Comms Dealer

Datafox has ratcheted up its campaign to ensure that telecoms companies receive the tax relief they are owed under the Government's R&D scheme.

"Telecoms companies and resellers are missing out on significant amounts of available tax relief and tax credits owed to them by HMRC for work carried out that qualifies as R&D," said Jonathan Leefield, Director of Datafox.

The R&D scheme is the single largest support for UK business and was developed to encourage UK businesses that carry out R&D as part of their strategy to remain innovative and competitive.

"We are increasingly discovering new opportunities for businesses within the telecoms industry to claim R&D tax relief they simply aren't aware they can claim on," added Leefield.

"The perception seems to remain that R&D must involve a form of lab research. However, the reality is very different. For example, many companies have pursued successful claims for software development such as developing an internal CRM system, even where this development is not their core business."

Datafox's team has successfully claimed between £35k and £950k for clients with average claims this year totalling approximately £100k.

"Companies can only claim on their previous two years filed accounts, so delays in claiming means businesses could potentially miss out on tens, if not, hundreds of thousands of pounds," added Leefield.

Many telecoms firms fall under HMRC's small business scheme (less than 500 employees) and will see a return of 26% of relevant costs if their accounts show a profit (33.35% if loss-making). Large companies can claim 8.8% tax relief.

Leefield noted that Datafox's team has handled many claims within the telecoms industry in areas such as software development and bespoke software adjustments, billing platforms, customer dashboard and client interfaces, cloud technologies, next generation networks, cyber security, data trafficking and data centre management, along with technology updates for compliance.

To help comms companies make successful R&D claims Datafox has also launched a new partner programme for dealers and resellers including referral opportunities.

Leefield added: "We offer telecoms dealers an opportunity to refer business for R&D claims and add important revenue streams to their existing suite of services, with Datafox taking care of all the work preparing and submitting the claims."

"So far, our team has managed over 300 successful claims in across range of industries and sectors."

www.data-fox.com 

The indirect channel units at BT and EE have been integrated to create a 100-strong business operation led by a new executive leadership team with Director Steve Rathborne at the helm.

The integrated sales, commercial and service division will deliver fixed and mobile network propositions to SMEs, corporates and the public sector via its growing network of 40-plus reseller partners.

Prior to heading up the BT Business Partner Channel Rathborne held international and UK leadership roles across sales, product and service management, most recently Sales Director for Small and Medium Enterprises at BT, leading a 1,200 person sales team across direct and indirect channels.

Joining Rathborne is George Sebastian as GM Partner Sales. He was formerly EE's Head of Channel and will be focused on building an integrated sales team to collaborate with BT's channel partners.

Also joining from EE is Nigel Dean, previously the Head of Indirect Business Sales. As GM Business Development, he will lead several initiatives to build new business across the channel.

Liz King becomes GM of Partner Experience and will focus on leading the end-to-end lifecycle experience for BT's indirect partners and customers.

Lastly, Andy Kelly becomes Head of Transformation and will lead on the development of future strategy and the execution of the transformation plan.

BT will announce more details about its channel strategy and specific partner benefits in due course.

Pressure applied by Ofcom on BT to bring more independence to its Openreach division has prompted the telco to appoint Mike McTighe (pictured) as the first Chairman of its local fixed network business.

He brings substantial regulatory experience having been an Ofcom board member for eight years between 2007 to 2015.

BT has pledged to appoint additional independent members to the new Openreach board which will operate from early 2017 and be accountable for setting the strategy and overseeing and managing the performance of Openreach, working with CEO Clive Selley and his management team.

BT Chairman Sir Michael Rake said: "I remain hopeful that this significant move by BT can help to underpin a sustainable, proportionate and fair regulatory settlement that is in the interests of the whole country."

McTighe added: "It is clear that Openreach needs to up its game on service and regain the trust of the people we serve in the industry and across the UK. Clive is making great progress on both fronts and I look forward to working with him to ensure the UK has the best possible digital infrastructure.

"I also look forward to meeting with the many service providers who rely on Openreach services or who are keen to use its ducts and poles to build their own networks."

Hats off to Gamma for scooping the Business of the Year Award at this year's Thames Valley Business Magazine Awards, held on 17th November at the Madjeski Stadium in Reading and hosted by Gyles Brandreth.

Pam Williams, HR Director at Gamma, said: "We are fully committed to the Best Companies' model of employee engagement and everyone works hard to continuously improve employee engagement. We especially focus on factors such as personal growth and giving back to the community.

"Gamma has a wonderful, positive culture where 'anything is possible'. Our managers, with support from the HR team, do a great job in recruiting people who believe in Gamma's culture and values."

Chess's employment policies and people management ethos has been recognised in the Employer of the Year category at the 2016/17 European Business Awards.

The company has been awarded the National Champion Certificate for its ability to inspire and motivate its 500-strong workforce, while supporting their professional and personal growth.

Chess Chief Exec' David Pollock said: "The European Business Awards are recognised as the showcase for Europe's most dynamic companies, and we're proud to be recognised at this level."

Pollock credits much of Chess's success in this area to the firm's Engage App which provides information on company news, benefits, 1-2-1 forms, the Gimme 5 chip reward scheme, surveys and notifications etc.

ZEN INTERNET has announced a multi-million pound partnership with Chinese networking giant Huawei to roll out a new Next Generation Network across the UK.

