Comms Dealer

NewVoiceMedia has reported international new business growth of 140% and a 50%-plus increase its customer base in FY 2016.

The company now serves more than 600 customers spanning 128 countries and six continents, including MobileIron, Siemens, RAC, Canadian Cancer Society, Vax, Quintessentially and Wowcher.

NewVoiceMedia's intelligent communications platform enables organisations to deliver a personalised customer service experience and drive a more effective sales team.

NewVoiceMedia also secured $30m in a new round of funding from new investor BGF Ventures and joined by existing investors BVP, Eden Ventures, Highland Capital Partners Europe, Salesforce Ventures and TCV.

Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, said: "We enjoyed another year of expansion throughout FY 2016. With 140% international growth, half our new business came from outside the UK, and we now serve more than 600 customers spanning 128 countries.

"Furthermore, our customer base increased by over 50% from the previous year and nearly half of new bookings were for our ContactWorld for Sales platform.

"We are focused on continuing to drive innovation that will revolutionise the way organisations connect with their customers and prospects worldwide."

 Westcon-Comstor has appointed Wayne Mason as Commercial and Marketing Director of the Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) Solutions Practice for the EMEA region.

Mason brings over 20 years of unified communications and distribution industry experience to the position.

He will be responsible for product management and solution marketing strategies that support the company's UCC business objectives in the high-growth collaboration space.

Joining from Imago ScanSource, Mason spent 12 years employed in multiple sales, product management and marketing roles, most recently as head of Group Marketing.

Previous to Imago he led the high-touch sales team at Tandberg.

Mason has experience in the UC and collaboration solutions area, having worked with a number of Westcon-Comstor vendors including Polycom, Avaya, Tely, Blue Jeans and others.

"Wayne brings invaluable expertise to Westcon-Comstor. His proven ability to develop, manage and lead fast-growth sales and marketing teams and build long-term profitable channel relationships will be a great asset to our organisation," said Guy Koster, Westcon-Comstor EMEA General Manager and Unified Communications and Collaboration Solutions Practice lead.

Mason added: "With the UCC space predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate exceeding 20 percent over the coming five years, technology resellers have tremendous sales opportunities ahead."

Data security and download speeds are the top two barriers to a connected workforce according to a survey by Nexsan.

The study revealed that 98% of users need to work remotely or collaboratively, with nearly two thirds (61%) responding that they need to access company data on their own devices (BYOD).

While the majority of people (91%) felt they were permitted to access work files outside of the office, only 58% considered access to files away from the office to be 'private and secure'.

When it came to sharing files outside of the business only 3% believe file sharing to be private and secure.

22% of respondents said the main barrier to collaborative working was the length of time traditional storage or public cloud services take to download and upload work, with 18% believing that their storage was either inadequate for or hindering collaborative working.

Security was the second highest concern (17%) and a close third was concerns regarding version control (16%). Other barriers to a truly connected and mobile workforce were that companies did not have the facilities to file sync and share (FSS), FSS was too complicated, or remote access was prohibited entirely.

"The survey statistics reveal a picture of a workforce who need to access and share files remotely and across devices, yet who are being hindered by download speeds, lack of secure file sync and share facilities and storage systems that are too rigid," said Geraldine Osman, VP International Marketing, Nexsan.

24 Seven's national roaming SIM, Jump, which can switch between the UK's three biggest mobile networks, will be natively compatible with Sony's new Xperia X and Xperia XA devices.

The partnership sees the national roaming firm align with Sony to provide seamless compatibility for all existing Z series device owners, and the Sony Xperia E5.

David Samuel, MD and founder of 24 Seven, said: "We've established a purpose and place for 24 Seven in a competitive marketplace, and this partnership highlights the advantages of our offer.

"Thousands of our customers are now better equipped with tools that help them to do better than the competition.

"Mobile coverage has long been an emotive issue, and developing our offering in this way means we can continue to offer industry-leading prices, service and connectivity."

Global SIP training and certification specialist The SIP School has partnered with tekVizion to bolster its SIP training programme by providing students access to tekVizion's onTAP virtual lab.

Students will benefit by gaining experience on Microsoft's Skype for Business system with a specific focus on how they implement SIP trunking.

"tekVizion's onTAP is a welcome addition to our SIP training programme," stated Graham Francis, CEO of The SIP School.

"Students now have the option to see how one of the largest vendors provides SIP trunking connectivity and this is sure to add to the skills they gain from working with us."

onTAP allows students to access the system, view the Skype for Business SIP trunk configuration details, then make and monitor calls from a Skype for Business client across the SIP trunk.

