Comms Dealer

The ultimate gauge of any USP is whether it communicates and delivers real practical benefits like no other, and neurodiversity in the workplace passes this test, guaranteeing a unique business model and unbeatable competitive advantage, according to Auticon's CEO Ray Coyle.

Auticon has shown us that the days are long gone when autism was categorised as an all encompassing 'disability'. For the company's UK CEO, the power of neurodiversity in the workplace is beyond argument, so much so that autism-specific strengths are what define Auticon's culture, philosophy, growth strategy and go-to-market. The German-based B2B IT service provider exclusively employs autistic people as consultants and launched its UK operation in March this year to advance a remarkable business model that leverages the exceptional cognitive abilities of those in the autistic spectrum to bring significant value to clients.

"By 2020 we plan to have a team of over 100 autistic consultants carrying out great projects across the UK," stated Coyle. "Our core strengths are in software testing and QA, data analytics, compliance, migration and transformation projects; and we are keen to work with channel partners who want to offer their clients a consultancy service in any of these areas. Auticon handles all of the job coaching and project management aspects when working through partners."

Auticon was established as a social enterprise in 2011 by Dirk Muller-Remus who has an autistic son and was alarmed by his job prospects. The company grew rapidly in Germany and now employs 90 autistic consultants across nine offices - seven in Germany, with the French and UK bases set up this year. Its customer base is predominantly blue chip organisations including 50 per cent of the companies on the German DAX index.

Coyle pointed out that it is important to recognise that there is as much variety in autistic people as in non-autistic. "Many autistic people would not fit into peoples' general preconceptions in any shape or form," he said. "There are some skills that have been shown to be more prevalent in autistic adults, including sustained concentration, attention to detail and cognitive pattern recognition. Therefore, our consultants are frequently able to tackle problems from a different perspective. Their approach has been described as being 'wired differently' and can deliver huge benefits in problem solving and within project teams generally.

"Our tag line, 'systematically creative', points to the combination of systematic thinking and creative intelligence that is first evident during the initial brainstorming and conceptual project stages. Our consultants enhance the client's project teams with their pattern recognition and innovative capacity.

"During implementation they excel with a systematic approach, their attention to detail and persistent concentration - all strengths that are invaluable in the field of IT quality assurance. Our alternative perspective can generate far more creative solutions and make the whole team more productive and efficient. People often do not think of creativity when they consider autism, but that is one of the key commercial benefits of neurodiversity in the workplace."

Coyle advocates an immediate reassessment of autism as the key to unlock a new creative dimension in IT consultancy. "The UK is fairly advanced in its knowledge of autism, and in my view the IT and comms industries are ahead of the curve in recognising the talents of autistic adults," he added. "Research shows that 79 per cent of UK autistic adults would like to work if they had the right support. However, only 15 per cent are in full time work. There is a lot more that can be done to bridge this gap, and we do not meet with much resistance from potential clients and find they are generally keen to engage with us. The key thing for clients to understand is that our role is to support our consultants so that they can deliver to their full potential."

There are of course challenges as well as advantages for people on the autism spectrum. Many autistic people find social interactions difficult so Auticon provides skilled and experienced job coaches to assist with that aspect. "We have also found that small and simple changes can be made to help our consultants perform to their full potential such as reducing background noise and distractions," he added.

Not surprisingly, Auticon's recruitment challenges are different to most in the industry. "There is a large pool of talent out there that is being wasted," said Coyle. "Often people do not have the confidence to approach us as they are concerned that the application and interview assessment process will be daunting. We stress that we interview all applicants and do not prejudge on the basis of qualifications, experience, CV or even interview performance. We run a range of thorough skills assessments to really find out what the applicant's skills are so that we can offer employment based on talent rather than history."

Coyle's industry experience is rooted in IT distribution at Frontline (now Tech Data) in the early 1990s. He worked for a number of large and small IT businesses until switching to a career in law, spending eight years at the tech focused city firm Osborne Clarke before being hired to run Grow Software, a DRM platform for 3D printing, two years ago. His experience is therefore a mix of technology and high-end advisory work that is today being put to good use in helping Auticon build on its evolution.

"As Auticon has grown we have learned how to operate better, making constant changes to the business model and our own processes," added Coyle. "For example, our original business model involved just consultants and job coaches who both acted as a support person and point of contact for our consultant, and also liaised with the client. We have now split these roles so we have a job coach and a project manager on each implementation. This has brought a number of benefits in terms of reporting and communication lines, and the process now works much more efficiently."

