Comms Dealer

Solar Communications has acquired Essex-based Response Data Communications (RDC) for an undisclosed sum.

Solar is ShoreTel's largest partner outside of North America, while RDC is a ShoreTel Circle of Excellence Gold Partner and holds the vendor's Cloud Business Excellence 2016 award.

The acquisition adds a software defined (SD)-WAN platform and partnerships with Pure Storage, Rubrik, Nimble Storage, Balabit and Palo Alto, all boosting Solar's ambition in the cloud and managed services SME market.

RDC's MD Jason Evans and the business's employees will remain with the organisation.

John Whitty, CEO of Solar Communications, said: "RDC is a capable and exciting business with a talented team.

"Itsccombination with Solar will provide added depth to the business-enhancing services provided to both sets of customers.

"Following our acquisition of Armstrong Telecommunications in 2013, Solar has established the platform, people and services for growing the business organically. 

"Over the last 12 months the business has transitioned from its place as a telephone system reseller in the UK, into a fully managed service provider being at the heart of all ICT operations for its customers.

"This transformation has been enabled by the development of our managed services portfolio coupled with the strategic acquisitions, as well as the procurement and development of new technical services and product sets."

Evans, former owner and MD of RDC, added: "The time was right to take the next step.

"The introduction of Solar's telecommunications, WAN, cloud and managed services will allow us to provide a more comprehensive offering."

Pictured l-r: Jason Evans and John Whitty 

Ofcom's ruling to give Openreach greater independence and autonomy is a 'fantastic opportunity' for new broadband solution providers to make their voices heard, according to Jaime Fink, co-founder at Mimosa.
 
He noted that despite today's ruling the infrastructure problems facing the UK market that prevent the rollout of a nationwide next-generation broadband network still remain.

"This ensures that Openreach takes its strategies in new bold directions for the benefit of the UK marketplace," he said.

"Openreach must look at new technologies that can enable it to profitably deliver a sustainable broadband network.

"The company will have its eyes on the US where new market challengers, such as Google and Facebook, are selecting alternative broadband solutions like fixed wireless, to better connect their customers.

"The technology can deliver fibre-like broadband connectivity in any environment without the cost or disruption of its cabled alternatives."

Following Ofcom's proposals to make Openreach a distinct company within the BT Group Adept Telecom CEO Ian Fishwick said full separation was never an option given the complications of pension fund obligations.

"There are probably more ex-employees than employees and most worked before Openreach even existed," he said.

"So if you break off Openreach how do you decide what portion of the pension issue it takes with it?

"Many have been under the false impression that Openreach was a separate company with its own financial accounts. It never has been and it is amazing Ofcom has allowed this for so long.

"Perhaps the biggest issue is how the cash generated from Openreach's profits is used. Should BT be allowed to treat it as Group cash and fund areas like football TV rights, or should Openreach be forced to only spend its own cash on improving the UK's infrastructure? I sit firmly in the latter camp.

"Whether anything changes depends entirely on how this will be enforced. The devil is in the detail."

Ofcom's proposals to make Openreach a distinct company within the BT Group do not address the regulator's objective to reduce the country's dependence on Openreach and encourage essential investment in fibre, according to Mark Collins, Director Strategy & Policy at CityFibre.

"While correctly identifying Openreach as the principal source of the industry's dysfunction, it is hypocritical of Ofcom to focus on a restructured Openreach as a panacea," he said.

"Further debate and navel-gazing as to the appropriate structure of BT will continue to create a period of uncertainty at a time when the industry needs clarity, direction and competitive investment.

"Openreach has a critical role to play, but it is not prudent to entrust them with sole responsibility for our digital future."

Regulator Ofcom has stopped short of enforcing the sell-off of Openreach but said BT's infrastructure division should become a legally distinct company within the group that owns its own network, and has its own branding, culture and board of directors not affiliated to BT Group.

The new board will have a majority of non-executive directors, including the chair, and be appointed and removed by BT in consultation with Ofcom.

In Ofcom's proposed model Openreach should develop its own strategy and annual operating plans within an overall budget set by BT Group.

According to Ofcom's CEO Sharon White (pictured) these measures provide the benefits of independence and structural separation but without the time delays, complexities and costs of a sell-off.

White said: "We're pressing ahead with the biggest shake-up of telecoms in a decade to make sure the market is delivering the best possible services for people and business across the UK.

"Openreach will become a distinct company, legally separate from BT and obliged by law to act on behalf of all customers and the whole industry. Not just BT.

"The new Openreach board will have to take investment decisions as a matter of law and the decisions must work for the whole of the UK, not just BT.

"I understand why people see the attraction of selling off Openreach. It seems straightforward, but, for example, pension issues could take years to resolve. These new rules provide all the benefits of separating Openreach and can happen straight away, without delay.

"Ofcom will monitor the new Openreach and the flow of decisions and judge whether they are being taken in the interest of customers. If this does not deliver independence, faster broadband and better service we reserve the right to revisit a sell off.

"There needs to be more investment in fibre to the doorstep, with engineers arriving on time and doing the job first time."

In February Ofcom made it easier for telecoms providers to invest in competing infrastructure by improving access to Openreach's network of telegraph poles and its ducts.

On 31st July new rules come into force that will give telecoms providers further rights to access physical infrastructure. These measures are designed to reduce the cost of deploying broadband networks by sharing access to infrastructure across different sectors.

In February Ofcom also announced a range of measures to ensure that all phone and broadband companies provide service quality that customers expect. Since then the regulator has taken more steps to improve services, as well as boosting coverage, such as automatic compensation and easier switching.

