Comms Dealer

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and UK charity Esmée Fairbairn Foundation have invested in Auticon, a social enterprise that exclusively hires IT consultants on the autism spectrum. Auticon was founded in Germany in 2011 where more than 70 autistic IT consultants have permanent employment, with over one third of the DAX on boarded as customers.

Auticon launched its UK office in spring 2016 and the investment will enable it to recruit autistic candidates from across the country.

The investment also offers Auticon a chance to promote social change in attitudes towards autism and employment.

Autistic adults often have extraordinary cognitive abilities, yet many find it difficult to secure or maintain mainstream employment.

Auticon's Group CEO Kurt Schöffer said: "We have received hundreds of applications from adults on the autism spectrum across the UK, France and Germany, and hope this new investment will enable us to see many more.

Auticon's UK CEO, Ray Coyle, added: "It is great to see such renowned British investors provide the backing to enable us to build our business in the UK, based on the successful model that has been proven in the German and French markets. This will enable many more companies in the UK to tap into the strengths of autistic adults."

Sir Richard Branson said: "Employment rates among autistic adults are a hugely challenging social issue in the UK and globally. Helping companies and employees overcome these hurdles is crucial if we're to enable autistic persons to use their unique skills successfully in the job market."

In the UK, only 15% of autistic adults are in full time employment, despite 79% of people with autism on out of work benefits wanting to work; 43% of those who have worked have left or lost a job because of their autism.

Reading-based Nuvola Distribution's revamped website has been designed to reflect the strategic changes within the business since it was created out of Nuage Communications in 2013.

Channel focused Nuvola specialises in UC, VoIP, contact centres, WLAN, Skype for Business and mobility, working with vendor partners such as Alcatel Lucent Enterprise, ShoreTel, Red Box Recorders and Talari.

"We have evolved to provide partners with consultancy, installation, support, maintenance and training," said Nuvola CEO Michael Lloyd.

"We have also developed our own UC cloud hosted product, called Nuvem, a loyalty programme and a finance programme.

"With all these changes, it was time to launch a new website."

Softcat's full year results to July show profits up 17.5% to £120.7m (2015: £102.8m), and gross profit margin up 0.8% pts to 18.0% (2015:, 17.2%), although gross profit includes the benefit of a one-off procurement saving of £3.4m (2015: nil).

Customer numbers were up 7.5% on prior year (2015: 6.5%) as average headcount rose 21%, driven by record sales and service staff recruitment, assisted by the launch of a Glasgow operation.

Martin Hellawell, Softcat CEO commented: "We are pleased to report continued strong organic growth at Softcat with 12.8% revenue growth, 17.5% growth in gross profit and 15.2% growth in adjusted operating profit, achieved against a backdrop of very modest growth in the UK economy which has equally been reflected in the IT market."

Hewlett Packard Enterprise says that FY 2016 revenue will grow at 1%-2% yr/yr.

President and CEO Meg Whitman, at HPE's 2016 Securities Analyst Meeting, provided a strategy update and the financial outlook for fiscal year 2017.

"Hewlett Packard Enterprise is in a strong position. We have a clear strategy, aligned to the market opportunity, and will be more focused than ever on how we innovate in our business models, our products, our solutions and our go-to-market."

She reiterated HPE's vision of being the industry's top provider of hybrid IT, built on the secure, next generation, software-defined infrastructure that will run customers' data centres today, bridge them to multi-cloud environments tomorrow, and power the emerging Intelligent Edge that will run campus, branch and Industrial IoT applications for decades to come.

Following a number of strategic portfolio moves, including the spin-offs and mergers of the Enterprise Services and Software businesses, the future HPE will have the right assets to achieve this vision, including core software and services capabilities that differentiate HPE from its competitors and deliver the company's infrastructure solutions, she says.

Looking at a total $250bn opportunity, HPE sees Data Centre and Cloud representing a $100 billion opportunity growing at 1-2% CAGR, with areas of high growth like High Performance Compute, Private Cloud, all-flash arrays and hyperconverged.

Next is what it calls "The Intelligent Edge", including the $23bn campus and branch market, growing at 2-4% each year, and a new category called Converged Infrastructure for the Edge, which will power the emerging $14bn market of Industrial IoT applications, growing at around 15% per year.

