Comms Dealer

The Agent headset range - first introduced in 2002 as an entry-level alternative to the established brands - has undergone another series of updates to include additional specifications and connectivity options.

The more popular models incorporate enhanced noise cancelling and speaker technology housed in lightweight designs. And the headset maker believes that its 2018 models will increase Agent's appeal to businesses across all market segments and add more big names to its existing line up of major brands which includes Boots, Virgin, Capita and Thomas Cook.

The Agent range has also secured a strong foothold in the reseller market, establishing a niche among cost-conscious businesses that don't want to compromise on features and functionality, said the firm.

Agent's try-before-you-buy policy has also proved popular among its users.

Cisco completes acquisition of BroadSoft.

The plan is to join BroadSoft's open interface and standards-based solutions primarily delivered via Service Provider partners, with Cisco's existing portfolio.

The combined company will offer solutions for businesses of all sizes which will be delivered through VAR and Service Provider partners.

Former BroadSoft CEO Michael Tessler and his organisation are joining Cisco's Unified Communications Technology Group led by Vice President and General Manager Tom Puorro, under the Applications Group led by Rowan Trollope.

According to reports Vodafone has entered into talks with cable firm Liberty Global to acquire certain European assets.

US-based Liberty, which owns Virgin Media, is a TV and broadband company operating in more than 30 countries worldwide.

Vodafone and Liberty Global first entered into talks in 2015 but they came to nothing.

Nuvias' UC Practice, formerly SIPHON, has added audio solutions from Revolabs to its UC product line.

The move gives Nuvias partners access to Revolabs and Yamaha UC technology and augments Nuvias' offering in the Microsoft market via Yamaha's YVC-1000MS Skype for Business-certified speakerphone.

Revolabs, a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha Corporation and part of the Yamaha UC department, provides audio solutions for unified communications, enterprise collaboration, and professional audio applications.

Nuvias UC also intends to focus on other Revolabs products, including the Revolabs FLX UC 500, FLX UC 1000, and FLX UC 1500 USB conference phones; and the Yamaha CS-700 video sound collaboration system.

Mitel has signed a distribution agreement with Westcon-Comstor to push its portfolio of on-site and cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions into the German market.

They will initially focus on the mid to large-sized enterprise market for on-site solutions, with Westcon-Comstor 'gradually' expanding its reach into Mitel's cloud-based offering.

Data privacy concerns are causing significant sales cycle delays for up to 65% of businesses worldwide, according to the findings in the new Cisco 2018 Privacy Maturity Benchmark Study.

In addition, the study shows that privacy maturity is connected to lower losses from cyberevents -  74% of privacy-immature organisations experienced losses of more than $500,000 last year caused by data breaches, compared with only 39% of privacy-mature organisations.

Privacy maturity is a framework defined by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and is based on Generally Accepted Privacy Principles (GAPP).

The study surveyed nearly 3,000 global security professionals in 25 countries regarding their privacy maturity and any effects of data privacy on their business. A surprising two-thirds of respondents indicated that data privacy was causing delays in their sales cycles, with an average estimated delay of 7.8 weeks.

The pending May 2018 enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the new law enacted to increase protections of European Union (EU) citizens' privacy and personal data, might also be a factor in these delays.

Customers are increasingly concerned that products and services they buy provide appropriate privacy protections. GDPR's provisions apply to any company that processes, stores, or uses this data.

Respondents were asked to assess their current privacy maturity level, according to the standard AICPA model, which defines five privacy maturity levels: ad hoc, repeatable, defined, managed, and optimised.

The study found that the average sales delay for those with ad hoc maturity was 16.8 weeks, but delays decreased for businesses with higher privacy maturity levels.

Businesses with optimised privacy processes reported 3.4 weeks of sales delay, which is an 80 percent reduction compared to ad hoc organisations.

Geography and industry also appear to play a significant role in the length of delay, said Cisco.

SAP has revealed its biggest acquisition in more than three years, scooping up US-listed Callidus Software for an enterprise value of $2.4bn.

It comes as the company reported earnings for Q4, generating sales of €6.8bn in the period.

SAP's new cloud bookings, a keenly watched metric for future sales growth, grew 31% at constant currencies.

Qumulo and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are to extend their partnership to deliver Qumulo File Fabric to HPE customers in EMEA.

The US headquartered company, which is on track to more than double its year-on-year growth, will offer Qumulo File Fabric (QF2), a scalable file storage system that runs in the data centre and in the public cloud.

The company has appointed seasoned leadership in the EMEA region - Thore Rabe and Stefan Radtke. Thore will serve as Qumulo's Vice President/General Manager, EMEA. Stefan will serve as Qumulo's Technical Director, EMEA. Thore previously held the position of EMEA Vice President of Dell EMC Isilon and Stefan previously served as EMEA CTO at the same company.

Qumulo will open offices in the UK and Germany to service market demand. It will also open a 24/7 support centre in the UK to accompany the existing centres it has across two-time zones in the US. Additionally, a growing ecosystem of channel partners is joining including Qvest and ConCat in Germany and Gegobyte and Escape Technology in the UK.

In June of 2017, Qumulo joined the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Complete program so that validated HPE and Qumulo solutions became available from HPE and its resellers.

Downing-backed Kao Data has opened the doors to the first of four planned data centres at its campus in Harlow, Essex. On completion the £200m campus will support an IT load of over 35MW across 150,000 square feet of technical space.

Tech Data's Miriam Murphy has stepped in as SVP for Advanced Solutions in Europe, taking over from Graeme Watt who leaves the company on January 31st to become CEO of reseller Softcat.

Murphy joined Avnet TS in 1999 and has held a number of senior roles including SVP of Enterprise Business Group for EMEA and SVP for the North Region in EMEA. She was most recently SVP for the Benelux region, a role she occupied since Tech Data acquired Avnet's Technology Solutions business a year ago.