Comms Dealer

Isle of Man business Manx Telecom has reported a dip in H1 revenues, posting £39.2m compared to £39.8m in the first six months of 2015.

Profit before tax rose slightly to £8.3m (H1 2015: £8.2m).

Data centre revenues were down 15.7% due to a decline in low margin kit sales and customer consolidation; but global solutions revenues showed strong growth of 12.4%.

Fixed line, broadband and data revenues rose 1.3% driven by take-up of high speed broadband.

A 4.7% rise in mobile revenues was offset by lower roaming charges.

Gary Lamb, CEO, said: "We have had a solid six months of trading which saw the group continue to make progress with its strategic objectives and perform in line with the board's expectations.

"Demand for superfast broadband and the increased speeds offered by 4G mobile services continue to grow and help drive growth in our cash generative core.

"We recently introduced 4G roaming to our customers as well as trialling superfast 4G+ during the summer period.

"We will continue to explore new ways to grow the business by leveraging our mobile technology platform and we are confident in the long term outlook for the business."

Hats off to UKCloud (formerly Skyscape Cloud Services) which topped 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.

The Farnborough-based cloud services provider scooped first place following an annual three-year sales rise of 262.66%; followed by IT services provider Roc Technologies in second place having scored a 221.18% hike in sales.

Virtus Data Centres was ranked 16th with 133.57%; while Cloudreach took 23rd position having registered 111.98%.

Other notable tech firms in the listing include Redtail Telematics (29th, 106.32%); IT consultancy Focus Group Europe (33rd, 98.35%); IT services provider Ideal Networks (47th, 77.66%); 48th spot went to Managed 24/7 (76.79%); Cloud Technology Solutions appeared at number 52 with 72.38%; CSP essensys was ranked 77th with 50.76%; Channel Telecom scooped 78th place having generated a 50.50% sales increase over the measured period; 80th position went to IT Lab on 49.49%; Cloud Distribution came 83rd with 48.74%; 85th - Edenhouse on 47.78%; Hutchinson Networks took 88th place with 46.98%; and IT services provider Littlefish came 97th with 44.63% sales growth.

telent's networking capabilities and portfolio of solutions and services have been significantly bolstered following the acquisition of Richardson Eyres.

The acquired company brings a 30 year technology heritage and specialises in data centre infrastructure solutions and services for large organisations in the UK and Europe including banks, pharmaceutical companies, law firms, construction companies, software, retail and online businesses.

The deal also adds multi-vendor capabilities and bolts on a base of engineers.

Mark Plato, CEO of telent, stated: "With increasing numbers of customers moving to the cloud and requiring more virtual and flexible technology, this acquisition broadens our offering and extends our reach particularly within the ICT space.

"It also offers Richardson Eyres' clients access to telent's capabilities and expertise."

The deal follows telent's acquisition of Arqiva's Secure Solutions Business in October last year and its earlier purchase of Telindus in 2014.

Violin Memory reported Q2 revenue ($7.5m) 23% lower sequentially and 51% lower compared to the prior year period along with a $0.59 loss per share. Shares fell by nearly 40% after the report.

CEO Kevin DeNuccio on an earnings call said: "This quarter's performance is obviously frustrating and disappointing as we strongly believed it could be the quarter that returns revenue upward after a downward trend for more than a year.

"Both of our international theatres in the EMEA and APAC had difficult product sales in the quarter. The international markets alone could account for a short fall from expectations."

Nimans has tied up a deal with BT to become the incumbent's exclusive UK high street distributor for consumer telephones and baby monitors across the UK.

The agreement marks a 30 year trading relationship between the companies and includes BT's 8500 Premium Nuisance Call Blocker.

Richard Carter, Group Sales and Business Development Director at Nimans, said: "This represents a significant step forward in our relationship with BT. We have moved from being a minor distributor in 1985 to its number one partner in 2010 and now the exclusive distributor in 2016 for this area."

Nimans has added the Storno range of licensed radios to its two-way radio communications portfolio, offering resellers an entry level springboard into what the distributor claims is a market worth millions.

"Radio communications are being hailed as the missing piece in the comms jigsaw, combining advanced technologies with rich untapped revenue streams of over £40m this year alone," claimed Gary Redshaw, Radio Communications Category Manager at Nimans.

"We've sold two-way radios for many years but now offer more powerful licenced equipment that can communicate over much longer distances.

