Goodbye Dimension Data

One of South Africa’s biggest IT firms — Dimension Data — will be waving its 40-year-old name goodbye and getting renamed to NTT Data from 1 April 2024.
The company confirmed the impending name change to MyBroadband after an interview by TechCentral with NTT Group CEO Alan Turnley-Jones.
The Japanese telecoms company acquired the entire Dimension Data in 2010. Before its buyout, it was the largest JSE-listed technology company.
Since 2019, Dimension Data has been part of the group’s NTT Ltd. division.
The name change forms part of the merger of NTT Ltd. and NTT Data into a single entity, which will simply be known as NTT Data.
The company will be headed by the current CEO of NTT Ltd., Abhijit Dubey.
The latter’s branding will gradually replace Dimension Data’s at its offices over the next few months.
Dimension Data was founded in 1983 and listed on the JSE in 1987.
In the years that followed, it made a name for itself in the local industry and was appointed as the official distributor for Cisco Systems in 1991.
It currently provides IT products and services for data centres, cybersecurity, network integration, and converged communications.
Legal battle with former CEO
The branding change comes after legal challenges against six former Dimension Data executives in the past few months over the questionable 2019 sale of the company’s The Campus headquarters in Johannesburg.
Among them, is former global chief executive officer Jason Goodall, who was sued by NTT Ltd. in the UK and South Africa in January 2023.
The company has alleged he had a secret financial interest in the deal, which was meant to improve Dimension Data’s Black Economic Empowerment rating.
Goodall allegedly approved the sale at “significantly less” value to a majority black women-owned fund, Identity Fund Managers, in which he had either already invested or planned to invest.
“Goodall and the other executives’ conduct in arranging and acquiring their interests in the Identity Fund and concealing and failing to disclose those interests amounts to gross misconduct involving dishonesty,” NTT’s lawyers said in their UK court filing.