Comms Dealer

A staff BBQ hosted by Nimans raised £3,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support and included a wet sponge throwing contest that saw Sales and Business Development Director Richard Carter get a soaking.

Head of Sales Operations Mat Weall and Investors In People Manager Sue Goldfine were chefs for the day, feeding 150 staff at the firm's Manchester HQ.

John McKindland, Nimans' Head of Solutions Sales, has kicked off a fund raising campaign in aid of OUCH, a charity that helps Chronic Cluster Headache sufferers such as himself.

McKindland ran the Hull 10k on Father's Day and completed a similar event in Leeds. He has also signed up for the Bury and Sheffield 10k events this year.

"I have had a big lifestyle change over the last five months," he said. "I'm nearly two stone lighter, stopped smoking and decided to take up running again at the age of 50.

"OUCH is a charity that supports Chronic Cluster Headache sufferers like myself, a charity that has supported me over the last 13 years so this is my way of giving something back for the help they have given me.

"I just want to thank everyone for their support (moral, financial and humorous!). I finished the Leeds race with a personal best time and have so far raised around £600 thanks to the generous support of work colleagues which has exceeded my expectations."

If you would like to support John please visit: http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/JohnMckindland

Vodafone UK celebrated its 2016 Partner of the Year award winners at its annual partner conference at The Vox in Birmingham.
 
This year's winners are:
Total Communications Partner of the Year - Onecom
Fixed Partner of the Year - italk
Platinum Partner of the Year - Qualitel Voice and Data (part of Elitetele.com plc)
Gold Partner of the Year - Rock Networks
Silver Partner of the Year - Trinity Maxwell
One Net Business Partner of the Year - 4G Mobile and Data Ltd
 
Nick Birtwistle, Partners and Alliances Director at Vodafone UK, said: "We know that many of the UK's SMEs want to work with a local communications partner, which is why our partner channel is such a crucial part of our own business."
 
At the conference Vodafone announced more details about the new Partner Programme, due to go live early next year, with a focus on capability and customer experience.

A new suite of training and certification materials were unveiled to enable partners to make the journey to selling unified communications without having to invest in training themselves.
 
A new marketing toolkit was also launched, giving partners access to a range of marketing materials and tools.

Birtwistle added: "This is biggest level of investment we've seen in our B2B indirect channel, which combined with the launch of the new capability tiering allows us to emphasise our focus on delivering customer service."

Vodafone Partner Services has also adopted a more regional focus and recruited Jan Collins, Kathryn Platt and Oliver Lofthouse to head up Vodafone Partner Services in their own regions, overseen by Birtwistle.

ICT distributor Intelisys Global is ramping up its European and UK channel expansion programme with a London launch event on July 19th.

The Californian giant is aiming to establish an elite network of telecom sales and consulting professionals in Europe to sell telecom, connectivity and cloud services to business customers around the globe, with dedicated support in the UK.

"As telecoms providers and other service providers increasingly develop more mature end-to-end service portfolios, there is significant opportunity for end customers to procure services direct and the aggregation of these multiple provided services via a community of interest has enabled Intelisys to become the market leader in this space," said Stephen Hackett (pictured), Intelisys Global's lead in the UK.

"We view Europe as a sleeping giant in terms of our new channel model and the opportunity for the introduction of this two-tier services distribution model is hugely exciting."

Hats off to Exertis for collecting the Dell EMEA Security Distributor of the Year award. 

Jason Hill, Exertis' Security Sales Director, said: "Our working relationship with Dell Security is now in its 19th year and is testimony to our mutual belief in the success of a technology that has proven to be a winner when customer security is at stake."
 

M12 Solutions' superfast Internet brand Wessex Internet has collected ISPA's Best Wireless gong, beating Metronet, Luminet and Vodafone.

With 225km of its own fibre in the ground and over 175 masts and points of presence, Wessex Internet uses superfast fixed-wireless technology to deliver Internet speeds of up to 50 Mb/s wirelessly to over 1,200 homes and businesses in rural Dorset, Wiltshire & Somerset.

M12 Solutions/Wessex Internet MD Andrew Skipsey said: "To be recognised as being the best at what you do is a great feeling. We have a dedicated team who provide a great service and our fast growing network is making a difference to users and enterprises in the areas we serve in Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset."

Zest4's flair for turning market opportunities into business growth is reflected in the firm's relocation to new and bigger premises in Wilmslow, Cheshire.

The UC firm began its commercial life three years ago and is tapping into a rich of seam of opportunity in the M2M space following the launch of its partner programme earlier this year.

Mandy Fazelynia, Zest4's Operations and Business Development Director, said: "The move to larger premises is a reflection of our team's hard work. Our focus on M2M solutions will continue over the next 12 months."

