Comms Dealer

Entanet has published an open letter to the Rt Hon Theresa May MP, who will today take over as Prime Minister, urging her to replace current Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, Ed Vaizey MP, with someone who has the ability to understand the communications industry from a technical perspective.
 
In the letter, attributed to Entanet's Head of Service, Neil Watson, the company states that, in its view, Mr Vaizey has not been effective due to a lack of experience, and notes that even his own website describes him as being more oriented towards the arts than technology.
 
It goes on to suggest that Baroness Joanna Shields might be a suitable choice for the post.

"Her experience of technology - which includes everything from streaming video and audio, network storage, online marketing, social media and latterly championing the social responsibilities of the Internet as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Internet Safety and Security - suggests to us that she has the abilities necessary to continue to pioneer digital technology within the United Kingdom."

SAS has extended its partnership with The Voice Factory (TVF), bringing its UC platform 'on-net' to its hybrid networking portfolio.

TVF's hosted UC solution provides local numbers in over 63 countries and is based on the latest BroadSoft platform.

TVF Director Paul Harrison said: "The market is demanding cloud solutions that need to remain 'fit for future' and secure, but must provide predictability of costs and services for many years to come."

Charles Davis, CEO at SAS, added: "The requirement for on-premise UC solutions is becoming the preserve of larger enterprise customers.

"Most customers are looking for cost reductions and increased functionality, so there is a growing demand for robust global UC that allow corporate telephony to move securely to the cloud."

Network infrastructure services (NIS) adoption has increased as customers invest in IT transformation initiatives, leading to a 5.4% yr/yr rise in NIS revenue for benchmarked vendors, according to TBR's 1Q16 Network Infrastructure Services Benchmark.

NIS segments grew in 1Q16 as customers shift focus to modern hardware and holistic business outcomes, it says.

Product-centric vendors maintained their lead over their services-centric counterparts, increasing their revenue contribution from 69.4% in 1Q15 to 70.4% in 1Q16.

The rise in open hardware and customer initiatives to gain holistic business outcomes from a single install are key reasons for this advantage.

However, as the market shifts to cloud-based models and vendor lock-in concerns increase, TBR believes services-led NIS vendors will, in the long term, challenge product-led vendors' footholds, causing a shift in market share in favour of services-led vendors.

TBR believes the competition between product- and services-led vendors will transform into co-opetition as market consolidation intensifies.

For example, in 1Q16 Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) each announced deals to divest their respective professional services arms.

TBR believes Dell's and HPE's divestitures and the overall trend of market consolidation will bring about increased partner activity, as product-centric vendors such as Dell and HPE will require services-led vendor partnerships to provide customers with holistic business outcomes.

Consolidation is effectively leading to some vendors having a services specialty, creating co-opetition opportunities.

"NIS market consolidation is increasing, altering the competitive balance within the market," said TBR Senior Analyst Krista Macomber.

"As product-led vendors such as Dell and HPE vacate the professional NIS market in favour of maintenance and deployment services, and customers increasingly desire more complex infrastructure, co-opetition will be necessary to address customer demands and stimulate revenue growth."

According to TBR's 1Q16 Network Infrastructure Services Benchmark, all NIS segments experienced growth in the quarter.

Maintenance services remained the top performing segment, growing 7% year-to-year, and contributed 50% of overall NIS revenue for benchmarked vendors, making it the largest NIS revenue contributor.

TBR believes as customers transition more of their businesses to modernised solutions, NIS vendors will have an opportunity to increase share of wallet with add-on consulting and outsourcing services, as complex and customised deployments will require more vendor-customer collaboration, and increase professional services' share of NIS revenue.

The Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) has added ELKO Group and TIM AG as its newest members in the EMEA region, and appointed Westcon Group CEO Dolph Westerbos to the organisation's Executive Committee.

GTDC CEO Tim Curran said: "We recently hosted our most successful conference ever in Europe and feel very good about the additions of ELKO and TIM to our EMEA membership.

"Dolph's channel and industry knowledge will be of great value as we build on our commitment to supporting the success of our members and the distribution industry worldwide."

A growing number of contact centres are wising up to the financial and productivity benefits of home working, according to a new survey from the UK Contact Centre Forum.

Almost 60% of contact centre operators in the survey employ home workers/agents, and 69% say it creates happier and more productive employees, while 74% believe it enables them to schedule staff more flexibly to meet expected customer contact volumes, while giving employees a better work life balance.

"Interest in contact centre home working has never been higher, and our survey clearly shows why," said Trevor Butterworth, CEO of the UK Contact Centre Forum.

"Employers responding to our survey pointed to huge benefits in terms of cost savings, productivity and enhanced employee engagement, while the vast majority of home agents are clearly happy swapping the advantages of office working for the work-life-balance benefits of home working."

Sabio has moved into acquisition mode following a multi-million pound investment from Lyceum Capital along with £30m funding to help it double in size over the next three to five years. Lyceum's investment builds on Sabio's average 25.4% annual international sales growth for the last two years. Sabio's COO Andy Roberts becomes CEO while Lee Shorten continues as Chairman.

