Comms Dealer

Red Box Recorders CEO Lee Jones has stepped down after ten years at the company. Richard Stevenson takes over the role, moving from Standard Life where he was CEO of operations in Germany and Austria.

Red Box Chairman Ian McKay said: "Richard is a proven leader with a successful track record in growing businesses in the software and financial services sectors.

"With this appointment we have a leader with the credentials to take Red Box to the next level of growth globally.

"Lee has made a massive contribution to the development of Red Box and will continue working with us in a non-executive capacity."

Stevenson added: "I look forward to working with the Red Box team to maximise the opportunities this growing global market presents."

Distributor Zycko (part of the Nuvias Group) has been selected as Nokia's first pan-EMEA distributor in a move that signals a step forward in the go-to-market diversification at Nokia, extending channel and value added distribution to help expand the company's footprint in the enterprise and mid-market space across EMEA.

Initially, Zycko will focus on hardware and software integration of IP routing and optical transport networks, fibre-based LAN connectivity infrastructure for buildings/campus', open standards DDI management software and software defined networking.

Dave Parker, VP Strategic Partners, at Nokia, commented: "This appointment gives us access to a wide network of resellers experienced in communications and networking across the EMEA region.

"The type of distributor that Zycko and Nuvias are building internationally complements our own growth plans."

Paul Eccleston, Head of Nuvias Group, added: "This deal is a vote of confidence in Zycko and Nuvias and an endorsement of our concept of redefining international, specialist value distribution."

Telecoms resellers can now help customers with company car or van fleets improve the performance and safety of their sales reps and service engineers following the announcement of a new partnership programme by driver and fleet performance specialist GreenRoad Technologies.

Central to the programme is the release of GreenRoad Mobile, a smartphone app that acts as a 'coach in the cab', warning drivers in real time when they stray from a safe, smooth driving style.

It monitors 150 vehicle movements, detecting risky manoeuvres such as harsh braking, sudden acceleration, sharp cornering and swerving.

It will also help company car drivers avoid the temptation of using their mobile while driving which now carries a maximum fine of £1,000.

"Our app is installed in the background of a smartphone and it can then either interact with the driver or it can give them a score at the end of their journey," explained GreenRoad Chief Marketing Officer David Rodriguez, who is spearheading the channel development programme.

"For example, if a sales person is driving and he or she picks up the phone to look at an email or text, a notification will be sent through as a 'safety event.

"It makes sense to offer the app through telecoms resellers because it will be an added value proposition for them.

"For a low monthly fee per phone company managers will have the reassurance that employees are driving safely and it could pay for itself with in three months based on the savings on fuel alone.

"If a reseller is trying to sell a large number of mobiles to a customer and can offer to help reduce their insurance claims, increase driver awareness or improve mileage capture along with the deal it's the perfect added value sale."

Livingbridge-backed Metronet (UK) has acquired Internet infrastructure and hosting company M247 for £47.5m. The acquisition is the first step in a buy and build strategy that aims to build a disruptive platform in the connectivity space with 'last mile' control, speeding up communications to end users, and a transit network across Europe.

Mid-market PE firm Livingbridge invested in Metronet (UK) in June 2014 as part of a £45m secondary buyout of the firm.

Metronet (UK) currently employs 150 people across two sites in Manchester and works with over 2,500 businesses, generating turnover of £21.5m in the financial year to 2016.

Following the acquisition Metronet (UK) will be able to offer a combined portfolio of connectivity and content services including wireless network services, data centres and managed hosting solutions across the UK and Europe. The combined business will have three data centres, over 200 staff and EBITDA in excess of £12m.

Lee Perkins (pictured), Chief Executive at Metronet (UK), said: "M247 provides the scale and reach to build upon our existing momentum and the expertise and infrastructure to provide richer solutions to our combined customers."

M247 was founded in 2000 by school friends Jonathan Buckle and Chris Byrd, initially as a web hosting services business before David Buckle, Jonathan Buckle's father, decided to co-invest in the business to purchase a web hosting company called Open Hosting. Open Hosting was then incorporated into the existing business before being rebranded as M247 in 2003.

Matthew Caffrey, Partner at Livingbridge, added: "This is a fantastic step forward for Metronet (UK) as it continues to expand its footprint across the UK and eventually into Europe. This acquisition is the start of a journey to build an international, multi-offering Internet service provider and hosting business.

"Metronet (UK) has an exciting time ahead as it looks for similar acquisition opportunities."

