Comms Dealer

Chris Pateman, CEO of the Federation of Communication Services, has welcomed today's CMS Select Committee report and urged Ofcom to implement its recommendations without delay.

"After years of Openreach's customers calling for fundamental reform, it's encouraging that the CMS Select Committee has come independently to the same conclusion," he said.

"FCS members focus on providing the crucial business-to-business connectivity that enables British companies to prosper, grow and trade.

"Our members' success and vitality is testament to the success of Ofcom's deregulation of the resale market. But it's clear from the report that we now need to see the same focus on liberalising the network and infrastructure level.

"We have already approached Ofcom with some robust suggestions for a more responsive and accountable Openreach.

"We're glad to see the Committee recommendations go further, including liberalising access to fibre backhaul.

"FCS believes this is the crucial key to deliver broadband to the ‘last 5%'. It should be up to communities and local councils to determine what levels of connectivity they need, and freeing up wholesale access to dark fibre and the lit fibre network is a crucial key to unlocking that empowerment.

"Ofcom should be encouraged by the Committee's helpful investigation, and move quickly to implement a new regime which will make Openreach more accountable and transparent, and open up the market to greater competition."

8x8 is expanding its international footprint with new investments in Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America to support growing demand from global and distributed mid-market and enterprise customers.

The move includes the addition of three new data centres in Singapore, The Netherlands and Brazil; full localisation capabilities (end user application and portal localisation) for an additional six languages - French (two dialects), German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese; and new support centres in the Philippines and Romania delivering 24x7 follow-the-sun support.

With this expansion, 8x8 will have a total of 12 data centres in eight regions of the world.

From a localisation perspective, 8x8 will support a total of 13 languages in addition to English for its desktop IVR services by the end of this calendar year, including Japanese.

The company is also opening new support hubs in the Philippines and Romania, bringing the total number of centres to seven.

"Our mid-market and enterprise customers demand the highest levels of quality of service with minimal latency across the globe," said Bryan Martin, Chairman and CTO, 8x8.

"These new investments will enhance our international footprint and better enable us to support the global and regional efforts of our customers, giving them the proximity to their data, local language capabilities, and follow-the-sun support."

Orpington-based Telecoms World provided the freephone number for the Ghostbusters main promotional campaign in the UK. The movie opened last month and was promoted at Waterloo station via a striking marketing installation (pictured).

The number also appeared on phone boxes across the country and callers were routed to a voice message from cast member Chris Hemsworth who plays the secretary at Ghostbusters HQ.

Sam Diamond, Director of Telecoms World, said: "Working with the Ghostbusters promotional team in the UK has been an adventure. With the majority of movies now being wholly promoted through digital channels it was refreshing to see the use a freephone number as a main point of contact."

The European rival to the Global Technology Distributors Council (GTDC), the Technology Channels Alliance (TCA), has been formally incorporated in Dublin and is looking to add members from both local and regional distributors across EMEA to share information, ideas and best practice.

The TCA is emphasising its regional nature and strengths, though current members' total revenues are well below the scale of the GTDC's European members.

Three former members of the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) are founder members of the TCA and will sit on the board of the EMEA-focused organisation.

Multi-regional distributors Westcoast, Exertis and Esprinet say they will work with the vendor community to help it understand and make full use of the benefits of working with local and regional channel partners across EMEA.

Robert Norum, chief executive of the TCA: "Our intention is to provide local and regional distributors in EMEA with a voice, and the TCA will represent the interests of local and regional channel players.

"We will be asking our members to sign up to a charter. They need to be professionally run, have a good reputation and be trustworthy to do business with. New members will have to be ratified by the board, but genuine technology distributors headquartered in EMEA will be welcome."

In addition to full membership for EMEA-headquartered distributors, there is also the opportunity for corporate resellers and retailers to join as associate members, and for distributors with headquarters outside EMEA to join as affiliate members.