This is all done remotely and with no specialised hardware requirements from the user.

onTAP supports access through a secure VPN or through a public IP connection for users to connect remotely.

In addition to virtual training and distance learning, onTAP allows businesses to validate interoperability, troubleshoot and tweak solutions, as well as demonstrate capabilities for sales enablement.

This combined with the tekVizionVerified guarantee is helping a growing number of companies to optimise their business communications solutions with confidence.

"The SIP School demonstrates the power of onTAP by leveraging our virtual environment for education with training that students would otherwise have to gain in the field," said Vimal Andrews, director of strategic accounts at tekVizion.

The SIP School's training program involves a series of modules that cover the SIP protocol as well as how SIP works with firewalls/NAT, SBCs, trunking, security, cloud, mobile and UC among others areas.

This is followed by online testing of the technologist's understanding and application of SIP. An SSCA certification demonstrates that the certified recipient can work effectively in the Voice and Video over IP environment along with SIP's migration into Unified Communications and Collaboration.

Dimension Data has named Barney Taylor as Managing Director for United Kingdom & Ireland.

Taylor has been with Dimension Data since 2012 during which time he has worked as part of the Global Services leadership team based out of London.

Andrew Coulsen, CEO, Dimension Data Europe, commented: "Barney's knowledge and understanding of services, alongside his proven leadership capabilities, will bring continued success to our business.

"Dimension Data is committed to accelerating the ambitions of our clients and enabling their digital transformation. Barney will be a key part of delivering this vision and growing the UK&I business."

Taylor added, "It is very important that this business now takes our clients into new operating models and brings our full services portfolio and the global strength of Dimension Data into this market. We must strengthen and grow our existing relationships and demonstrate services-led business value to our clients and partners in a way that we have not done before in the UK and Ireland."

Taylor, who will take up his new role in June, will be responsible for growing Dimension Data's current position in Data Centre, IT-as-a-Service and Enterprise Services.

SCC's transformation into a managed service and solutions led business is reflected in its financial results for year ending 31st March 2016. The company reported services turnover up 11% to £177m, but overall revenues of £653m were down 1%.

Data centre services revenues were up 67% to £43m; and services now account for 27% of total turnover (17% in 2013). Services margins represent 66% of total margins, up from 63% in the prior year and 52% in 2013. EBITDA increased 29% to £24.9m.

The marginal decline of 1% in overall turnover was attributed to a high-turnover/low-margin product revenue reduction of £35m.

The most notable growth in FY16 came from SCC's Cloud Delivered Managed Services (CDMS) business.

SCC's total investment in CDMS surpassed £60m, with further investments in hosted voice & UCaaS specialist SIPCOM, and mobility business One Point completing its services portfolio, adding to investments made in FY15 in connectivity (Fluidata) and SCC's third Tier 3+ Data Centre in Fareham.

These businesses independently generated £26m of revenue in the year, taking combined services revenues past £200m to £203m.

Since its acquisition by SCC in February 2014, M2, Europe's leading Managed Print Services (MPS) business, has enjoyed its best ever period of growth.

SCC & M2 closed FY16 on £46m combined turnover, representing 21% turnover growth, and £4.6m combined EBITDA, up 48%.

In the last year, M2 has grown to employ over 230 people and has 24,000 devices under management in the UK.

FY16 also saw the expansion of M2's regional office network to include London, Bracknell, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Scotland, and the creation of a dedicated public sector division.

SCC Chief Executive James Rigby (pictured above) said: "We've had another strong financial performance in the areas identified in our business strategy as key to SCC's long-term success.

"We continued to make investments throughout FY16 in additional capability, improved facilities and skilled people - all geared towards delivering the very best service to our customers.

"Our services business has grown significantly over the past three years and the forecast is for that to continue. And the opportunity for customers, particularly in the mid-market space, to grow with us has never been so large with the completion of our Cloud Delivered Managed Services proposition in FY16."

SCC also announced a new global delivery centre (GDC) in Vietnam.

SCC Vietnam, headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, will deliver two main activities - firstly, providing level three and four infrastructure support to customers, and the creation of an Offshore Development Centre to accelerate the development of custom applications.

Rigby added: "It's an exciting time for SCC as we look further East to a location that combines a sufficient time difference with widely-available technical skills. SCC Vietnam will be incorporated by August 2016 and we are aiming for an initial headcount of around 50.

"Vietnam is a country of over 90 million people with an average age of 30. It has a high quality education system, similar to Romania, with over 300 IT-only universities.

"English is widely spoken to a high standard and the time difference of London+7 is ideal for 24X7 customer support."

A trade fair hosted by Nimans marked the official opening of a new £500k Manchester trade counter facility based in Trafford Park.