According to Marcus Allchurch, Partner at Acuity Advisors, Metronet is currently one of the most exciting communications companies in Europe. "Metronet is well capitalised with a differentiated service offering and first class team of founders and new management," he said.

"As Acuity have consistently said, private equity backed buyers in this market are focusing on strategic acquisitions, and this is no exception.

"Metronet are significantly expanding its capabilities with M247’s infrastructure expertise. 

"Accounts have not been released for the year ended April 2016, however Megabuyte suggested EBITDA of around £4m and growth to a potential £6m for the current year, all of which implies a run rate multiple of just under 10x EBITDA which is very much in line with the market for high quality targets. 

"Expect more acquisitive and organic growth from Metronet and its private equity backer, Livingbridge."

Six Degrees Group's (6DG) growth ambitions in the mid-market for converged cloud and application hosting have been significantly advanced following the addition of two big guns to the leadership line-up.

Former CEO of GTS Central Europe Danny Bottoms joins the company as Chairman and Paul Mills, ex-Head of Sales for Rackspace UK, has taken the role of Group Sales Director.

Bottoms brings 25 years experience in the comms and media industries including stints at PE backed companies. He is based in Virginia, USA.

Mills boasts 10 years sales management experience in the IT managed services space and has particular expertise in delivering across a mix of verticals and products.

6DG CEO Alastair Mills said: "The appointments are significant coups for Six Degrees.

"Danny has an excellent track record in PE backed technology companies, and Paul's experience in leading sales in managed hosting and managed services for the mid-market are exactly the areas we are targeting for our future growth around cloud platforms and application management services."

The country-level reorganisation and management for Dell EMC's channels will be announced in November, it says. Some elements of the new partner programme have already emerged ahead of its formal single programme due in February next year. Some Dell EMC people were being told this week or their new roles.

Using the deal registrations going back over the last three years there has been some local arbitration over customers with both Dell and EMC channels as suppliers, but this is not seen as a significant issue, Michael Collins, Dell EMC's EMEA channels chief tells IT Europa. "We have a broad and deep channel. We are working on answering their questions, and through training, education and certifications, giving us the channel we need."

"The channel programme will be based on profitability, predictability and simplicity," he says, aiming at a high comfort level among partners, but also building 'peer envy' to encourage them to seek higher position in the tiers. Fast-track cross-training has been in place to bring both partner groups up to speed on the other's products. It has been further complicated by Dell's decisions to sell off the enterprise content division and to abandon the printer business, but this does not affect large numbers of partners in Europe.

Dell has been encourage, he says, by surveys of enterprise customers almost all saying they are positive or at least neutral about the merger, and with most suggesting they will increase their spending with the new firm.

The uncertainty in the channel about the nature of the new organisation has been addressed by partner conferences recently in the UK and a joint eastern/western European channels meeting this week. "It is not easy to predict the shape of the future channel," he says, but points to high levels of planned investment in cloud, particularly in managed services by systems integrators. "Many integrator partners are investing in hardware cloud as well," he says.

Modernisation of infrastructure seems to be a key driving factor; Dell has announced both reference architectures for solutions and the tighter "blueprints" for specific tasks, business outcomes and user numbers. This demand from customers will obviously colour the continuing nature of Dell EMC's channel. "We must not lose focus on the customer for the longer term," he says, in spite of "the challenge of joining the two very credible companies."

Noetica has launched the Noetica Voice Platform (NVP), delivering ACD, IVR, voice recording, quality management and billing, in a telephony solution built purely for the use of contact centres.

NVP can be deployed either on-premise or in the cloud, and frees contact centres from the requirement of an enterprise PBX and cuts the cost of inbound, outbound and blended telephony, claims the firm.

Prior to launch, NVP has been in live production at Noetica clients including ResQ, Parseq and RSVP. Many of these organisations have been able to reduce, or eradicate their reliance on large enterprise telephony platforms.

RSVP is using NVP across 220 seats at its London office with plans to replace all PBX units with NVP. Its new 100-seat Manchester site will be running NVP from launch.

CEO of Noetica, Danny Singer, said: "Telephony is rapidly becoming a commodity and a 'one size fits all' way of delivering calls to back-office and the call centre is now obsolete."

Following the reintroduction of the Storno brand as part of Nimans' two-way radio portfolio the distributor is offering two-way radio demo kits in a bid to help resellers tap into the £80m UK licensed market.

The firm has also produced on-site testing guides.

