Comms Dealer

Six Degrees Group (6DG) has raised over £17,000 for WeSeeHope at its fourth annual pub quiz. WeSeeHope provides support for children in southern and eastern Africa who have been orphaned or isolated by extreme poverty.

Organised as part of its CSR programme called Six Degrees of Hope, the quiz brings together teams from 6DG's suppliers, partners and employees.

Jonny Shanmuganathan, Director of UC and Data at 6DG and WeSeeHope Ambassador, said: "The event has become an annual highlight, and this year was a great success thanks to the largest turnout we have ever had."

Congrats to Phil Coley, Director of Yorkshire-based Duocall, who scooped a brace of prizes for best score and the longest drive at Union Street's first golf day staged at Moor Park golf club in Rickmansworth.

Ben Turner, Customer Service Manager for Premier Choice Telecom, won nearest the pin.

Vincent Disneur, Head of Sales and Marketing for Union Street, enthused: "I'd like to say a big thank you to all our channel partners for joining us and for making this such an enjoyable event."

Unify has appointed Luiz Domingos as Head of Product House for Software and Platforms. Domingos assumes responsibility for the entire Unify product portfolio as well as Atos' social collaboration technology blueKiwi.

Jon Pritchard, CEO, said: "When the time came to appoint a new Head of Product House, Luiz was the obvious choice given his successful role as Head of Development of Circuit, our first pure cloud offering, and his leadership in developing the OpenScape portfolio."

Domingos has spent more than 20 years managing product development teams in enterprise VoIP, UC, collaboration and contact centre platforms.

Domingos added: "We are already building a roadmap that meets the biggest issues facing companies big and small including cloud, BYOD, SaaS and the requirement to have all information available at any time."

Chris Wallace has moved from Gradwell to Swyx where he will operate as a Channel Account Manager, building on his already considerable 14 years experience in the IT and telecoms sector across technical and sales roles.

Wallace also worked at IT maintenance and support company Trisoft and IT distribution firm Bechtle.

TeleWare's newly appointed Senior Channel Manager for Mobile has already set about building strong commercial partnerships and driving incremental revenues.

Darren Rawlinson brings 17-plus years industry experience and has held senior and consultancy roles at Ingram Micro Mobility and Compare52. He has particular expertise working with mobile virtual network enablers (NVNE) and played a key part in the launch of MVNO IQ Mobile.

Rawlinson said" "Enthuse and educate is my belief and the way I like to work. It's important to me that the industry is constantly pushing forward and developing. TeleWare has been in the forefront of this."

TeleWare CEO Steve Haworth added: "Quality partnerships have a key role to play in growing and maintaining a successful business, they allow us to share insight, risk and development. We're in a growth phase and I believe Darren will play a key role further developing our partnership programme."

Andrew Set has joined Inclarity as Operations Director bringing 16 years telecoms experience to the firm.

Previous appointments include operational, commercial and leadership roles at Luminet, Redstone and Centrica Telecommunications.

"My key driver is to ensure maximum customer satisfaction and build a trusted relationship with our clients," said Set.

TelcoSwitch has added 15 years comms experience to its pool of industry knowhow with the addition of Paul Gibbs as Sales Director.

Previous roles include stints at MTV Telecom, Westcon, Veropath, Gamma and most recently HighNet.

TelcoSwitch launched late last year as a provider of turnkey open standards hosted telephony solutions and has since been busy recruiting channel partners with circa three resellers on-boarding every week.

Lee Reuben, COO, commented: "Paul joins the company during a period of rapid growth as we seek to consolidate our position within the market. Paul is well versed in the telecoms environment and has extensive knowledge within this arena."

Gibbs added: "As TelcoSwitch continues its journey, I look forward to using my skills and experience to capitalise on the great strides that have already been made and to drive the business forward."

The addition of two industry heavyweights has added significant leadership muscle to collaboration solutions provider sipsynergy.

Toby Gold has joined the firm as CEO and Tom Kelly has been named Chairman.

The duo are charged with accelerating the company's growth and customer base following a £2.75m investment from YFM Equity Partners (YFM).

Gold brings 25 years IT industry experience and has held management and executive roles at a number of hardware, hosting and cloud services companies. He joins from Dell Software where he was Director of Northern Europe.

He said: "As Tom and I take up our positions at the company, this new round of investment will enable sipsynergy to further expand its products. I can't wait to put all of my experience to great use as we continue enabling our reseller partners."

Kelly boasts over 30 years experience in the UK IT and communications channel, during which time he has held senior management positions in a number of organisations, including a 10 year stint as Managing Director of Logicalis UK, one of the UK's largest Cisco managed services partners.

Kelly added: "The company has its sights set on conquering the SMB space. We've created a cloud hosted solution which we're taking to market through a growing partner base of IT and telecoms resellers and managed service providers."

sipsynergy works closely with Cisco and has developed a white labelled UCaaS 'business in a Box' solution, enabling partners to deliver their own branded Enterprise class collaboration solutions to small to mid-sized businesses.

Nifa Vaz has joined Voiceflex to support and expand their community of partners in the South and South East.

Vaz will be responsible for recruiting new channel partners and account management with an emphasis on new business development, account retention and growth. She brings with her an established background and has 15 years’ experience in telecommunications, channel development

and account management, having spent a total of eight years at Swyx. She also held positions at Voiplicity Limited, Nimans and Weston where she was responsible for the growth and recruitment of new partner accounts.

Vaz commented: "I am excited to start a new challenge within Voiceflex and look forward to working with the team and its partners.\"

Paul Taylor, Sales & Marketing Director added: "Nifa’s valuable experience and industry knowledge has already made her a key addition to the channel sales team. I’m confident that she will play a key role in Voiceflex acquiring and supporting our partners and their growth opportunities.\"

Communications and IT services provider KCOM has been selected to deliver new communications technology for Bupa UK’s four contact centres and multiple satellite sites, supporting 1,500 staff members.

Over the next five years KCOM will work to simplify interactions with Bupa UK’s customers, enhancing the experience of staff and its customers. The new cloud-based system will use Interactive Voice Response (IVR) call recording, screen recording, social media integration and quality management. It will also introduce analytics into the contact centre, helping inform and streamline processes. This will mean faster, even more relevant interactions with customers.

The decision to move to a cloud-based service was taken to deliver greater flexibility and agility. A stringent service level agreement (SLA) will minimise downtime and ensure software is automatically updated. Using a cloud based system will also enable new service elements to be introduced over time as Bupa UK moves to an integrated digital contact service that allows customers to communicate with the company via all possible channels – phone, email, webchat etc.

"There are few occasions where customer service is more important than when discussing health issues. It was vital that the contact centre solution continued to put the customer first,\" said Bill Halbert, CEO, KCOM. "Bupa has built its leadership position on being focused on the customer and we are very proud to have been entrusted with making sure the technology continues to keep Bupa at the forefront of healthcare.\"