Sabio's team of founding directors - Paul Began, Adam Faulkner, Sebastian Henkes and Kenneth Hitchen - remain invested in the business and will support the company in its next phase of growth.

"Partnering with a growth investment specialist firm makes sense for Sabio at this stage in our development as it gives us access to both the funds and expertise we need to accelerate our growth strategy," commented Roberts.

"How organisations engage with their customers has never been more critical, and there's a clear international demand for a technology specialist such as Sabio that can help businesses to close the gap between digital and traditional customer contact channels.

"It's an opportunity where Sabio can add value for our customers and, with Lyceum's support, we're looking to double our business over the next three to five years and establish Sabio as the dominant player in our market."
?"Sabio is particularly well placed to help organisations, both in the UK and internationally, as they evolve to meet the changing demands of today's increasingly mobile and socially connected customers," added Simon Hitchcock, Partner at Lyceum Capital and leader of the firm's Sabio investment team.

"Sabio is at the heart of this transition and is the kind of high quality, fast growth business that will strengthen Lyceum Capital's portfolio of technology services businesses."

The countdown to Gamma Ball Rally V has begun with 35 teams preparing to converge on Dover (14th September) for the three day event that kicks off with a 'best dressed' competition.

Overnight stops are planned in Brussels and Bonn, with a day out at the Nürburgring and a treasure hunt along the Rhine River.

The spending cap for each car is £500.

The final evening will be celebrated with a black tie gala dinner where the Auction of Promises will also take place.

Event sponsors include BroadSoft, Polycom, Akixi and Genband).

Richard Bligh, Chief Operating Officer at Gamma, said: "Now into its fifth year we're proud of the reputation the rally has built up across the channel. It's a great opportunity for our channel partners and sponsors to enjoy themselves while raising lots of money for two great charities - Action Through Enterprise and SpecialEffect. The money raised makes a huge difference to these charities."

All proceeds raised from the rally will be donated to the nominated charities, this includes team entry fees, sponsorship, auction bids and donations.

Russell Attwood, Chief Executive Officer at Unify, said: "We really enjoyed taking part in the Gamma Ball Rally last year and can't wait for this year's event. It's great to spend time with so many like-minded people, having fun and raising money for such good causes!"

Over 60 IT and business professionals joined Content Guru, Vapour Media and Spearhead Interactive for an evening of innovation at the White Cloth Gallery in Leeds to learn more about the latest advances in business communications.

Guests had the opportunity to see how WebRTC technology can be seamlessly incorporated into the contact centre to enable organisations to increase internal efficiencies through engaging more effectively with customers using enhanced web collaboration, voice-to-browser communication, and encrypted video conferencing.

Participants also had the opportunity to immerse themselves in virtual reality with Spearhead's futuristic headsets as well as texting, calling and emailing Content Guru's multi-channel drinks ordering service, storm BAR, to order a range of complimentary drinks, from local Yorkshire ales to Italian wines.

Tim Mercer, CEO of Vapour Media, who gave a keynote presentation about the emergence of new technologies on the night, commented: "We were delighted to see such a fantastic turnout at this event and to have the opportunity to work with a wide breath of technology innovators, who collectively demonstrated how emerging technologies are set to rapidly change the way businesses and consumers interact over the next few years."

Martin Taylor, CMO of Content Guru, commented: "Technological advances continue to accelerate at an unprecedented rate and here at the White Cloth Gallery we've seen some fantastic examples that are ready for businesses to use today.

"WebRTC is absolutely transformative - as everyone will see over the next few years - and we're delighted to have been able to support Vapour Media with an early demonstration of how the storm platform is already ushering in this next era of customer engagement."

Zerto has appointed Jason Cowie as its new Senior Director of Global Partner and Channel Sales.

Cowie will be responsible for managing the expansion of Zerto's channel sales team through the enablement and support of technology, resale and cloud service provider partnerships.

His addition supports the investments Zerto has made over the last year in partner resources on both the partner-facing sales and marketing teams.

Prior to joining Zerto, Cowie held executive leadership roles spanning sales, strategic alliances, product management, and business development at various companies including Virtual Instruments (acquired by Load Dynamix), Configuresoft (acquired by EMC), Drive Protected (acquired by Allied), Embotics, Microsoft, and Mission Critical Software (merged with NetIQ).

"Jason brings a wealth of channel experience to support our diverse, global partner ecosystem," said Paul Zeiter, president at Zerto. "Zerto's commitment to sell exclusively through channel partners has resulted in over 100 per cent year-over-year sales growth for four consecutive years, which is a result of attracting top talent to continue that growth pace."

Imago ScanSource has added a new range of audio communications products to its portfolio following a link up with Phoenix Audio Technologies.

The deal gives Imago ScanSource exclusive distribution rights across the UK for microphones, voice capture technology, digital signal processors (DSP), speaker phones and audio conferencing mixers.

Phoenix Audio Technologies has been established since 2004 and has a large footprint in the US market.

James Vickerage, Vice President for the UK and Ireland at Imago ScanSource, said: "The products are easy to use and the DSPs in particular allow audio within a video conference to be managed precisely, whether that's directing sound to speakers in the ceiling and walls or onto a recording device. This will give our reseller channel a great opening to start new conversations with customers."