"Today's modern solutions offer full integration with telephone systems and perform many seamless functions not available via other devices.

"There's a perception that two-way radios are yesterday's technology limited to niche markets, but that's not the case. From leisure centres and shopping malls to warehouses, car parks, building sites and schools, demand is on the rise. Two-way radios are the final piece of the comms puzzle."

Nimans supplies licenced and licence free equipment offering Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) and Private Mobile Radio (PMR) devices. The distributor stocks brands such as Hytera, Icom and Motorola.

GCI has been accepted on to the eighth iteration of G-Cloud through which it will offer a range of services across SaaS, IaaS and Specialist Cloud Services (SCS) lots on the framework.

Newly-listed services bring additional capability and will enable public sector bodies to take advantage of hybrid cloud models and access the full suite of GCI's cloud-based unified communications(UC), compute and storage services.

These include Skype for Business, Microsoft Office 365, Contact Centre, end-to-end cloud migration services and GCI's highly-resilient, enterprise-grade UK secure IaaS solution.

Another new addition is Microsoft Azure virtual machines that allow organisations to take advantage of public cloud, quickly test and deploy applications and flexibly meet changing storage and disaster recovery requirements.

Jon Seddon, Head of Product at GCI, said: "Our adherence to cloud security principles and ongoing investment in ISO 27001 and 9001 means that we are capable of holding data at OFFICIAL and OFFICIAL SENSITIVE levels, meeting the added security sensitivities of the public sector."

Mike Ayres, Chief Commercial Officer at GCI, added: "The public sector is making good headway in its move to cloud services, helped in no small part by procurement frameworks like G-Cloud. At the last count, the framework had amassed more than £1.2bn in sales since it was established in April 2012, which is a significant achievement."

A significant majority of sales professionals say their jobs are made easier by the efficiencies and support provided by IT.

In a survey by RingCentral and Censuswide 80% of respondents experience a slicker sales process while 90% cited the support they receive from IT as a telling factor.

Sahil Rheki, UK MD of cloud comms provider RingCentral, commented: "The relationship between sales and IT is integral to business efficiency and these stats demonstrate how vital the IT department is to sales teams."

More than half of the survey's respondents also see the IT department as a business improvement operation, introducing new IT processes and infrastructures.

"With the rise of team collaboration and off premise cloud networks, KPIs for IT teams are evolving from reducing downtime to boosting efficiency and supporting the sales, marketing and operations departments," added Rheki.

Cradlepoint, a 100% channel focused provider of cloud-based network solutions, has invested £4m in its EMEA HQ at West Byfleet and will bolster its existing team with newly created sales, marketing, operations and channel roles in a bid to expand its EMEA business via the IT channel. "In the last year alone, Cradlepoint has seen its growth in EMEA business double," said Hubert Da Costa (pictured), Vice President of EMEA, at Cradlepoint.

"This rapid growth is set to continue in the coming year as firms across the region embrace cloud, mobile, and IoT technologies to increase their business agility, empower distributed workforces and gain operational insights.

"As a result, an increasing amount of enterprise network traffic is moving off private IP networks and onto the public Internet. Now is the right time to invest so that we can not only grow the business, but make a difference to the customers we already serve."

Cradlepoint's HQ will house a Solution Centre to demonstrate its solutions including the NetCloud platform which enables companies to deploy private cloud networks over wired and wireless broadband Internet services for branch, mobile workforce, vehicle and IoT networks.

Channel facing Juniper Bridge reports it is rebranding and transforming its business from a managed technical support service to an innovative software business.

The company says it has developed its software solutions beyond managed technical support to provide customers with a self-service platform, JuniHub, transforming how resellers can manage their complete connectivity footprint by putting control into their clients’ hands.

Within JuniHub resellers will be able to utilise network monitoring software that rapidly identifies network outages for clients so that they can proactively analyse and resolve performance issues. The software also detects circuit, router and end user problems, significantly reducing business costs.

Clients will also be able to manage customer interactions with a fully integrated ticketing system that captures emails, tasks and call recordings improving end-user customer experience. Other services available will give resellers access to zero touch provisioning of their routers and devices, logistical support and 24/7 technical support team to their end users.

Juniper Bridge Founder, Steve Larkin, commented: "2016 has been landmark year for Juniper Bridge and we’re excited to see how we can help clients in the channel leverage our new solutions to deliver cost savings and operational efficiencies.\"