Coyle has been mindful of Auticon for some time. While running the Impact Investment Team at Osborne Clarke one of his clients was an early investor in the firm. "When Auticon launched in the UK I was keen to be part of its journey," stated Coyle. "Our immediate priority is recruitment to expand our team in the UK. The longer-term objective is to demonstrate to the industry that there is a huge untapped skill set that is being overlooked and to raise our profile as an open, honest and supportive organisation. While we are a commercial business, our social purpose runs through everything that we do. We expect that, over coming years, more businesses will see the benefits of neurodiverse teams, particularly in technology projects."•

Any examination of the big trends that currently dominate the communications landscape expose the unstoppable march of WebRTC, according to Paul Clarke, Regional Sales Manager UK&I, 3CX.

An upward movement in WebRTC adoption last year continues to gather momentum with industry analysts projecting a CAGR of 50.9 per cent and a market worth $4.45 billion by 2020. Clarke believes that it won't be long before WebRTC acquires a life of its own as the Internet Engineering Task Force continues to prepare a series of WebRTC standards even as the technology is gaining ground in all sectors far and wide. From a development perspective, the WebRTC API and the Google codebase for mobile apps has also spurred adoption rates.

"Ongoing development, usability and security have all led to a global proliferation of business apps in every vertical," said Clarke. "Users can run video conferencing sessions without plug-ins on all supported browsers, and this communication is secured with encryption. WebRTC does not rely on outside applications to maintain complete data security at all times, using SRTP encryption in its code."

One fast growing trend pointed out by Clarke is the use of WebRTC-powered links that can be sent to customers or partners, or placed on a landing page for rapid contact with potential customers. "The ability to get face-to-face with customers easily boosts sales," commented Clarke. "Retailers, for example, can bring a website viewer directly into their showroom in seconds."

Contact centres also represent a strong potential market for WebRTC-based services. "It is important for contact centres to decrease the 'time to issue' resolution, making them more productive," commented Clarke. "Amazon pioneered this approach to customer service with its Mayday button that got a Kindle user in touch with an agent with just a click. The concept has since been applied on thousands of websites that boast a WebRTC-powered link to Help.

"Contact centre agents are also using WebRTC to receive incoming calls, with callers being routed to an agent's web browser via a company's IVR. Another growth area is WebRTC's file sharing capability which is being broadly exploited in data analytics and business collaboration."

Clarke also pointed out that a growing number of new start-ups are using WebRTC technology for disruptive applications. London-based Cloud9, for example, offers a trading system based on a WebRTC platform that expands the communications range of the industry standard product, and which cuts the costs of trading while maintaining a high level of security.

Meanwhile, Dutch company 24Sessions provides live contact with experts for consumers via WebRTC-powered online meetings. In Japan, carrier NTT is offering a speech recognition API compatible with multiple browsers, available for no charge on SkyWay, the company's WebRTC space for developers. These are just a small sample of businesses that are harnessing the power of WebRTC.

Not surprisingly, WebRTC offers a raft of opportunities for comms resellers. "Given the wealth of business applications for the technology, resellers can point to the best solution for a particular vertical or context," explained Clarke. "They can also show how these WebRTC apps provide solutions for business issues, working effectively as a consultant. Increasing productivity is, for example, a key issue for large and small businesses. Users can access WebRTC-enabled services over any network, public or private, Wi-Fi, mobile broadband or wired LAN, accelerating communications and collaboration.

"They can use the same services working remotely from the laptop or smartphone. This is possible thanks to integration with Unified Communications. The ability to hold WebRTC-powered online meetings gives a potent boost to collaboration, a key ingredient in improving productivity."

Improving technical assistance is another issue for many businesses. With WebRTC conferencing, technicians can share screens with the person they are helping. Similarly, companies can easily combine a face-to-face meeting with photos and information in a web conference to speed up and close sales. "Customers never have to look elsewhere for the information required to make a decision," said Clarke.

Resellers can also capitalise on the increased revenue streams from related hardware sales, providing webcams and headphones to use in web conferencing. "Resellers should look to offer a fully integrated open standards solution that provides a one-stop shop for all of an end user's communications needs," stated Clarke. "This will combine WebRTC-enabled web conferencing, click-to-call and an IP phone system."

