Comms Dealer

Essex-based reseller Dataphone kicked its own disaster recovery plan into gear when its new offices in Hainault were flooded out during a storm early on referendum day.

"We all went out on a company outing on the day before the EU vote and came in on the big day to a flooded office, which had of course affected all the floor wiring and all the computers were down," explained MD Chris Wilce.

"Our engineers kicked in our DR plan straight away and we were up and running by the start of the working day.

"SIP is great because you can redirect it so quickly.

"Ironically we were celebrating moving into the new office after 25 years at our old premises in Riverside House next to the River Roding and we never got flooded there!"

Pictured: Wilce alongside the dehumidifiers drying out his new office.

Timico has made great strides to balance the number of males and females working in the technology sector.

The company has taken on 42 female recruits this year, representing 60% of all new starters.

Flying the flag for women in IT Timico has also joined forces with Microsoft as sponsor of the Women in Technology community within the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP). 

Last year saw 400-plus women from more than 30 countries share their experiences and explore how the IT community could change the male-female balance of the industry.

Lucy Butcher, Microsoft Alliances Manager at Timico, said: "The tech industry has been largely male-dominated but it’s inspiring to see a gender shift with more women coming into the industry from a range of different backgrounds.\"

Timico works with local schools and The Girls’ Day School Trust (a Timico client) to encourage young females to consider a career in technology or pursue STEM subjects. 

Contrary to press speculation BlackBerry is not backing away from BB10, stated COO Marty Beard.

"Our customers depend on the BB10 platform and they are the ones that drive our roadmap," he said.

"That is why we are committed to not just maintaining BB10 software, but advancing it to be more secure and provide greater productivity.

You'll see that with the next 10.3.3 update coming within the next month, which will be focused on enhancing privacy and security features."

Future BB10 software updates for 2017 are already 'in the works', explained Beard. "Meanwhile, BlackBerry 10 devices such as the BlackBerry Passport and Leap are still available to our customers," he said.

Chess Partner Services has formed a new distribution relationship with Vodafone UK effective August 1st 2016.

The deal sees Chess offer a wider range of airtime solutions to its partner base with a broader choice of tariffs, converged mobile, data and cloud solutions.

John Pett, MD of Chess Partner Services, said: "Chess is focused on growth and along with our recent IoT launch, Cloud PBX offering, wholesale and our own billing platform ebillz, we have a product set that gives us a strong foundation in the UK distribution marketplace."

Chess will host a series of webinars to help partners sell Vodafone’s range of products; and offer co-branded materials and promotions. 

Strategic Imperatives has been shortlisted in the Best Newcomer category at the 2016 international SaaS Awards for its Elevate telecoms platform.

The company goes up against contenders from North America, Australasia and EMEA.

Wail Sabbagh, MD at Strategic Imperatives, said: "SaaS technologies sit in an incredibly competitive global marketplace, so for Strategic Imperatives to be shortlisted reflects a huge achievement for the team and an endorsement of our billing as a service platform strategy.

"Previous winners of these prestigious awards include TalkTalk Business, British Gas, Dell, HP, Ubuntu and Redhat. We are honoured to have been recognised alongside these huge global names that are leading the revolution in cloud-based solutions to consumers and business customers."

Awards organiser Larry Johnson said: "We've welcomed a significant number of entries this year with a very high standard of submissions. To make the shortlist is an honour and a major achievement."

Final SaaS Awards winners will be announced on Tuesday 9th August 2016.

DMSL has signed-up more than 100 resellers for Virgin Media Business's ultrafast services in the first three months of working with the company.

It has also launched a new set of promotions with the aim of driving more interest and activity.

"Resellers have responded with enthusiasm to the Virgin Media Business ultrafast value proposition," said John Carter, Managing Director of DMSL.

"We are already building a healthy pipeline of business and helping resellers to get ahead of the game."

Skyscape Cloud Services has launched Skyscape Ideas, an online portal enabling customers to input their ideas directly and influence Skyscape's product development roadmap.

Simon Hansford, CEO at Skyscape Cloud Services, said: "We have a track record of evolving and improving our cloud platform to add the features that are most important to our community of users.

"We're always looking for innovation that delivers value to our customers and this portal will help us do that.

"It will make it easier for customers to provide the ideas and feedback that will directly influence future product development and what we deliver going forward."

In a move to simplify group activities TTG Global has disposed of its Indigo Telecom division and associated subsidiaries, enabling it to focus on the core businesses affini Technology and Simoco Group.

TTG Group CEO Mike Norfield said: "We have worked hard to develop Indigo and pass the business on to its new owners as a resilient, profitable and vibrant business, with significant growth prospects in its chosen telecommunications industry sectors.

"The increased focus that this allows TTG to give to its two core businesses is fundamental to driving long-term shareholder value."

Claranet has extended its reach into the French hosting market with the acquisition of Diademys, significantly expanding the company’s size and influence in the country. 

Diademys is based in Suresnes and Caen and has an annual turnover of 26m euros, employs 120 staff and works with 200 clients from a range of sectors.

Diademys represents the latest in a wave of acquisitions made by the company across Europe over the past 18 months.

The Group's annual revenues now stand at £192 million, employing more than 1,100 staff and working with 5,500 customers in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Diademys' CEO Fabrice Tetu said: "We are backing Claranet for a number of reasons. The company has an aggressive and innovative strategy and wide presence across Europe, but, critically, it has retained its independence and is able to be agile in the face of changing market conditions.

"Claranet's ethos matches that of our own and becoming part of the Claranet Group will bring significant opportunities for both our employees and customers."

Olivier Beaudet, CEO of Claranet France, added: "The acquisition is a real opportunity for Claranet to strengthen its position in the French hosting market.

"We now have nearly 400 employees in France, a turnover of 76m euros, and one of the broadest hosting portfolios in the country."

8x8 has been awarded three new patents relating to networked contact centres, data storage and conferencing, bringing its total number of patents to 121.

The patent associated with Networked Contact Centre is part of a family of four other patents with issue dates between 2008 and 2014 related to 8x8's Virtual Contact Centre architecture. This allows several platforms of networked contact centres to host multiple contact centre tenants, and ensures this data is handled securely within the architecture.

The User Configurable Data Storage patent enables various forms of data (voicemails, call recordings, and other captured data) generated by the user of an IP communications service to be propagated from a local server where the data is collected, to a remote server. It also updates a user's index to that data so it will now refer to the remote server.

The third patent describes one of the ways that local meeting content and data is shared with remote participants in a distributed conference session.