"We don't want anyone to feel excluded. It is going to be a democratic organisation with a one member, one vote approach on key decisions," he said, adding that the TCA plans to establish a social charter and set up a charitable foundation with a portion of its member fees.

The organisation wants to run events, conduct research and produce case studies to help its members work more closely with vendors and each other to address issues and capitalise on local and regional opportunities.

A nine-strong team of Pennine Telecom staff are limbering up for Trekfest on 3rd-4th September, a tough 50km hike across the Peak District in aid of the Bury Hospice.

They aim to raise at least £1,000 for the charity. "We are all looking forward to the challenge, especially as we know that our efforts will ultimately benefit Bury Hospice, a cause which is close to many of our hearts," said team member Belinda McGee.

Trekfest is the latest charity effort from Pennine in support of the Bury Hospice. In 2013 the company gave a £20,000 boost when it waived its project management and installation fees when equipping the hospice with a new VoIP telephone system.

Claranet has bought-in website management skills with the acquisition of Ardenta for an undisclosed sum. Ardenta manages e-commerce systems and has particular expertise in high volume transactional database management. The Surrey-based company has established in 2001 and has annualised revenues of £6m.

Ardenta operates in a number of sectors but has a focus on media and e-gaming, and counts the BBC, ITV, Ladbrokes and William Hill among its customers.

The firm's co-founders, Neil Truby and Scott Hanson, will work alongside Claranet's senior management team to integrate the business.

Michel Robert, Claranet UK's MD, said: "Ardenta's experience with e-commerce systems and database management will complement our in-house expertise, leading to new and improved services for our customers.

"This acquisition represents the latest in a line of strategically important deals that we've made over the past two years across Europe."

Ardenta MD Neil Truby added: "There are considerable cultural and strategic similarities between Ardenta and Claranet and the move will allow us to capitalise on the economies of scale that moving into a larger company affords."

Exertis has forged a distribution agreement with Smartsign, a provider of software for digital signage.

Smartsign Manager is a packaged digital signage product that enables users to create, publish, deliver, schedule and display content on any platform and any device.

It has applications across vertical markets from corporate business to hotels, restaurants, transport, retail, healthcare and education.

Ian Aitken, Exertis, GM, AV, said: "Smartsign complements our existing LFD partnerships and our strategy for providing an end-to-end AV solution for our customers.

"For resellers and systems integrators, it's an opportunity to deliver a services wrap around their AV business and deliver digital signage as part of a cloud service offering that can provide content to their end user's display."

CityFibre has welcomed this morning's report from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee highlighting BT's underinvestment in UK digital infrastructure.

"CityFibre has campaigned for sustainable competition to Openreach and significant further investment in fibre infrastructure," said Mark Collins, Director of Strategy and Policy at CityFibre.

"As this report highlights, Openreach's legacy networks are not able to meet the requirements and demands of businesses, local government and consumers. Competitive investment in fit-for-purpose fibre infrastructure is now critical, and this need must be recognised and supported by both the Government and Ofcom.

"Ofcom's historical desire to regulate to lowest prices and devalue infrastructure investments must be curtailed.

"We need a regulatory and policy environment that underpins the building of new digital networks across the UK.

"A restructured Openreach will continue to have an important role to play in the future, but it cannot, and should not, anchor the entire UK broadband infrastructure alone.

"Its poor performance is testament to this. Today's report recognises the need to foster a competitive environment where the role of alternative network providers are encouraged and supported to ensure the UK's digital infrastructure is capable of meeting current and future demands."

Colt is targeting a new set of partners and ramping up its channel activity following a period of double digit growth via agents.

The man at the centre of this expansion campaign is James Kershaw, Sales Director, Indirect Channel at Colt Technology Services.

He joined Colt in 2010 and manages channel development across the firm's northern region. Previous roles include stints at Lixxus and Claranet.

Kershaw has witnessed, in particular, greater usage of Colt's core data and voice products. "When looking at data, 1Gb and 10Gb circuits are now the norm, and we are continuously helping more of our customers connect to cloud providers," he said.

