Comms Dealer

On-premise system sales at Nimans continue to gain momentum, up 10% year-on-year against an industry decline of 3% in the sub-100 extension segment.

"Everyone is aware that the impact of the cloud and an uncertain economic outlook is biting into the traditional comms space - but not at Nimans," said Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales.

"As an industry we shouldn't get too obsessed by the cloud verses on-premise scenario. The mindset around deployment rather than functionality and solution sales needs rebalancing.

"Hence we have a strong PBX portfolio, our own hosted offering and also hybrid solutions."

Channel Telecom has introduced one-click instant access to Ethernet pricing from multiple carriers following the launch of OPTIC (One Portal To Intelligent Costing).

Clifford Norton, MD, stated: "The portal provides options from 10/100 through to 1,000/1,000 simultaneously which means that a price request needs only to be run once as opposed to the industry standard all too many of us have become used to."

Three men have been arrested in connection with a big data breach at mobile network Three.

Michael Hack, Senior Vice President of EMEA Operations, Ipswitch, commented: "The Three data breach demonstrates that perimeter defences are not enough.  Any organisation that handles customer data is at risk from insider threats. 

"The way that files are managed, monitored and shared is key.  An authorised login will enable someone with malicious intent to download data to a disc or USB key, unless there are safeguards built in to the infrastructure that flag this movement of data.
 
"Under new proposed EU data protection law (GDPR) fines for this kind of breach are set to increase drastically for private sector organisations to up to 4% of global turnover.

"Organisations can't take chances when it comes to IT security and must make sure critical information is kept safe. By automating, managing and controlling all file transfers from a central point of control, employees can easily send and share files using IT approved methods.

"The IT department also gains complete control over activity. It's no longer good enough just to have the right policies in place for secure data transfer, an organisation must ensure it has the right file transfer technologies, security systems, processes, and most importantly, staff training."

NTA's fourth annual karting event staged at Lakeside Karting Centre in Essex on November 16th also put partners on track for two new initiatives launched by the company - a partner incentive scheme and new bundled £4.75 per seat licence fee including 5,000 free minutes to 01, 02 and 03 numbers and UK mobile networks.

Justin Blaine, Channel Sales Manager, commented: "We have successfully sold against the per seat license fee for many years and pushed our flexible simultaneous calls model to the industry. However, we have listened to our partners who asked us for a bundled option.

"Adding the new per seat licence model to our existing portfolio, running the two models in parallel, is our response."

Blaine also lifted the lid on NTA's latest incentive scheme and explained that 'easily achievable' targets will ensure that a number of winning resellers will fly to Cyprus in May 2017 and stay in a 5-star hotel with activities such as spa days, golf and sailing all included.

The incentive runs from 1st December until 30th April 2017.

NG Bailey's IT Services division witnessed sales growth of 7.8% for the first half of 2016 (March to October), reflecting its successes in securing more than £23m worth of new contracts for its structured cabling, electronic security and DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems) services.

The company has won more than 30 new IT contracts since February and experienced organic growth through contract extensions, bringing sales in the 2016-2017 financial year to £38.8m so far, up nearly 8% on the same period last year.

Bob Dunnett, MD, NG Bailey's IT Services division, said: "Our focus on positioning ourselves to deliver technical solutions in response to increasingly complex and demanding project briefs is paying great dividends.

"Clients are increasingly realising the benefits of partnering with suppliers like NG Bailey that can deliver tailored and cost-effective solutions.

"The emergence of new technologies has enormous potential to change the way buildings are designed, managed and used.

"We've already seen examples of this in IP security and smart buildings and expect to see further disruption to companies as the IoT and smart cities shake up the market."

NG Bailey IT Services is a subsidiary of NG Bailey group, the independent engineering, IT and facilities services business.

Group results in 2015-2016 showed it tripled operating profit over the previous year to £6m, and increased sales by 12% to £408m.

Adopting new technologies at an excessive rate without a concrete strategy can disrupt the everyday working functions of a business, causing more harm than good, warned Andrew Smith, Technical Director at Annodata.

"There's a lot of pressure for organisations to keep up with the rapid pace of the digital economy," he said.

"Digital transformation is often held up as a nirvana as we hear stories of new digital challengers displacing traditional incumbents.

"However, it can often be difficult for organisations to know where to start on their path to digital transformation.

Organisations must not feel pressured to overhaul everything in their business at once on the path to digital transformation.