3CX is an early adopter of WebRTC and the company quickly set about integrating this technology into the video conferencing feature of its own UC solution. "The evolution of WebRTC is fascinating," enthused Clarke. "Next will be the integration of comms into many different kinds of applications, just as we have seen with CRM. There will be complex solutions that combine, for example, big data analytics, communication and accounting software. Analysts are already talking about 'comms as a feature'." •

The latest set of financial figures from Tunbridge Wells-based Adept Telecom prove again that its CEO Ian Fishwick has succeeded in his strategy, posting a 31 per cent sales increase and 34 per cent hike in EBITDA.

Fishwick has been a Managing Director or CEO of telecoms businesses for over a quarter of a century and March 2016 marked the 25th consecutive year of increased EBITDA generated by companies under his leadership. Fishwick's growth plan is founded on a simple common sense strategy that in practice can only achieve its purpose and hasten Adept towards the realisation of its goals. Not surprisingly, sticking to a policy of 'back to basics' remains a potent force in Fishwick's thinking. "Cash is King," he stated. "You only go bust if you run out of money."

Recognising the primacy of cash may not be an ultimate guarantor of long-term prosperity but according to Fishwick the thought should always be at the forefront of a business owner's mind whether expanding or contracting. "In 2008 when the financial markets crashed the City believed that small companies were the most likely to go bust, and that those most at risk had borrowed money," he said. "That was a gross over-simplification. I told the team to pay back our debt as fast as possible and within three years we were in a different position. The major thing to remember is that Cash is King."

These basic business principles imposed by Fishwick have propelled Adept a long distance away from its commercial beginnings in Fishwick's spare bedroom back in 2003. Today, Adept is a public company and Fishwick is also Commercial Director of Innopsis, the trade association for network service suppliers to the public sector. He is also a man who has grown accustomed to achieving his purpose and offers important pointers to those starting out with similar aspirations.

Top tips
"My advice to young entrepreneurs is to resist giving away too much equity stake in your business," said Fishwick. "Be wary of building your own bespoke platforms as integration issues will make it difficult to buy your business. And always be mindful that ten very good people will always be better than 100 not so good staff. Some people get a kick out of being the boss of a large number of employees. I've been there and got that T-shirt, and it's not the answer."

Fishwick managed 1,250 staff and circa 400,000 customers when running Telewest London and South East in the late 1990s. This job followed a stint at Marconi Secure Systems between 1990-95, after Fishwick 'fell' into the comms industry by accident. "I had qualified as an accountant and saw a job advert for Plessey (which later became Marconi) in Liverpool," he explained. "Plessey wanted someone to transition the business from paper accounts to computerised finance systems. I then became the Managing Director.

"In 1995 I went into cable. These were truly exciting years building the networks and launching services like Sky Movies, Sky Sport and Digital TV as well as doing telecoms and Internet at the same time. I ran Telewest North West and then Telewest London and South East. When we moved from four regional heads to one UK boss I didn't get the big job and had to leave."

At this juncture in Fishwick's career a US company called World Access asked him to manage its seven UK acquisitions. "I inherited £250 million sales with over 1,000 people but the company was losing £20 million a year," said Fishwick. "After 16 months we had merged the seven businesses and were profitable, making £1.6 million. But the US parent went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and I was forced to break the organisation up and sell it. We improved the profitability by £21.6 million in just over a year, but it still went wrong. That's when I'd had enough of large companies and set up Adept in 2003."

Adept Telecom has since grown to employ 90 staff based across three sites with sales of £33 million and EBITDA of £7 million. Acquisitions have been a running theme and an important growth factor in terms of scale and capabilities, with the purchase of Fleet-based Centrix in 2012 being particularly significant, adding £10 million revenues and placing Adept in the UC space. "We started out selling simple products to small businesses but larger organisations now account for over 65 per cent of sales revenue," said Fishwick.

"We have transitioned rapidly and mainly sell complex integrated solutions to bigger clients. We are now strong in Avaya products with a specialism in both Aura and IP Office. We may consider other manufacturers such as Cisco and Mitel. We are also keeping an eye on data companies as telecoms and IT is increasingly converging. UC is our biggest opportunity, where we provide everything from the connectivity to the desk phones, smartphones and tablets, all integrated with contact management systems."

Adept's current go-to-market strategy builds on 11 years spent acquiring connectivity businesses and integrating their customer bases. "We did that 19 times," said Fishwick. "When we started out the orthodox thinking was that you couldn't make money from small firms as the support costs were too high. Our view was that if we automated our processes early this would enable us to make lots of money, and we did.

