Comms Dealer

Managed services provider CSG has teamed-up with cloud and networking provider Exponential-e, giving its customers access to a range of cloud-based IT services.

Jason Clark, MD at CSG, said: "This partnership takes us to another level, enabling us to offer a tried and tested suite of cloud services to our customer base and giving them the opportunity to accelerate the digitalisation of their business."

Michala Hart, head of channel strategy for Exponential-e, added: "By changing the way cloud services are accessed over the corporate network, we ensure that data is never sent over the public Internet and can side-step the issues that come with traditional cloud models.

"By adopting this approach, our network and services ensure that organisations are able to use the power of the cloud to build an IT estate with the flexibility, scalability and dynamic agility needed to compete in fast-moving globalised markets."

Channel Telecom MD Clifford Norton has credited the efforts of staff and partners for the company's listing in this year's Sunday Times Tech Track 100 league table, a ranking of Britain's 100 private tech companies with the fastest growing sales over the past three years.

This is Channel Telecom's second inclusion, following last year's outing with 78th place having generated a 50.50% sales increase over the measured period.

During the past 12 months the company has almost doubled staff numbers, generated £10m-plus turnover, welcomed over 150 new channel partners, introduced new services, improved business processes and restructured its customer support operations.

MD Clifford Norton enthused: "This year has been incredible. We have welcomed so many new faces, staff and partners, and this success is combined effort by all of them."

"The bar was exceptionally high this year and we are working in an incredibly competitive market, which makes this achievement that little bit sweeter."

The Tech Track 100 ranking adds another gong to Channel Telecom's trophy cabinet which also houses this year's Comms Dealer Sales Awards 'Marketing Team of the Year' accolade.

"This is just the start," stated Norton. "We expect the next 12 months to be our most successful yet.  We don't just want to feature in 2017, we want to climb that leader board year on year."

Australia-based independent ISP Exetel has reached around the globe to seal a launch deal with wholesale network provider Virtual1 and other industry players in a bid to enter the UK market with its VoIP and data solutions for SMEs.

Exetel's international expansion follows a period of growth in its domestic market based on what it calls a 'straightforward approach' to business customers.

The family owned company, now rated as Australia's biggest independent ISP, provides a range of data solutions with flexible contracts and what its CEO Richard Purdy claims is an industry changing level of agility, speed, and affordability.

"Exetel's entry into the UK will see the lowering of the costs of data services for businesses, changing the shape of the industry," he stated.

"The UK market is undergoing a seismic shift as more than 3.2 million ISDN lines will have to transition to VoIP in the next 10 years following the decision by BT to phase out ISDN services.

"With many of our existing clients having a presence in both markets, this expansion is a logical step for us.

"Virtual1 is very much aligned to our straightforward approach. The growth of the SME market and the proliferation of cloud services demand an ever-increasing need for affordable data packages, and this is precisely where Exetel's offering sits."

"We see a considerable gap in the market where small businesses are not supported, and we have the know-how and the flexibility to fill this. We aim to replicate the success that we have achieved in Australia in the UK market."

Simon Durrant, Business Development Director, Virtual1, added said: "Exetel's commitment to the SME market through low cost high speed voice and data solutions will help enable us to bring our businesses closer together."

CityFibre's national footprint has spread into Cambridge, Portsmouth and Southampton following the acquisition of Redcentric's duct and fibre networks (at least 137km), taking its presence to 40 cities. This latest development in CityFibre's strategy to acquire non-incumbent owned fibre infrastructure assets also brings incremental coverage to a number of existing city footprints including Nottingham, Derby and Northampton.
 
As part of the £5m network acquisition CityFibre has secured £4.5m in long-term dark fibre leasing commitments from Redcentric which has become a new customer. CityFibre's new network will continue to serve 188 Redcentric customer connections.

Redcentric has also entered into a framework agreement with CityFibre for the use of CityFibre's infrastructure across the pure fibre provider's national footprint in future.

The newly acquired networks, such as the 44km footprint throughout Cambridge, are all routed to address local areas of identified high demand for high bandwidth services.

In Cambridge the network reaches many of the city's key science, business and research parks. Once made widely available the networks are expected to benefit the wider local communities.
 
Fraser Fisher, Chief Executive Officer of Redcentric, said: "This disposal is in line with our strategy of control over our customer affecting core assets while not tying up capital where ownership is unnecessary.

"We will continue to service customers in Cambridge and Portsmouth exactly as before, and expect to generate additional revenues and network efficiencies over time as a result of our developing relationship with CityFibre."
 
Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer of CityFibre, added: "Once again we've shown that under utilised legacy fibre assets can find a new home in which to flourish within CityFibre's wholesale shared infrastructure model."

CityFibre's influence in the public sector will be more strongly felt following the appointment of Martin Kemp as Head of Public Sector engagement.

For the past three years he operated as BT Client Partner within the public sector running a key partnership contract, a role that followed a stint as BT Group's Business Development Director supporting the BDUK rollouts in 12 UK regions.

Prior to that he spent 10 years in carrier sales within BT Wholesale working with some of BT's largest customers.

"The opportunity that CityFibre's existing fibre footprint and network build approach present to the public sector are significant," he said. "Being part of bringing that opportunity to life and seeing towns and cities across the UK reap the benefits made my decision to join CityFibre very easy.

"I am already busy raising awareness within the Public Sector of what CityFibre can do for them in the short and long term. We have a number of different Gigabit City development approaches that are relevant to the sector and I want to help leaders in this area work out exactly which is right for them and help them to make change happen."

Also joining CityFibre is Paul Tanner the new Head of Pre-sales. He moved from Virgin Media Business where he was Pre-sales Manager for Business Network Services, a national role leading a team of Cisco LAN consultants specialising in collaboration, data centre and routing/switching.

Prior to this role Tanner was Pre-sales Manager for Business Markets where he supported the Enterprise vertical for London and South East covering WAN products and services.

Before joining Virgin he worked in a Project Engineering role for Telewest, was a Planning Manager for General Cable Group and undertook various roles at Mercury Communications and BT.

Tanner said: "I was attracted to CityFibre by its fresh approach to the market opportunities, its can-do attitude, flexible and intelligent network, ability to meet partners' needs and the buzz I got from meeting the passionate team."

A new organisation set up by Knight Corporate Finance offers SMEs advice and guidance on how to maximise their claims for R&D tax relief while meeting HMRC's expectations.

Called Knight R&D, the advisory service is led by R&D Incentives Specialist Rupert Mayo who heads up a multi-disciplinary team that provides industry, technical, tax and accounting expertise across all aspects of the R&D Incentive claim process

Mayo boasts 15 years experience, initially as an industry scientist followed by a nine-plus year stint at one of the Big 4 accounting firms.

To underscore his firm grip on HMRC's expectations he has never had a claim reduced or disallowed.

Knight R&D is holding a workshop to determine whether attendees have a claim to make, and if so estimate their potential entitlement.

Knight R&D also offers a free one hour health check for companies already claiming to determine whether the claim covers everything a claimant may be entitled to, and estimate any potential increases in claims either as amendments to existing claims or to be introduced into future claims.

"An estimated 80% of UK businesses I have met with have not been receiving their full entitlement of R&D tax credits," stated Mayo.

"Companies rarely understand how broad the qualifying criteria are, and frequently have more qualifying costs than they realise.

"Misconceptions associated with the R&D definition often lead to under claims, and misunderstandings relating to the qualifying cost categories can lead to errors in deriving the qualifying cost amounts.

"Furthermore, SME businesses are often ignored by larger professional services companies. At Knight R&D, we are able to identify the qualifying areas of activity and expense and unlock the full level of R&D credits."

Paul Billingham, Director at Knight CF, added: "The opportunity to partner with Rupert will allow us to provide a new opportunity to support clients' growth.

"The goal of Knight R&D is to help even the smallest start-ups across industries get the tax incentives and credits they deserve so their business can thrive."

Northampton is set to become the UK's next Gigabit City as CityFibre makes its 45km pure fibre network available to Northampton's business community via a partnership with local comms provider dbfb.

dbfb will offer gigabit speed Internet services to Northampton businesses up to 100 times faster than the UK's average.

dbfb have pledged an initial donation of £5,000 to the Cynthia Spencer Hospice for the first 50 connections, and will then donate £50 per business connecting to the new network thereafter.

Northampton County Council has already set targets to make superfast broadband available countywide by the end of 2017 in order to stimulate growth in the region.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said: "The council has shown its commitment to improving digital infrastructure and we hope that our investment will help Northampton reach its targets even faster.

"Pure fibre networks like these will one day be commonplace but until then, Northampton and its businesses will be able to enjoy a digital head start on the competition."

Brian Kingston, co-founder and Chairman of dbfb, said: "It is not every day you have the chance to introduce a product that will transform the way a business can operate - but this is one of those days! Gig Up Northampton!"

