Comms Dealer

Hats off to Gamma for scooping ITSPA's Best VoIP Infrastructure award, a category that focuses on companies providing back-end services for VoIP providers, and independently judged based on key features of the service, innovation, how it's differentiated from other services in the market and how well it delivers customer support.

Detailed examples of how the service has been successfully deployed were also included in the submission. Along with the written submission, each entrant underwent two months of technical testing.

Mike Mills, Head of Cloud and Infrastructure Channel at Gamma, said: "We're delighted to be recognised by ITSPA as 'Best VoIP infrastructure' for our SIP Trunking service."

Rob Walton, MD at VTSL, ITSPA member and one of Gamma's Channel Partners, said: "It's important that the partners we work with are forward-thinking and can effectively support us to deliver a reliable SIP Trunking service.

"We've been partnering with Gamma for seven years and our relationship has grown from strength to strength. We find it particularly refreshing to have direct access to Gamma's senior management and key personnel within the business and it's clear that they listen to our feedback and take it on board."

VoIP distributor ProVu has teamed up with IP intercom manufacturer Castel to offer a bespoke intercom design and build service, offering resellers a variety of models and features all compliant with disability regulations.

With its bespoke design and build service Castel offers a range of options including a choice of materials: brass, bronze, anodised colours and stainless steel, custom finishes, choice of layout and buttons, incorporation of logos and engravings and bespoke mounting options and posts.

ProVu's Managing Director Darren Garland stated: "We know that items off the shelf are not always suitable for every project, now with Castel's value added service resellers are able to meet complex user requirements."

Castel's Manji Gami commented: "Our ability to provide a customised intercom housing that blends in with the aesthetics of a building, while still providing full functionality, means that we can meet the most challenging project specifications."

Basingstoke-based Southern Communications has scooped the NEC Best EMEA Reseller Award for the third time in the last four years.

"We are delighted with this award," said Paul Bradford, CEO of Southern Communications. "To win three out of the last four years is a fantastic achievement and demonstrates the continued focus, commitment and capability of Southern Communications."

Directors Andrew Robinson and Simon Campbell were presented the award during a Gala Dinner at the Hotel Excelsior on Lido Island during NEC's three day Annual conference in Venice May 25th-27th 2016.

Southern Communications is on target to double revenues in the next five years through a programme of acquisitions and product developments.

Pictured: Paul Kievit, President NEC Enterprise Solutions (outside left) Andrew Robinson, Director of IT and Technical Services (inside left) Simon Campbell, Director of Installation (inside right) Mr. Hosaka, President Global Platform Solutions (Outside Right) in Venice

RingCentral is extending RingCentral Office capabilities with greater integration into the Microsoft ecosystem, providing integrations with Microsoft Outlook and Skype for Business.

These new integrations will complement RingCentral's existing integration with Microsoft Office 365.

"In today's multi-vendor cloud application environment, enterprise customers are empowered to choose best-of-breed software solutions," said Marco Casalaina, VP of Integrations for RingCentral.

"With our open platform we make it easy to have a seamless experience with RingCentral's cloud communications capabilities embedded into many popular business applications.

"Our integrations with Outlook and Skype for Business are the latest examples of how we're delivering a best-of-breed experience to fulfill the needs of enterprise customers."

The increasing popularity of managed service delivery models is fuelling European Communications Reseller sales of data and communications networks and everything from security to mobility and video conferencing solutions, with 67.5% of resellers now offering managed service solutions.

Yet the market remains highly regionalised and fragmented with 95.2% of communication resellers providing solutions only within their own or neighbouring countries. These are amongst the trends emerging from European Communication Resellers - the Top 750, a new database report from IT Europa which is published today.

The European Communication Resellers - the Top 750 report provides detailed profiles of the leading 750 European Communication Resellers across 36 countries.

Between them the companies post sales of €25.39 billion ($26.88 billion) and employ 122,742.

In terms of activities, 88% of companies are providing Data Communications/Networks solutions; 84% are providing Telephony/VoIP; 66% providing Security solutions; 61% are offering Mobility; and 57% are providing Video Communications/ Videoconferencing. Sales operations span a number of vertical market sectors the most common being the Public Sector (44.7%), Bank/Finance/Insurance (37.5%) and Manufacturing/Industry Vertical Market (33.3%).

The largest geographic markets covered in terms of companies profiled within the report are: UK (251 companies), Germany (51), Netherlands (51), Russian Federation (41), France (38), Spain (37), Italy (31), Switzerland (28), Turkey (24), Poland (23) and Sweden (23).

"It is good to see the European communication reseller community grasping the managed services opportunity, but there are several other challenges that will need to be addressed for the sector to achieve its full potential," says Alan Norman, Managing Director of IT Europa.

"A lack of standards in such growth areas as IoT (the Internet of Things) and national differences in terms of regulations will limit the potential for pan European growth. While recent agreements in areas such as roaming charges should help, these gains could be very swiftly undermined by potential political/economic events - for example Brexit."

www.iteuropa.com

Chess has bagged Burnley-based ICT company Lanway for an undisclosed sum. It generated £21.8m turnover last year and has been in operation for 25 years, boasting over 550 active repeat customers including a number of blue chip names. The acquisition pushes Chess's headcount to 550.