Announcing the news at Zen’s annual partner conference at the Ham Yard 10 pin bowling hotel in London on November 24th, CEO Richard Tang told Zen resellers and dealers: "This continues our journey from an ISP to a carrier. This is great news for the channel and great news for the industry.\"

Named Project Plexus, Zen’s major network investment will see its number of Points of Presence (PoPs) in BT exchanges rise from 270 to over 400 in the next few months, and expand Zen’s robust, cost-effective on-net reach to well over 500,000 postcodes, covering nearly every corner of the UK.

Jon Bauer, Zen’s Technical Director for Network and Infrastructure, said: "We chose Huawei because it has a wealth of experience in building networks and offers the right technology to match our ambitions. With Huawei we’re creating a carrier-grade network that will, for channel partners, mean a more dynamic and flexible portfolio of products and services, alongside even greater resilience and performance.\"

"For channel partners it means a network that will, with Huawei equipment at its core, make their businesses more competitive now and in the future. It means we will be able to grow capacity more cheaply and quickly than our competitors, adding extra services and emerging technologies to our portfolio whenever the demand arises. In the short term it will mean major performance efficiencies, much better fault tolerance and more cost-effective solutions.\"

Included among those channel services will be: hosted VoIP in partnership with Vanilla IP (giving resellers the chance to rebrand the Uboss management platform); 500Mbps and 1Gbps Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC); G.fast (ultra-fast broadband over copper from the cabinet) from Jan 17; a 25-day turnaround service for wireless IGb wireless Ethernet in association with Metronet;  traditional calls and lines alongside connectivity and provisioning management specialist Imperatives;  100mg Ethernet in London covering 20,000 postcodes(which Zen claims will be 35% cheaper than alternative);  and a 3G mobile broadband back up service.

Ready to roll: Picture shows (left to right) Steve Warburton, Zen
Managing Director Channel Partners; Zen CEO Richard Tang; and
Shiweiliang, UK Managing Director Huawei - Photo supplied by Simon Wright Photography

Daisy has bagged Alternative Networks in a £165.3m cash deal in a move that builds on Daisy's acquisitions of Damovo and Phoenix IT in the managed services space. The acquisition also bolsters Daisy's mobile and fixed line portfolios. Daisy CEO Neil Muller said: "Alternative Networks is one of the largest independent providers of IT managed services and B2B communications in the UK and is a strong strategic fit with the Daisy Group.

"Having respected Alternative Networks for many years, we look forward to further enhancing our capability and scale across our chosen markets and we believe the combined group will be well positioned to increase its market share further and to continue to be the provider of choice for its customers and partners." 

Alternative Networks Chairman James Murray added: "Today, Alternative Networks faces rising demand from customers to procure, manage and support the complete chain of enterprise IT and communication solutions.

"The combination with Daisy will ensure that the company is best placed to capitalise on future growth opportunities. In particular, the strong complementarity and strategic fit will ensure our competitiveness and benefit our customers through access to a broader range of unified communications solutions."

Exponential-e has introduced a low-cost Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) connection offer available on its real-time pricing tool for channel partners, CloudPort.

Users also benefit from use of the automated platform for the pricing and ordering of cloud and networking services.

With a team of developers constantly updating the portal, channel partners of Exponential-e have access to live quotation tracking that delivers price protection to its customers.

John Kyrillou, Sales Director, Exponential-e, said: "Using the platform to create, price and order solutions tailored to meet their customer's needs, our channel partners are empowered to drive more business opportunities."

Exponential-e has unveiled its new SD-WAN offering to help organisations stay in control of their IT operations and drive performance.

Offered through Cloudnet, Exponential-e's self-service platform connects enterprises to business applications from wherever they are enabling organisations to utilise SD-WAN to separate the data and control layer into two parts.

This allows businesses to centrally assign and manage application-aware policies across sites to secure and control all network traffic. Organisations will also be able to turn bandwidth up - and down - in real time with no time delays.

"In today's digital world where business agility is critical, businesses can no longer afford to continue operating with WAN deployments that are isolated from the Cloud," said Chris Christou, director of engineering at Exponential-e.

"With Gartner predicting 30 per cent of enterprises will have deployed SD-WAN in their branches by the end of 2019 - up from less than one per cent in 2015 - gone are the days of traditional WAN-as-a-bottleneck mentality. Organisations are clearly ready to adopt agile, secure, flexible and scalable WAN solutions that are available at the drop a hat."

The UC team at Exertis has notched up record conferencing sales over the past year following a programme of partner education designed to help resellers attach more conferencing solutions to existing and new UC system installations.

Demand for all kinds of conferencing solutions, from traditional audio conferencing to high end video conferencing and collaboration, reflects the estimations of industry analysts who forecast the global video conferencing market to grow to over $6bn by 2020.

Michael Thompson, Head of UC Devices, said: "Conferencing is at the heart of modern UC&C solutions. It has to be the centrepiece of any enterprise strategy and there is a growing need to integrate audio and video conferencing devices into the overall communications solution."

Key growth areas include a number of vertical markets including education, where distance or web based learning adopt video as part of the delivery mechanism; healthcare for remote patient monitoring and consultation and media industries where the streaming of interactive events is in ever increasing demand.

Exertis has also witnessed increasing demand for a new breed of products for remote meetings, the personal speaker phone, a portable unit designed for mobile workers who need to attend online meetings 'on the go'.