"The priority remains the same, to continue our unbroken track record of increasing EBITDA every year and to ensure that it turns into cash. We will use strong cash flows to increase our dividends and also identify selective acquisitions. As we move into more complex solution selling there is inevitably an investment needed in more expensive, highly trained specialists in every area from pre-sale through to installation and support. We are increasingly strong in the public sector but it has taken us six years of hard work and re-training people. Selling to this sector is very different to approaching a commercial customer."

Technologies such as UC have become the default mode of industry discussion, but Fishwick has a helicopter view of the bigger picture and does not hold back from pricking the comms industry's tendency to talk up the market with ballooning hype. "Not every customer wants fancy technology for road warriors," he stated. "Some are just hairdressers who use broadband for a PDQ machine once every half hour.

"That said, there is no shortage of revenue in our sector, up to several billions of pounds. However, there is too much cost supporting that revenue. We have massive duplication across the industry because there are so many small companies, often with technically focused business leaders who believe they can do everything. But it's blatantly not possible for a small company to be all things to all men and be profitable. We are not here to discuss technology, we are here to make money."•

Luminet CEO Sasha Williamson's new tactics mark a fresh approach to channel partnerships founded on a combination of vision, capability and determination.

Williamson's prevailing narrative indicates that he is clearly moving his business towards the channel to expand Luminet's routes to market via partners and wholesale. His outlook shows that he has not only seen what is possible growth-wise via partnerships but also the potential advantages to be gained from heterogeneous networks. "We want to be the leaders in intelligent managed services, pioneering a new approach to telecoms," he said. "We see a huge opportunity in heterogeneous networks and developing a neural host strategy."

In support of his statement Williamson also showed a determination to build on a new partnership with CCS that will see Luminet develop one of the first self-organising networks in a Tier One global city. "We see this as an industry game-changer in how mobile operators can scale with the ongoing increase in mobile data demand in urban areas," stated Williamson.

At this point the discussion moves from tactical logic and intent to capabilities and propositions. "Our big opportunity is to scale with larger partners and provide systems support for automation and sustainability," explained Williamson. "Our most popular channel products include co-location and business Internet services. We have recently launched the Fibre Air product, a wireless business Internet service that can be installed in as little as five working days. Partners reselling traditional fibre leased lines typically have to wait around 90 days for installation. With Fibre Air they can offer customers up to 2GB symmetrical broadband Internet connectivity almost straight away, which means they can immediately start billing."

He emerges as a figure in tune with techno-power and its potential to transform businesses while at the same time advancing Luminet's strategic cause. "We're driving our market penetration, developing new routes to market for wholesale and increasing our geographical presence," he emphasised.

Insights into Williamson's strategic thoughts recall past experiences that are very much in play today. "My career started in bulk purchasing for major European telecoms users and since then I have worked with a number of successful telcos including Broadband4U, Primus, Worldcom and ETT (now GTT)," he said. "Luminet is my most recent venture and my cross-functional experience in telecoms has helped me in this current role."

Luminet started life as Urban WiMax in 2007, an intelligent managed services provider offering organisations connectivity, communications, computing and security services. It was founded by Williamson and a management team that had strong experience within the telecoms and IT industries, holding key executive and technical roles in companies such as Telewest, ETT, CitiGroup, Orange and BT.

"From the outset we had an impressive 61 per cent CAGR," noted Williamson. "We have since weathered an economic crash and in May 2015 announced our rebrand to Luminet in line with an investment of £2.15 million through Santander's Breakthrough programme. Our turnover has grown every year since our inception and the funding enabled us to continue to innovate and develop our connectivity solution."

The financing from Santander enabled Luminet to accelerate its growth and develop a new product portfolio, including a LLU network and enhanced Fixed Wireless Access infrastructure. "We also offer intelligent PaaS value added services," said Williamson. "And provide services such as Insight, optimisation and control of any applications on any connectivity services. We pride ourselves on our 100 per cent SLA service for cloud and mission critical services, as well as the visibility and control we offer on any application on any connectivity with our intelligent PaaS."

Williamson says he has found an exciting course, one where a customer-centric culture permeates every aspect of the business. "Luminet currently has 550-plus customers and 70 partnerships," he added. "We have 50-80 per cent capacity in our data centres and 100 per cent core network uptime. We employ 28 members of staff in our central London office and are growing at a fantastic rate of 27 per cent per year. We align and empower our staff to the customer journey relationship and our transactional interaction, which is rated across four key measures at each stage. This has resulted in an improvement in our NPS score of nine to 42 over the last three years."•

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."