using it, the firm has said.
China state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon as well as China-based Storm-2603 were said to have “exploited vulnerabilities” in on-premises SharePoint servers, the kind used by firms, but not in its cloud-based service.
The US tech giant has released security updates in response and has advised all on-premises SharePoint server customers to install them.
“Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing,” Microsoft said in a statement.
The firm said it had “high confidence” the hackers would continue to target systems which have not installed its security updates.
It added that it would update its website blog with more information as its investigation continues.
Microsoft said it had observed attacks in which hackers had sent a request to a SharePoint server “enabling the theft of the key material by threat actors”.
Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting firm, a division of Google Cloud, told reporter, it was “aware of several victims in several different sectors across a number of global geographies”.
Carmakal said it appeared that governments and businesses that use SharePoint on their sites were the primary target.
A number of adversaries who stole material encoded by cryptography were then able to regain ongoing access to the victims’ SharePoint data, he said.
“This was exploited in a very broad way, very opportunistically before a patch was made available. That’s why this is significant,” Carmakal said.
Carmakal said the “China-nexus actor” was deploying techniques similar to previous campaigns associated with Beijing.
Microsoft said Linen Typhoon had “focused on stealing intellectual property, primarily targeting organizations related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years.
It added that Violet Typhoon had been “dedicated to espionage”, primarily targeting former government and military staff, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, higher education, the media, the financial sector and the health sector in the US, Europe, and East Asia.
Meanwhile, Storm-2603 was “assessed with medium confidence to be a China-based threat actor”.
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has issued a public warning that it is not associated with NINcard.com.
According to the commission, the website has been circulating online to offer services for Nigerians seeking National Identification Number (NIN) services.
NIMC, in a post on its official X account on Wednesday, said, “NINcard.com is not in anyway affiliated to NIMC. Stay vigilant!”
The warning was accompanied by screenshots of fake payment receipts and OTP request pages from the website, both of which were boldly stamped “FAKE” by NIMC to alert the public.
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