Nimans' Radio Communications Category Manager Gary Redshaw said: "Storno licensed radios are viewed as a key introduction for resellers new to the sector as they combine performance with reliability. Fitted with the latest lithium ion battery technology they benefit from easy out of the box performance.

"We've had a very positive response to bringing back the Storno name and the demo kits will help pour more fuel onto the fire.

"We supply licenced and licence free equipment with both Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) and Private Mobile Radio (PMR) devices available.

"Two-way radio has always been an important element of our business based on Julian Nimans' passion and keen interest in this sector. We've sold devices from day one and are now able to offer resellers access to more powerful licenced equipment that can communicate over much longer distances."

Infrastructure provider CityFibre has announced that businesses in Sheffield City Region will soon be able to exploit the advantages of gigabit speed Internet services in a partnership with Exa Networks

CityFibre is set to open up a next-generation pure fibre network across Sheffield, Doncaster and Rotherham enabling them to join the growing ranks of Gigabit Cities as the company continues to introduce fibre infrastructure competition nationwide.

The network, which spans 110km, will provide local businesses with some of the fastest download and upload speeds in the world, up to and exceeding 1000mbps.

The Sheffield, Doncaster and Rotherham Gigabit City projects are being delivered in partnership with Exa Networks, which is already delivering ultra-fast connectivity across CityFibre's networks in Bradford and Leeds.

Rob Hamlin, Commercial Director at CityFibre, commented: "Organisations large and small now require reliable, fast, low latency Internet services to compete and succeed in an ever changing digital world."

Mark Cowgill, Co-Founder of Exa Networks, added: "We understand the crucial importance of ultra-fast connectivity in our schools as well as our businesses, and anticipate a huge demand for increased bandwidth in both the education and business communities of Sheffield."

CityFibre and Exa will be hosting Gigabit City launch events in Sheffield and Doncaster on 15th November, where local business representatives will hear more about how the Gigabit City project can benefit them and revolutionise the way they operate.

Bamboo Technology Group's M2M channel business is booming with a growing posse of reseller partners embracing its M2M proposition. M2M was first introduced to Bamboo's Total Partner Programme in October last year and since January 2016 the firm has witnessed 31% average month-on-month growth in connected M2M devices and 71% average month-on-month growth in data volume.

MD Lorrin White attributes much of this growth to a flexible pence-per-kilobyte wholesale data plan that has proved popular among firms with small data requirements and large organisations that wish to create their own bundles.

"Our M2M channel has been a resounding success in the short time since its launch," said White. "Despite being a relatively new technology for the channel the reaction from resellers at this early stage is encouraging.

"The barriers to wide scale M2M adoption have generally been one of two things - customers either struggling to conceive where M2M can deliver its own unique value in place of a regular cellular or fixed line connection, or resellers unconvinced about the long-term profitability and viability of M2M even at a small scale. We believe we have been able to address both of these concerns with our M2M proposition."

Bamboo can also work with partners and customers to develop bespoke M2M packages and pricing structures that ensure the viability of new M2M product lines before a customer takes them to market.

"By giving our partners direct access to our pre-sales team, they have been able to demonstrate the real world potential of the technology to their customers," added White.

"As a result, we have seen new use cases as varied as mobile CCTV, temporary office Internet and even solar and wind farm telematics, in addition to the more traditional use cases in fleet and asset tracking for example."

According to White, offering M2M SIMs on a wholesale pence-per-kilobyte basis has significantly lowered the entrance fee for this market. "This has given our partners the flexibility to build their own bundles so they can succeed with customers of all sizes, from heavy data users to those that use very little data at all," she said.

"This wouldn't have been possible if we had enforced high volume data packages or fixed tariffs. Helping resellers to identify and understand the opportunity has been key. Whereas previously they may have walked away from a potential deal because they couldn't see how to make it viable, we now have the flexibility in the tariffs to meet even the most specific of requirements and deliver growth for all."

Bamboo's M2M proposition is powered by Telefónica, a long standing partner. Bernie McPhillips, Head of M2M Authorised Distributor Channel at Telefónica UK, added: "Bamboo's innovation in the M2M sector and strong track record within the mobile arena is clearly resonating with the channel."

Bamboo's M2M service for resellers also includes monitoring and control features via the Cisco Jasper IoT services platform; all SIMs deliver connectivity across multiple networks globally under one bill (due to 600 network roaming agreements worldwide, including 4G coverage in 26 countries); IPSec VPN for advanced network integration; and flexible deployment options such as the provision of test-ready SIMS.