Comms Dealer

Node4 has completed a buyout with Bowmark Capital which has acquired a majority shareholding alongside the management team. The move will finance new growth opportunities, new channel offerings and infrastructure investments. The incoming principle investor has also committed a further £40m of additional funding for Node4's growth and acquisition plans over the next three years.

The transaction follows a period of growth and service development at Node4. Within the last three years Node4 has tripled staff numbers, grown its customer base to 900 and expanded both its geographical presence and cloud services portfolio.

As well as considerable expansion of its Northampton and Leeds data centres, Node4 has also upgraded its DWDM network, launched a new managed security offering, and is poised to roll-out further cloud-based services aimed at the UK mid-market.

"Anyone that has seen Node4's progress within the last three years will know we're an ambitious and rapidly growing company," stated Andrew Gilbert (pictured), Managing Director.

"Node4 has achieved every strategic objective it set itself three years ago, and our strong channel relationships have been a major factor in this success.

"We will also be undertaking several new initiatives in the background that will create new revenue opportunities for our channel partners."

Bowmark Capital bought-out Node4 holdings from LDC, its previous institutional investor.

Bowmark Investment Director Stephen Delaney added: "We have been tracking the ICT managed services sector for a number of years and have been impressed with Andrew Gilbert and his team."

Martin Draper, Chief Executive of LDC, said: "The company's success demonstrates the impact private equity investment can have as a catalyst to build scale and value, and to support the vision of ambitious management teams.

"Our close partnership with Andrew and the team has helped the business to more than double its revenues and triple its employee numbers."

With full ownership of its own infrastructure, including three data centres in Derby, Leeds and Northampton and Cisco CMSP accredited Cloud infrastructure, Node4 retains full control over service delivery.

telent has climbed 35 places in the Sunday Times Top Track 250, securing 30th position in this year's listing.

Highlights this year include a 14 year service contract with National Express Group and the near completion of the voice and data network on the new Aircraft Carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Chief Executive Mark Plato said: "We are dedicated to continued profitable growth in our key market sectors, while also proud that we support local communities through our work on rural infrastructure projects, with the emergency services, with local councils and through our CSR initiatives."

The league table complements the Sunday Times Top Track 100 league table of Britain's private companies with the biggest sales, listing the next 250 biggest companies, provided sales or operating profits have increased by at least 10% from the penultimate to their latest financial year.

Timico has enhanced the user management of its Virtual Data Centre (VDC) service following the launch of a new portal.

Timico's VDC cloud solution offers servers, storage, networking, security and other IT elements as a service from the firm's UK-based data centres.

The Timico Cloud Portal gives users more freedom to customise and manage their virtual environment.

New VDCs can be created as well as adding more resources to expand an existing environment. The portal also gives access to other features such as virtual machine metrics, CPU core usage and memory usage, so clients can check their resources are always correctly configured.

Cloud backup, cloud antivirus and Microsoft licences can also be ordered through the portal, making it a true one-stop-shop for Timico cloud customers.

Andrew Fox, Director of Managed Networks, Connectivity and Cloud Services at Timico, said: "The new portal is flexible, intuitive and easy to use. It is also a time saver for customers as they can log in at any time and make changes for themselves.

"The Timico Cloud Portal gives them complete control of their environment without needing to manage any of the software or hardware underpinning the service, making their servers truly software-defined.

"If they want to add extra RAM to a server for example, they can go into the portal and order it directly and then after checkout, it will be automatically added to their Virtual Data Centre."

Fareham-based Taylor Made Computer Solutions is expanding fast following a 20% increase in the past year, the biggest growth spurt in the company's 22-year history.

The firm also upped staff numbers by almost 20% across a range of roles including IT engineers, sales staff, apprentices and customer service account managers.

Chairman Nigel Taylor said: "What's important to us is that we stay true to the values we held dear when we first launched Taylor Made, to provide an expert and personal service for each and every client. Increasing our staff will ensure that we continue to do that now and in the future."

Taylor Made now employs 120 people and was the first company in Hampshire to receive Gold Investors in People recognition when it was first awarded in 2009.

The Magnetic North brand has changed direction and gone West following its acquisition in November 2015 by West Corporation, a global provider of communication and network infrastructure solutions.

The integration of Magnetic North's cloud-based contact centre solution into West's UC services portfolio strengthens the company's ability to offer seamless multi-channel communications.

Enda Kenneally, West's VP of Sales and Business Development for Unified Communications Services, said: "We have a product portfolio that meets a growing market need for a fully integrated cloud-based contact centre and UC solution. As a single entity with combined experience and expertise, we look forward to bringing solutions with increased resilience, manageability and scalability.

"We are approaching a tipping point as enterprises of every size turn to cloud to overcome the limitations of their legacy systems and West will be working with its channel partners to respond to this market opportunity."

Ingram Micro UK has rolled out a number of new channel programmes including IM+, a platform that rewards resellers with points and prizes in exchange for attending training, buying selected products or meeting set targets.

Vendor partners will also be able to host their own incentive programmes on the platform making it easier for customers to track their performance.

Last month also saw the launch of Ingram Micro's new publication, Ingram Micro Advisor, a digital resource that provides marketing tips, cloud updates, vertical solutions and more. The second edition will be released in December and is supported by a new website which will provide additional content in the form of blogs, articles and white papers.