IoT spending is on the up, driven by the promise of significant RoI and business transformation benefits, according to Vodafone's fourth annual IoT Barometer Report that found 89% of companies investing in IoT have increased their budgets over the last 12 months; while 76% believe that taking advantage of IoT technologies will be critical for the future success of any organisation.

The study also found that 63% of IoT adopters are seeing significant returns on investment, up from 59% last year.

IoT investment now accounts for 24% of the average IT budget, on a par with cloud computing or data analytics.

IoT technologies are playing a key role in mainstream business activities with 48% using the IoT to support large-scale business transformation, rising to 61% in the Asia-Pacific region.

More than half of consumer electronics companies questioned in the survey are using IoT technologies as the basis for a new generation of applications for connected homes; and 46% intend to develop new IoT-based products and services over the next two years. 

Vodafone Group IoT Director Erik Brenneis said: "Three-quarters of the companies we interviewed now recognise that the IoT is a new industrial revolution that will change how people work and live forever.

"Over 50% of the companies surveyed across multiple countries and sectors told us they're already planning to bring connected network intelligence to millions of devices and processes over the next two years. 2016 is the year the IoT entered the mainstream."

While the US may have the advantage of a huge single market for managed services, new international research shows that parts of Europe, especially the UK, are already seeing high returns on analysis of how data is used, and plan to drive this faster than the US.

92% of MSPs are not using data-driven automation strategies, and as a result, are missing out on benefits such as doubling servicing capacity, serving more complex IT estates as well as achieving 100% RoI.

This is the conclusion of analysis of the IT Service Management (ITSM) industry carried out by LOGICnow, part of the SolarWinds family.

It says data-driven automation is starting to change the course of global ITSM delivery. The majority of the market has already invested in collecting and using data on their customers' IT estates, with the remainder clearly planning to catch up.

A small minority has gone one step further and begun to use the data to power automated service delivery. These few are already enjoying dramatic competitive advantages and most importantly have already seen positive RoI.

The research also shows that of those that have not yet deployed data-driven automation strategies, 85% believe that doing so would offer them a competitive advantage, with some MSPs even saying that late or no adoption of automated processes will lead to them going out of business.

While it is currently a small minority, the returns they have seen are clearly setting them apart from the rest of the market - and the market is not planning to let them run too far ahead.

With the expectations of those who are yet to invest roughly matching the experiences of the few who already have, the chasing pack will not be disappointed.

This should in turn mean that adoption will accelerate as more and more service providers report the promise of data-driven automation being fulfilled.

Much of this will rely on the introduction of new data analysis skills into the workforce, and as the research showed, this is mirrored in account management and sales.

Recruitment priorities will need to be assessed and most likely changed, quite probably meaning investigating new sources of talent.

Once the tools and talent are in place, the next step is to alter the service provision itself. Service providers will need to examine their current service portfolio and identify where enhancements can be made and where the immediate wins are.

A roadmap for transitioning the remainder of the services then needs to be built, with a focus on realism and sensible prioritisation.

These enhancements then need to be reflected in new SLAs and KPIs. And then finally, this competitive advantage needs to be sold. This is potentially where the greatest shift occurs. Sales and marketing will need to learn new messages and how best to articulate them, who to target and how to promote the benefits of the new service.

This is as fundamental a change to the business as transitioning from break/fix to managed services - but potentially even more valuable.

This research led to a single conclusion: the ITSM industry is on the brink of an enormous shift. The importance of the use of data is widely accepted and the value of automating actions and recommendations is proven. Few changes in business computing are as dramatic as expected - the evidence so far suggests that data-driven automation is an exception.

Barracuda is transitioning to reflect the growth in managed services and security for Office 365 and its extensions.

Figures show revenues from subscriptions up 20% while appliances fall away. Earnings are up overall as the company returns to profit.

The importance of managed services has been reflected in internal structures with Jason Howells moving from running the UK operation to EMEA head of managed services.

He tells IT Europa that while the UK is the main base, it is seeing activity across the region with customers in France and moves in the Netherlands even without any focus.

New products announced in the US are coming to EMEA soon, and this will mean further stimulus. The company remains 100% channel focused,

The migration to Office 365 took many by surprise, he says, including Barracuda but it is engaged in working with both traditional resellers and the emerging MSP wave.

"For MSPs, integration is key and we are monitoring and working with the likes of ConnectWise and Autotask. The idea is to wrap other stuff to automate it and provide a total solution.

"We are seeing more action in all channels as we build the MSP community. The team in Europe will be expanded. But the emphasis will be on simplicity of engagement and fixed prices, although the conversations with channels are on sales messaging, marketing and getting security aligned with integrated products."

Barracuda is focusing on third-party cloud infrastructure and managed security service providers. Products aim to protect customers migrating to Office 365 and Azure as well as Amazon Web Services, with managed email security and managed next-generation firewall offerings.