"Care must be taken to ensure that the technology follows the strategy and not the other way around.

"There are great gains to be had by working with multi-skilled ICT providers. Doing so will deliver true value to businesses, allowing them to react to changing requirements of today's digital world."

Former Head of Professional Services at Cobweb Chris Hoard has joined Westcoast as Head of Cloud Professional Services, a newly created role.

Mark Davies, Cloud Services Director, said: "Chris is an industry stalwart and his brief is to work closely with our partners to supplement and enhance their cloud-based skills, capabilities and offerings."

Hoard added: "Westcoast is the first distie to hit 100,000 CSP seats and I can't wait to start helping the company to grow even faster."

Intelisys Global is gearing for the UK roll out of its Super9 cloud training programme next June.

Two three-day courses will focus on enabling its Global Sales Partners to move from consultative selling towards what the company claims is a 'new cloud sales methodology'.

Delivered as part of the Intelisys Cloud Services University, the programme is targeted at telecoms agents with a recurring revenue model and VARs wanting to further develop their cloud business.

The course is followed by a monthly peer group component and collaboration with Intelisys' Global Cloud & Complex Bids team.

"With quarterly global cloud revenues fast approaching £5.5bn, getting cloud sales strategies right has clearly never been more important for the channel," said Stephen Hackett, Intelisys Global's lead in the UK.

Comms Dealer is sad to announce the sudden death of Jabra UK&I's Corporate Account Manager Fahad Quadri.

He joined Jabra in January 2015 as Team Leader for the newly created Inside Sales Team. He showed great promise and commitment from the very start and was quickly promoted to Corporate Account Manager within his first 8 months at the headset vendor.

Prior to joining Jabra Fahad worked at Outbound, Jabra's partner agency where the later part of tenure was spent working directly with Jabra channel partners to maintain and grow their audio device customer base.

Steven Whitehead, Jabra Corporate Account Director and Fahad's manager commented: "Fahad was an exceptional individual, an awesome colleague and a beautiful human being that I know will be missed tremendously by friends, colleagues and clients across the world."

Nigel Dunn, Jabra UK&I Managing Director echoed Steven's sentiments by saying: "Fahad was one of the most exceptional people I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with. One of our brightest stars has left us far, far too early. Our hearts go out to his family who adored him."

A charitable fund has been created by Fahad's family to raise money in his memory. For details of this please contact Jabra UK&I.

Pictured: Fahad (second from the left) accepting Jabra's award for Best End-Point Device at the recent Comms National Awards.

London Data centre co-location specialist Volta has seen a two or three-fold jump in enquiries since the Brexit announcement.

Jon Arnold, Managing Director, told IT Europa: "No-one is sure what will happen, so companies are looking at hosting in London along with a second site in Europe.

"I can understand why businesses would choose to host their IT infrastructure within a London data centre due to the growing uncertainty around EU data regulations."

Over the past 12 months Volta has seen fast growth and due to demand is now opening a new floor in its Great Sutton Street facility. This expansion will add an extra 11,000 square feet of space, more than 400 racks, and a further 1.5 Megawatts of power to customers on that floor. It has just announced the opening of its third floor there.

Arnold sees a particular advantage in a location 15 minutes from the City and having the power capacity for growth, which has proved a limiting factor in the area in recent years. The focus on location matters, he says, and is not impressed by data centres in Slough claiming to be London-based.

It is not just the financial services industry driving the growth, however: "We are seeing a particular boom in use by media companies," Arnold added.

He has just forged links with LuxConnect in Luxembourg connecting two strategically important communication hubs in Europe. The firm has four multi-Tier (Tier II, III & IV) data centres in the Grand Duchy certified by the Uptime Institute. Several global companies from finance, entertainment and online commerce are hosted at their facilities.

LuxConnect has been recognised for its exclusive use of green electricity sourced from sustainable sources and the subsequent low carbon footprint of its facilities. "Their data centres provide a stable environment for business critical hosting with low latency connections to the major European Internet hubs," said Arnold.

Carriers present in both data centres include BT, Level 3, Cogent, Verizon and Colt. Both companies have completed due diligence on each other's facilities which can now be extended to existing and new clients and both have fitted out space available ready for early occupancy.

"Luxembourg and London are fully complementary," said LuxConnect CEO Roger Lampach. "Volta will provide a useful offering to our partners looking for space for their clients in London."