Metronet (UK) has agreed a partnership with wholesale voice and data communications provider Entanet for its wireless connectivity services.

Metronet (UK)'s wholesale wireless platform provides partners with an alternative to fibre in the ground. The platform offers reduced lead times, quicker revenue and no excess construction charges.

According to Entanet's Sales Director, Stephen Barclay, said: "In today's business market, customers place enormous importance on the availability of their connectivity. This is especially true where they're implementing a solution to new offices, or significantly upgrading their service to accommodate growing bandwidth requirements.

"In these instances, timing is everything, and the impact of delays and excess construction charges can seriously damage their project. Through our partnership with Metronet (UK), channel partners can deliver a cost-effective working solution to a customer fast, whether it be as a primary or interim connection."

The managed services industry is in a healthy state, but acknowledged the challenges as it evolves further.

Not least of these is how it finds the resources to support continuing growth, and establish the new language of sales based on business change rather than technology.

Two hundred MSPs heard a series of expert presenters at the Managed Services and Hosting Summit 2016 in London on September 21st point to this coming period of change.

Mark Paine - Research Director at Gartner, talked about a global MSP business of $256bn with over 100,000 MSPs globally competing in the marketplace.

But he also highlighted research which showed that the managed services model could mean a dramatic fall in consulting business for IT companies, as well as less training. For customers this means a financial gain, but MSPs must get used to selling more services to compensate.

Pulling in figures from Gartner's own survey of CIOs, he revealed that over two-thirds of enterprise customers plan to review and change their IT sourcing in the next two years, so competition is not going to get less.

It all means working far more closely with customers, Tiffani Bova of Salesforce.com had earlier told the audience. "Only technology can help customers get where they want to go," she explained and this meant MSPs being able to understand the markets and models better: "We need to get to the future before our customers do and welcome them when they arrive." The customer should always be your "true north", she explained and that customer experience is where the next sales battle will happen. There was no longer any separation in technology terms between B2B and B2C.

For many in the audience, the interest was in learning how other MSPs successfully built their sales and business models. It was all about getting scale, and using expertise in the right places.

MSP BlueChip's MD Brian Meredith came on stage to relate how his business was growing, working with backup specialist Falconstor, and that knowledge of the solutions at a business level was key.

"The role of MSP is to also lead customers into what is possible," agreed Tony Martin, Falconstor UK&I MD.

APC by Schneider Electric used the event to launch its new channel programme for MSPs - the first time the company had planned new offerings starting with channel discussions rather than new hardware, Maeve Fox, global channel strategy manager revealed in a busy session. It now has plans to continue to roll-out further systems to allow the MSP to take wider control of features around power and cooling, allowing the introduction of planned maintenance.

There were plenty of new opportunities for MSPs revealed on the day: disaster recovery as a service set to grow ten times in next four years- StorageCraft's European Marketing Director Ellen Marie Hickey told the meeting, and this can represent a new business stream worth millions to the average MSP.

Looking forward again, international standardisation body onem2m's Ultan Mulligan said how, with other groups, it is working on one common IoT layer but diversity and different technologies means that the many devices expected to be used, and around which MSPs are starting to build applications, are working different ways- "things will get worse before they get better," he warned, but advised the MSPs where to look for advice.

In an unusual step, the event brought in the Open University, which has very close links to the UK government cybersecurity initiatives whose new business head, Simon Tindall was able to point to the high level (£1.2bn) of funding support promised for cybersecurity training, some of which is starting to come through in to the industry. In a sector where skills are in very short supply, he pointed to courses, many of them free, which were turning out thousands with some level of expertise which the industry could build on. OU cybersecurity training courses can be licensed, added to and resold, he told an interested session.

Synergi has appointed IT professional Mike Brett as Support Team Leader, bringing more than 12 years experience in Microsoft technologies to the role.
 
He will lead and develop Gateshead-based Synergi's support team as well as take on day-to-day responsibility for the delivery of IT support services to customers migrating to new cloud-based Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint and Nintex technologies.
 
As a former SharePoint developer Brett's background fits well with Synergi which is driving the regional adoption of the next generation of IT business technology tools, including Office 365 and SharePoint, together with a range of specially designed business apps.
 
Peter Joynson, MD, said: "It'll be great to have Mike on-board at this time of growth and success for the firm. He will ensure our customers have the best possible ongoing care experience and help maximise their investment in modern technology, something that he has been delivering internally within his previous role."