Matt Sanderson, Company Chief Executive, Ingram Micro UK&I, said: "The launch of both IM+ and Ingram Micro Advisor are part of a longer term strategy to help, inform, support and reward our resellers."

A report by Scottish Rural Action (SRA) has criticised Community Broadband Scotland (CBS), a government initiative led by Highlands and Islands Enterprise for its sole reliance on BT-partnered programmes.

And Charlie Boisseau, Chief Technology Officer at Commsworld, believes the mission to provide superfast broadband to 100% of properties by 2020 is, at this stage, a 'pipe dream'.

He said: "It would be difficult to disagree that the government has failed in its mission to provide broadband.

"Whether any one party can be blamed for this shortfall is open to discussion but if any progress is to be made in providing everyone with 'superfast broadband' the government must open the building of network infrastructures to more companies."

The Edinburgh-based telecommunications company, which criticised the decision not to split BT and Openreach earlier this year, hopes to see further attention paid to the rapidly advancing capabilities of smaller service providers.

Boisseau added: "Even with significant government subsidies rural areas are of little to no interest to tier one providers like Openreach who stand to gain little from what is, comparative to city infrastructure projects, a lot of work.

"Although these projects are of vital political and local importance, the biggest providers will always leave the highlanders and islanders to last. That is if they pay them much heed at all.

"While larger companies may offer a cheaper service for the provision of broadband in the main it is our view that the use of smaller companies to 'fill in the gaps' they leave behind could establish a network that is a lot closer to meeting the Government's ambitious aims than the system currently in place.

"For this to work though, they must stop merely paying lip service to smaller providers and throw all their resources into getting companies of various sizes working on making Scotland a more connected country."

Organisations need to move faster to prepare for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) according to Annodata.

With more than 9 in 10 organisations reporting a data breach in the last five years, businesses need to rapidly put measures in place to prevent the loss of Personal Identifiable Information (PII), especially with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set to transform cyber security regulation in Europe with significant financial and legal (not to mention reputational) implications.

A recent report from Lloyd's on what European businesses are doing to tackle cyber security shows that 92% of organisations have suffered a data breach in the last five years, highlighting the increasing threat of data loss within organisations.

Furthermore, 57% of businesses surveyed stated that they know 'little' or 'nothing' about the GDPR, despite the serious financial (with costs of up to 4% of revenue) and legal repercussion of not complying with the regulations.

"With the introduction of the GDPR fast approaching, organisations must ensure they maintain strict control over their sensitive data, this includes securing their partners and automating their mailrooms," said Joe Doye, Marketing Director of Annodata.

"In light of the mounting threats organisations face in today's security landscape and with the deadline for compliance with the GDPR rapidly approaching, it's vital for organisations to address the possibility of data leakage and security breaches so these pressures can be tackled effectively.

"Printer technology has advanced with the help of smartphones and tablets, leading to staff breaking free from their desktop computers.

"These mobile devices are now fully integrated within the IT estate of many organisations, affording broad functionality such as the ability to print from mobile devices and to scan to email and network drives.

"Although this new usability brings big benefits, new areas of vulnerability rise in parallel. As a result, it's vital that organisations ensure they pay close attention to the security posture of their devices, data, network and internet-enabled printers."

SBL Group and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) have formed a channel training partnership that sees SBL provide engineer training on Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Office and OmniPCX Enterprise to ALE channel partners.

SBL will launch the new SBL Academy in October 2016, kicking off with an OmniPCX Enterprise Starter course.

"We are seeing an increased demand and interest for UK training on the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise portfolio with a solid engineer led framework," said Peter Tebbutt, UK&I Managing Director for Alcatel Lucent Enterprise.

"The new SBL Group management team have focused on driving the business forward, especially in the areas of customer care and professional services. This new initiative will enable them to optimize the investment they have made whilst also enabling Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise to offer increased local training services for UK and international partners."

Pan-EMEA distribution firm Nuvias Group has acquired UK-based UC distributor Siphon Networks in a deal that promises to extend Siphon's influence in the UK and across the continent. Post-acquisition it's business as usual for Siphon which will continue to be led by Steve Harris (pictured) who remains MD.

"We will protect what has already been built by Siphon," confirmed Nuvias Group CEO Paul Eccleston. "We will enhance it through the other capabilities in the Nuvias Group, and we will expand it across EMEA.

"Siphon's service and solutions capabilities for the channel are aligned with the Nuvias Group's philosophy and strategy. Siphon is also complementary to the cyber security, advanced networking and UC capabilities of Wick Hill and Zycko, the existing businesses in the Group."

Harris added: "This enables us to accelerate our growth plans and expand geographically in the UK and EMEA as part of a much larger organisation which shares our core beliefs and dedication to high service levels, and has the resources to help us realise our goals."

Siphon began its commercial life in 2009 when Harris co-founded the company with a £50k investment in the midst of a global financial crisis.

In May last year Siphon received a £1.5m investment from Finance Wales to boost its presence in the UK and Europe.

It currently generates approximately £20m turnover, has offices in the UK and Benelux, circa 50 staff, and works with vendors including Polycom, Oracle and Broadsoft.

In autumn 2015 Siphon was ranked 23rd fastest growing technology company in the UK and one of the fastest growing technology companies in EMEA by Deloitte.