Services, which represents a $116bn opportunity growing at 3-4% each year, driven by growing customer needs for consulting and support across hybrid infrastructure and demand for flexible IT consumption models.

An order from Storm Technologies has taken distributor Westcoast past the 100,000 CSP seat milestone in the UK.

Westcoast was appointed as a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider in 2015.

Mark Davies Westcoast's Cloud Services Director, said: "That says a lot given we only started accelerating our CSP programme last September. Since then we've absolutely rocketed. Our partners have seen their cloud numbers surge and their businesses boom."

Georgina Block, Head of Cloud Sales at Westcoast, said: "The technology hasn't changed no matter which Microsoft agreement is chosen. What has changed is the way in which our partners now sell their products, creating margin from value added services and building solutions."

IT solutions provider Imerja has achieved Gold Partner Status with network access provider HPE Aruba.

Since the partnership began in 2011, the two companies have worked together to deploy and deliver a number of networking projects across the public sector.

A standout example is the critical IT infrastructure deployed for the Innovation Hub at Alder Hey hospital, which allowed clinicians to trial, develop and test new health technologies.

Ian Jackson, MD at Imerja, said: "Aruba Networks has been a core partner of ours for five years, and throughout that time we've worked together to empower organisations through innovative solutions."

Eve Kelly, channel manager at HPE Aruba, added: "Making Imerja a gold partner felt like a natural elevation as we have been impressed by the team's innovative approach to large projects and strong customer relationships for many years."

Cloud telephony provider Firstcom Europe has selected Cisco' new Multiplatform IP Phones for its Unified Communications Service, Universe.

Adam Crisp, Chief Technology Officer at Firstcom, said: "By partnering with Cisco we have a clear development path from today's products into the products of the future. Customers and partners demand ease-of-use, value and hardware that is built to last, and with Cisco, by definition they are buying into technology that is not only all of these things, but also future-proof."

8x8 has been awarded four new patents related to its communications technologies - Conferencing and Meeting Implementations with Advanced Features,; Multiple-Master DNS System; Identifying and Processing of Unreturned Calls in IPBX; Limiting Contact in a Networked Contact Center Environment.

"Enterprises everywhere are undergoing a digital transformation that involves not only a shift to cloud-based architectures, but also requires the implementation of smarter, more flexible communications systems that help address the needs of a constantly evolving competitive environment," said Bryan Martin, Chairman and CTO of 8x8.

"We've long been committed to innovating with and ahead of our customers to help them meet the evolving and complex needs of that transformation."

Reading-based Nuvola Distribution invited local businesses to a coffee morning held in aid of Macmillan, raising over £290 for the cancer charity. "Many of us have friends and family touched by cancer, so we ate a selection of cakes baked by employees and their children, and drank copious amount of hot brews to raise the funds," said Nuvola CEO Michael Lloyd.

Mitel has introduced World Cloud, a new solution for simplifying back-end services and management of cloud communications for multinational businesses.

Announced at the company's marquee Mitel Next event in Paris, World Cloud expands Mitel's cloud footprint to more than 40 countries worldwide.

World Cloud gives employees universal access to the same communications capabilities while providing free international extension-to-extension dialling and unlimited user-based country dialling. Local in-bound phone numbers and extensions with local out-bound dialling also localise the customer experience.

World Cloud also simplifies IT management with streamlined administration tools and consolidated billing.

"There is an increasing, even an accelerating, interest in cloud communications by distributed organisations with sophisticated requirements and geographically-dispersed offices," said Sandra Gustavsen, Analyst, G Business Systems.

"Ease of adding new locations, consistency across a network and built-in resiliency are among the strategic benefits a cloud alternative inherently offers.

"Moreover, a global cloud network that can unify a hybrid of cloud and on-premises deployments provides the ultimate in flexibility by creating a single communications platform for multinational organisations, while allowing them to retain the mix of on-premises equipment and cloud services that best fits their particular business challenges."

Jon Brinton, President and EVP Mitel Cloud Division, added: "With the rise of the digital economy, business must think globally more than ever because the reality is their competitors are.

"Mitel is helping meet the connection and flexibility needs of multinationals as they penetrate new markets, acquire and merge with other companies or expand their workforce.

"This is true for the small business looking to address its customers' needs like a Fortune 500 enterprise, or a large business wanting to adapt to changing markets with the ease of a nimble start-up."