Ofcom has also set out stricter minimum requirements for Openreach to repair faults and install new lines more quickly. From next year, Ofcom will publish tables on communications providers' quality of service, showing the best and worst performers on a range of measures.

Ofcom will introduce coverage checkers by address, providing information on mobile and broadband coverage by individual address, not just postcode.

Ofcom's plans come after last week's CMS Select Committee report criticised Openreach for its poor the quality of service and BT's under investment into the UK's digital infrastructure.

Enterprise applications specialist Unit4 is buying Munich-based prevero, a provider of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) solutions.

prevero has more than 4,000 international clients, and is a privately held company with customers including organisations such as ABB, Audi, BMW, Endemol, Heidelberg, Konica-Minolta, Mercedes, SwissLife and Swisscom.

prevero's offerings aim to complement Unit4's business solutions for services organisations, enabling customers to model service delivery around insightful strategic and operational data.

"As services organisations face increasing pressure to drive organisational transformation across all functions, CPM and BI are critical to successful strategy execution," said Stephan Sieber, CEO of Unit4.

"This is particularly true for services organisations that need to find new service models and revenue streams. Through intelligent enterprise solutions they can become more strategic and ensure efficiency and excellence in execution."

Alexander Springer, prevero's co-founder and CEO, added: "More than ever, services organisations are looking to optimise the performance of their often over-complex financial planning, budgeting and forecasting processes.

"They are also looking to drive that same kind of insight down to all facets of the organisation. As part of Unit4, we will improve our ability to bring these capabilities to organisations globally."

http://www.unit4.com/about/news/2016/07/unit4-acquires-prevero

Skyscape Cloud Services scooped the VMwarevCloud Air Network (vCAN) Partner of the Year award in recognition of its contribution to VMware's UK market performance. 

"Skyscape has a long and successful track record of working closely with VMware to design, build and manage complex cloud platforms that meet the very specific needs of UK public sector organisations," said Simon Hansford, CEO of Skyscape Cloud Services.

VMware is a key member of The Skyscape Cloud Alliance, which brings together best-of-breed technology vendors.

Since its foundation in 2011, Skyscape has scaled to become one of the largest cloud platforms built on VMware and its latest next-generation cloud platform is leveraging the latest VMware technology, including VMware NSX.

The company has also built up in-house VMware technical expertise in order to deliver innovative cloud services to the UK public sector.

US technology magazine CIOReview has named Content Guru as one of its Most Promising Contact Centre Solutions Providers 2016.

The annual listing positions Content Guru and its storm Communications Integration platform as one of the 20 leading worldwide providers of contact centre technology.

Sean Taylor, CEO of Content Guru, commented: "We are proud to once again be recognised by CIOReview's panel of experts, after having been listed as one of its 20 Most Promising Unified Communications Solution Providers in 2015 and 50 Most Promising Utilities Technology Solution Providers the year before.

"Content Guru has over a decade of experience in providing mission-critical cloud contact centre services to thousands of organisations across a variety of sectors.

"Delivering a great customer experience is key to the success of any organisation and, with the proliferation of channels and devices over recent years, consumers now expect to communicate however, whenever and in whichever they want.

"To keep up with the increasing expectations of this new multi-channel consumer, the humble contact centre has rapidly transformed into today's customer engagement hub, and disruptive technologies, such as WebRTC, are only set to further change how customers and businesses engage with each other on a daily basis."

Intelisys Global, a subsidiary of Intelisys Communications, has announced the addition of Equinix to its Supplier Partner portfolio.

An Intelisys Communications Supplier Partner since August 2014, Equinix is one of the first Supplier Partners to extend its contract to Intelisys Global, allowing it to expand its relationship to Intelisys Global's Sales Partners in the UK and Europe.

"There's an adage all sales professionals are familiar with, and that is that it is easier to sell to the customers you already have than to find new ones," said Jay Bradley, Intelisys President.

"In some ways, it applies to exactly what we're doing here with Intelisys Global - we're taking solid, successful partnerships and extending them into new geographies, enabling a whole new community of Sales Partners to gain agnostic access to the world's carriers and vendors in the telecommunications, connectivity and cloud industries."

Purple, the intelligent spaces company, has partnered with Wi-Fi services provider Haptic Networks, a specialist in public access Wi-Fi with deployments in the town centres of Wallingford, Oxfordshire and Northampton.

Purple has expertise in social Wi-Fi, analytics and marketing, with deployments in over 70 countries.

Its 'Intelligent Spaces' approach provides real-time analytics and marketing for venues and businesses that want to engage with visitors, optimise the use of physical spaces, and utilise the wireless infrastructure to generate ROI.

Purple first joined forces with Haptic Networks to provide Wi-Fi services to Moray Council in Scotland and the King's Cross Public Wi-Fi contract in London.

Following various high profile wins in the leisure, hospitality, healthcare and public spaces vertical sectors, Haptic Networks has achieved Certified Partner status with Purple. It is now operating across UK, EU and UAE, offering secure, family-friendly Wi-Fi with data collection for analytics and reporting functions.

Gavin Wheeldon, CEO at Purple, said: "Our partnership with Haptic Networks has already proved to be a success with joint contracts delivered and a range of upcoming opportunities.

"Our two teams are closely aligned in terms of our approach to services and our vision of the market. We look forward to building a successful long term relationship."

Mark Bartley, CTO at Haptic Networks, added: "We selected Purple primarily due to its approach to data ownership. We believe that customers providing Wi-Fi services to their visitors and residents should have full access and control of any data collected through the service rather than this data being retained by the service provider."