The event included product demonstrations, prize draws, warehouse tours and an introduction to a networking 'zone'.

Nimans' Radio Communications Category Manager, Gary Redshaw, is spearheading the firm's two-way radio division including devices from Hytera, Motorola and Icom.

He was joined by representatives from Hellermann Tyton, Ideal Industries, Riello UPS, KableMate, Erico, Draper Tools, Titan, Dymo, Marshall Tufflex and Greenlee Communications.

Other members of the Nimans team raised awareness about Wireless LAN, leasing and other support services.

The new 10,000 sq ft unit is led by Geoff Wilde and Bob Hinder who boast more than 40 years combined data infrastructure industry expertise.

Cable Management, Tools, Cabinets, Trunking, Fibre, Power Distribution and Labelling Machines and Accessories are some of the expanded areas of activity. Thousands of lines are available for immediate collection, to help resellers complete a job from start to finish.

"More than 30 years ago I started Nimans by opening a Trade Counter, repairing radio equipment and it's always been my ambition to develop more," Chairman Julian Niman explained.

The new facility opens at 8.30am and includes a large training room.

Exclusive Networks has been appointed by security policy orchestration vendor Tufin to distribute its products in the UK.

The agreement sees Exclusive Networks take Tufin's Network Security Policy Orchestration and Automation solutions to existing and new channel partners looking to introduce security policy management capabilities to their enterprise customers.

Graham Jones, Exclusive Networks' MD, commented: "Tufin's software dovetails perfectly into our portfolio of cyber-security solutions.

With direct support for our current vendor solutions, like Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks, it integrates into our CARM (Cyber Attack Remediation and Mitigation) strategy, giving partners a complementary sale to solutions their customers are currently deploying.

"The channel has not had such a significant upgrade and up-sell opportunity for a long time and we'll be working with Tufin on demand generation and recruitment of new partners who want to take this technology to help customers be better prepared and armed to respond to attacks and breaches."

Andrew Lintell, Tufin Director, Northern EMEA, added: "Network Security Policy Orchestration and Automation is currently a hot topic.

"We are a 100% channel vendor and Exclusive Networks is the natural distribution partner for us. With Exclusive Networks driving partner recruitment, enablement and collaboration activities, underpinned with a new Tufin Channel Partner Program, we can offer channel partners enhanced margins, in-field support and significant professional services opportunities."

Hats off to IT and comms provider KCOM for raising over £92,000 in the first year of its charity partnership with Teenage Cancer Trust, more than twice the target set.

Fundraising activities included the London Marathon, the Yorkshire Three Peaks, skydiving, the Rock Solid Endurance Challenge and the Jane Tomlinson Hull 10K run.

As charity partner, KCOM supports employee involvement by kick-starting any fundraising they do with a £25 donation. In 2016 KCOM introduced matched funding, effectively doubling every pound raised.

KCOM employees have been supported by a network of more than 30 volunteer charity champions in the firm's main offices in Hull, London, Wakefield, Hemel Hempstead, Ipswich, Exeter and Reading.

Siobhan Dunn, Chief Executive at Teenage Cancer Trust, said: "KCOM employees and their supporters have made a huge effort to raise funds for us, taking on marathons, scrambling up mountains, and even falling from the sky to smash their target.

"£92,000 is a truly awe-inspiring amount and will have a real impact on the services we provide, allowing us to fund our vital services and supporting us in our goal to reach every young person with cancer in the UK by 2020."

How the £92,000 raised could help Teenage Cancer Trust fund:
• 2,000 hours of vital nursing care by a Teenage Cancer Trust Lead Nurse, ensuring that young people with cancer receive age-appropriate care.
• 1,000 hours of tailored support by a Teenage Cancer Trust Youth Support Coordinator, who keeps young people active on and off the unit, encouraging them to socialise and share their experiences.
• 40 young people to attend Teenage Cancer Trust's annual 'Find your Sense of Tumour' weekend conference at Center Parcs, allowing them to meet other young people with cancer, often for the first time.
• 2,500 students in secondary schools, colleges and universities across the UK to have an engaging, upbeat cancer awareness session from Teenage Cancer Trust's education team, teaching them how to spot the early signs of cancer and how to prevent it in later life.

KCOM's partnership with Teenage Cancer Trust will continue next year, with activities planned including a Golf Day which is set to raise thousands for the charity.

Bill Halbert, CEO, KCOM said: "The first year of our partnership with Teenage Cancer Trust has proven to be one of our most successful yet. We are aiming to raise £150,000 over the course of our relationship to help the Trust provide expert care and support to young people with cancer and we look forward to smashing that target as well."