"For voice, the migration to SIP/VoIP from traditional TDM has been significant year-on-year and, as well as immediate cost savings, customers have been able to utilise a wider range of features previously unavailable to them. These were the main contributors to the double-digit growth Colt has seen in its agent channel last year."

The channel market has seen a big shift, with customers increasingly wanting more consultancy and independent advice before signing up to a service.

"This is primarily due to digital transformation which has brought with it a myriad of companies offering a variety of services, creating more information to digest than ever before. So identifying the right partner is not always a straightforward task," said Kershaw.

Colt is hoping to attract resellers with the skills to help companies move to the cloud and digitally transform their businesses, as well as manage this process with IT services.

"Colt will enable partners to have a wider conversation with customers through a consultative service around their business challenges," stated Kershaw. "And help them to scope out a project based on a business outcome, not a piece of telecoms equipment or technology.

"These new agents will be able to support the business with the right storage, IT virtualisation and mobility operations alongside other solutions. Colt's high bandwidth network infrastructure will enable these information intensive businesses."

Voice and data networks are the key underlying parts of infrastructure that connect users to services. But the idea of a one-stop-shop can result in a 'jack of all trades supplier', according to Kershaw.

Colt's portfolio includes Software Defined Networks (SDN), Direct Cloud Access (DCA) and UC services.

Kershaw says many agencies have won a number of complex pan-European deals and significantly grown their customer numbers by selling services such as these.

"The agent model allows Colt to collaborate with customers on every level," noted Kershaw. "We must ensure that we can offer services to both our direct, larger and enterprise customers, as well as the vast number of SME accounts."

"Companies want support throughout a business project and not just to be provided with a product such as mobile working or just selling phone lines," he stated. "Companies are becoming less sensitive and loyal to a technology, but instead want a combination of solutions to their business problems."

The push for consultancy is also driven by large companies moving their infrastructure into the cloud, or starting new IT projects. They understand that this can't be handled in-house.

The roll out of Colt's consultancy model draws on experience gained in the US and Germany where a fresh channel approach has already been deployed.

"The agent model is well established in these two regions and it has shown us that, if executed and supported in the right way, it is an invaluable route to market for us as a supplier and the end customer regardless of their size," commented Kershaw.

"The 'sell with' model gets Colt closer to the end customers and allows us to better address the business need in every account, which means we can deliver a bespoke and relevant solution."

In the UK, the SME market accounts for 99 per cent of the operating businesses so companies like Colt need to adopt these types of agent models to increase their 'feet on the street' in order to grow the customer base.

"Due to the vast number of companies in the UK SME market, agents help Colt to address a far wider proportion of businesses as an extended workforce," said Kershaw.

"At almost every level a customer now has far higher expectations from vendors such as Colt. Gone are the days where providers can set the expectations when it comes to initial delivery time, support hours or communication methods.

"Businesses now need services in days, or even hours, rather than months. They want to make a change in real-time without order forms or, in some cases, talking to us. Providers that aren't evolving or listening to the new fluid generation of CTOs, CIO and COOs will miss this natural evolution."

New partners enter the 'Flying Start programme' which offers a combination of learning platforms and materials. Portals keep partners and agents informed on latest product releases, as well as educating them about related technical aspects that complement the product range.

Colt has also introduced new measures to increase customer retention and minimise churn, covering the various customer touch points and the output score is reflected in an agent's development plan. "Colt agents, or trusted advisors, only need to focus on customers, everything else is covered," said Kershaw.

A Manchester trade counter opened by distributor Nimans has exceeded growth expectations by 30% just a few months since launching.

The 10,000 sq ft unit in Trafford Park is managed by Geoff Wilde and Bob Hinder who boast more than 40 years combined data infrastructure industry experience.

"Demand has exceeded expectations and business is growing each day with a steady stream of new and existing customers arriving," said Wilde. "Our new stock profile is proving a big hit and has captured the imagination of customers."