Chess founder and CEO David Pollock stated: "Lanway shares our passion for delivering technological advantage to customers, and our acquisition of Lanway is another step on our growth journey, helping to bring our vision to life.

"Together with Lanway's expertise we have the talent and technology needed to deliver truly integrated solutions across enterprise, mobile and cloud environments."

Richard Btesh, Director of Chess, added: "We're ready and waiting to take advantage of the consolidation of customers and relationships."

A one-stop hardware and software supply proposition introduced by Daisy Group aims to secure the total comms and IT spend of customers.

Headed up by Daisy's Director of Group Vendor Alliances & Supply Chain Services Jeff Palmer, the new Supply Chain Services operation is moving to a purpose-built office at the Group's Nottingham site.

The unit has already begun trading around 200,000 products from over 4,000 suppliers, ranging from data storage to laptops, desktops, printers and headsets. Palmer aims to create a £100m turnover business within the next three years.

"Whatever technology products a business needs to function, Daisy's Supply Chain Services can now offer via a process that adds value to every customer engagement," he said.

"Many of our customers are buying other technology-related products elsewhere. That doesn't make any sense for them and it makes even less sense for us.

"The advantage of Supply Chain Services for our customers is that they transact with just one company that they already know and do business with."

US security specialist Unitrends has named Zycko as its EMEA distributor.

Unitrends is 100% channel and offers cloud-powered backup and continuity solutions.

Talking to IT Europa, Mike Dalton, senior vice-president of international sales at Unitrends says it has a sweet spot in the mid-market, though it sells its products to everyone from SMB to enterprise, offering both software and physical appliances in what it calls continuity solutions.

He says a key feature which is attractive to partners is its ability to work with both physical and virtual drives, on premise and in the cloud. "Not all vendors can do this," he says.

In particular he points to the attraction of offering SLAs with user-set terms as to time to restore, using either its own hosting sites, whether in the US, the UK or Germany, or using Amazon Web Services.

In this market, word of mouth is a key driver of new business. As part of its recently announced channel programme, Unitrends has said it will reward partners who are active in social media, promoting use of the products and engaging in discussions, he confirms.

David Galton-Fenzi, CEO of Zycko, says: "We aim to choose best in class, and there is a great synergy between our two companies - we both have a focus on networking, cloud continuity and recovery, and we share a common approach to the market." Since Zycko has AWS cerfication, it can offer this model of backup to its partners. The only certification required by Unitrends is for those partners wanting to sell its Boomerang virtual machine mover.

Unitrends announced in March 2016 that it grew its cloud business 250% year-on-year, says David Galton-Fenzi. "They are looking to replicate that success in the wider EMEA marketplace. At Zycko, we are uniquely placed to help Unitrends achieve that goal, though access to our established pan-EMEA channel network, and experienced sales, marketing and technical teams."

Paul Eccleston, head of Rigby Private Equity, owner of Zycko and distributor Wick Hill says: "The appointment of Zycko by Unitrends is a significant step forward for our expansion plans. Customers are asking for simplification in this market and we have seen this in other product areas such as apps performance management and networking. It also demonstrates that there is a strong need for a pan-EMEA distributor that can work with companies wanting to expand and grow internationally."

He adds that RPE is supporting the expansion of support teams at Zycko, building up its cloud capabilities.

It is also clear that the backup market is spreading beyond traditional channels and partners and that these companies are gearing up to address the backup and compliance for the wall of data expected to be generated by industrial scale data generation and capture.

Exponential-e has kicked off a five-a-side tournament for channel partners in a bid to raise funds for the Macmillan Cancer Trust. The first Channel Charity Cup was hosted at West Ham's Boleyn Ground and was one of the last games to be played at the stadium before the club relocates.

"The launch of the Channel Charity Cup raises awareness and support for causes that have an affinity with our customers and staff," said Michala Hart, Head of Channel Strategy at Exponential-e. "We also wanted to organise something that would enable us to get more involved with our channel partners."

Pictured: Tournament winner Focus Group.

RingCentral has rolled out Global Office to UK customers and bolstered support for local developers.

Global Office is a single global UCaaS solution designed for multi-national businesses.

"Connecting workforces across multiple countries, RingCentral Global Office reduces the complexity and high costs of maintaining multiple, legacy on-premise PBX systems with a single cloud solution," stated John Marlow, MD EMEA at RingCentral.

"Businesses no longer need to struggle with the onerous and expensive task of figuring out how to deploy their communications infrastructure globally.

"With the realities of a global and mobile workforce distributed across multiple offices, often in different countries, enterprises need a flexible, mobile-centric UC solution that fosters a collaborative working environment and scales globally.

"With the launch of RingCentral Global Office in the UK, local businesses now have the tools to communicate across multiple global offices for a single monthly cost."

RingCentral is also expanding support for its RingCentral Developer Programme in the UK.