Comms Dealer

Gateshead-based Advantex Network Solutions is investing more than £350k in new facilities, doubling capacity at the firm's Follingsby Park-based head office.
 
The company secured a £75k grant from regional growth fund Let's Grow North East as part of an overall funding package to support its expansion plans which include the development of a new data centre alongside additional office space to house a growing workforce.
 
New training and product demonstration facilities are also being developed as part of a package of measures that come on the back of 40% growth in sales for Advantex in the last financial year.
 
The firm has also earmarked part of the investment towards the development of new superfast broadband services provided to businesses across Teesside and Wearside.
 
Following the cash injection, the company will be eyeing further growth in the next 12 months as it targets a £6m turnover by 2017.

Co-founder and Sales Director Stephen O'Connell said: "We're seeing strong traction as economic confidence looks to hold-up and businesses continue to invest while eschewing traditional approaches to IT provision and service support.
 
"We're also pleased to be able to continue to invest in recruiting talented people.
 
"The next few months promises to be even busier as we look to develop our presence further in core sectors.
 
"Education providers, which will be facing a changing IT landscape over the next year, can benefit from new strategic IT and wider commercial and e-Learning packages and technologies."

Advantex was established in 2002 and is an accredited Microsoft, Cisco and Mitel partner currently employing more than 60 people.

The sales operation at Cardiff-based comms firm Glamorgan Telecom has new leadership following the appointments of Michael Kennelly as Sales Director and Joe Volosky as Head of Telesales.

The pair are tasked with expanding Glamorgan Telecom's presence across south Wales and south west England.

Their appointments follow a MBO by MD Kelly Bolderson who aims to increase Glamorgan's revenues by £1m a year until 2018.

Bolderson said: "Michael and Joe's experience and skills will be a huge benefit to us as we continue to expand our service offering across Wales and the south west."

Kennelly added: "Technology has advanced at pace in recent years and there is a great opportunity for us to provide cost-effective solutions to our clients and drive growth. My job is to make sure we communicate that clearly."

Volosky said: "This role will allow me to play a big part in how the telesales department operates, and there is plenty of room to grow and nurture the team to support our prospective and current customers."

Pictured (l-r) Joe Volosky and Michael Kennelly

The latest version of Tollring's iCall Suite is designed for use in the cloud, on-premise or as a hybrid model.

The new multi-tenant call analytics and call recording service for data visualisation and fraud detection enables organisations to monitor business-critical call metrics by accessing real-time reports, intuitive dashboards, visual wallboards and call recordings via live tiles that are optimised for mobile devices. 
 
Tollring MD Tony Martino stated: "Our launch comes at a time when more and more end customers are reviewing their business processes and communications strategies as they consider migrating to cloud telephony.

"For those who are not ready to embrace the cloud, they no longer need to choose between the previous desktop version or the online version - they can now use one system with no loss of features."

Channel partners such as BT, Mitel and BroadSoft are already using iCall Suite 2016. 

"Customers monitor inbound and outbound calls including calls queuing and how many times a customer has called with no response," added Martino. "Every unreturned missed call is a missed opportunity and can result in a dissatisfied customer and increased churn."

He pointed out that companies that analyse their business communications are proven to gain significant advantage over competitors.
 
"The channel also benefits from competitive advantage through features such as utilisation analytics across multiple customers/tiers of partners, providing valuable insight," added Martino.

"Advice based on usage profiles highlights variances in behaviour. And revenue assurance tools are becoming not only a way for the channel to bill accurately, but even more importantly, a way to differentiate themselves, adding real value to their service offering."

iCall Suite 2016 also offers proactive fraud management using call limit profiling methods; self-provisioning in the cloud; a pay-as-you-use commercial model with opportunities to white label.

Three acquisitions by Direct Response Contact Centres (DRCCs) have kicked off a new phase of expansion according to Group CEO Ian Mitchell.

Ipswich-based Ansaback and its sister business CallScripter have been bagged along with Kent-based GoResponse.

The deals were financed through DRCC's existing liquidity as well as an acquisition finance facility from investment firm Boost&Co.

"These acquisitions represent a new and exciting phase in the continued development of our business," stated Mitchell.

"Uniting these companies means we can open the door for organisations to easily embrace seamless multi-channel communications, business analytics and digitalisation. This offers significant new avenues of opportunity for both clients and our employees."

Chris Robinson, founder and Chairman, added: "We are poised for continued growth via future acquisitions and sustained organic sales."

There are no plans to change the executive management or employment structures of the acquired businesses.

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."