Comms Dealer

Winchester-based IT company ProcessFlows has been acquired by Konica Minolta Business Solutions (KMBS) enabling the Japanese firm to offer a hybrid sales model for document solutions backed up by IT services expertise, especially in managed content services.

ProcessFlows generated £13.5m in its financial year to June 30th 2015 and has a 168 headcount.

Following the acquisition ProcessFlows will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of KMBS.

Entatech UK has released the latest version (6.04) of its e-commerce website for reseller partners.

Entatech's in-house design and development team, Entamedia, spent nearly two years working on the remodelling of the site to optimise the user interface and purchasing experience for Entatech's customer base.

Dave Stevinson, MD Entatech UK, commented: "A lot of brainpower and planning went into designing Version 6 of Entaonline.

"The critical features for designing the platform for our resellers was simplicity and speed. A trade only platform is fundamentally different from a traditional consumer site."

Cloud and network provider Exponential-e has promoted Liam Montague to the Channel Sales Team Leader, Referral, after fast-tracking his career through Exponential-e's Sales Academy.

David Yates has also been appointed Channel Sales Team Leader, Referral following his return to Exponential-e having been one of the original members of the company's channel team.

Montague will be responsible for expanding and building Exponential-e's relationships with partners of all sizes, and heading up the team's sales strategy.

He joined the Exponential-e Sales Academy as a graduate in 2009 and in just over six years, has progressed to team leader.

"Exponential-e's Sales Academy gave me a platform to work with an ambitious team and develop a strong career vision that matches my personal goals," said Montague.

"Within the first few months of the programme, not only had I gained sales knowledge pertinent to my role, but I'd already experienced valuable insight across the operation of other business units, and well-rounded knowledge of the technology industry.

"As team leader, I'm looking forward to guiding my team with a results-orientated approach, while also focusing on building relationships and understanding different approaches with our partners."

Yates will be leading the development of the channel referral team. Having previously spent four years at Exponential-e where he helped with the conception of the company's channel team and managed Exponential-e's office and sales team in Reading, he returned to the company from a data sales team manager role at Alternative Networks, an Exponential-e reseller customer.

F-Secure has appointed Samu Konttinen (pictured) as President and CEO following the resignation of former chief exec Christian Fredrikson who resigned to 'pursue a new career opportunity' outside the company.

Konttinen's appointment is effective from 1st August 2016.

He joined F-Secure in 2005 and has held a wide range of senior management positions in the company, including Executive VP of Sales and Marketing, and Executive VP of F-Secure's consumer business.

Most recently he served as Executive VP of the Corporate Security business.

Since 2009 he has been a member of the leadership team.

Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman of the F-Secure Board of Directors, stated: "Samu has proven his ability to drive innovation and ensure a steady strategy execution that delivers growth.

"I'm confident that his winning attitude and relentless focus on execution will further speed up F-Secure's transformation to the leading European cyber security company.

Konttinen added: "Thousands of companies and millions of people around the world already trust us to defend them against cyber-attacks.

"With our strategy, we are well positioned for further growth and I'm looking forward to taking advantage of the new opportunities in the connected world."

F-Secure aims to capitalise on the opportunities driven by increasing digitisation by increasing investments in the fastest growing corporate security markets, which include managed endpoint security services sold through the reseller channel, as well as cyber security services.

Logicalis UK has unveiled four new Logicalis Optimal Services, creating a wider choice of consumption and operational models for its customers in core areas of both infrastructure and business collaboration.

The services provide consumption of Data Centre, Networking/Security, Business Video and Collaboration services, and are available immediately.

Mark Best, Logicalis UK Services Director, said: "These services give our customers more choice, more flexibility, and greater access to digital platforms, as well as a faster time to delivering business results.

"Being able to access the latest in cloud IaaS at the touch of a button, accelerate business collaboration, or even deploy large enterprise class networks through cloud services is bringing in a new era of business aligned IT services."

Distributor Steljes, which has been in operation for 28 years, has called in the administrators following a period of cash flow difficulties, it is reported.

It is also reported that changes to an agreement with vendor SMART, a relationship Steljes was reliant upon, tipped the balance towards receivership.

When the warning signed were first registered Steljes made redundancies but these were not enough to offset losses.

Avaya is reportedly considering an asset sale to ease its $6bn debt burden.

It is reported that the vendor's private equity owners Silver Lake Partners LP and TPG Capital LP are exploring a sale that could value the business somewhere between $6bn and $10bn.

In an earnings conference call Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy said that Goldman Sachs is helping the firm to 'evaluate expressions of interest that have been received relative to specific assets, as well as explore other potential strategic opportunities'.

Avaya is experiencing strong cash flow, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation last year of circa $900m. But the vendor is being pushed into loss by an interest expense of $400m-plus every year.

Microsoft has started a venture capital fund to pursue early-stage technology investments, including cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

The new fund is called Microsoft Ventures, not to be confused with the existing group by that name, a startup accelerator that will be renamed Microsoft Accelerator.

The new Microsoft Ventures will sit on a continuum between Microsoft Accelerator and the company's bigger, more traditional M&A activity.

The company has typically invested alongside commercial deals, so the new creation is a move to an earlier part of the process. The unit will open offices in San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Tel Aviv and will be run by Nagraj Kashyap and Peggy Johnson, both veterans of Qualcomm.

Tech Data's Q1 2017 results show it undergoing some repositioning, but also taking advantage of the extra product lines.

Europe continues to make up some 60% of total sales. The share price has risen after it indicated mixed fortunes and changing strategies.

On a constant currency basis, and excluding a small amount of sales from South America that it sold in March off last year, worldwide sales increased 2%.

In Europe, Q1 sales were $3.6 billion, up 1% on both a reported and constant currency basis.

"Despite facing a slightly softer demand environment, most notably, in the mobility market, our European team capitalised on pockets of strength, taking share in select product categories and geographies. At a country level, the UK, Germany and Switzerland delivered solid growth during Q1," said CEO Bob Dutkowsky.

At a product level, European operations posted sales growth in broadline products, including notebooks, ultrabooks and tablet PCs, as well as software, consumer electronics and security products. This growth was offset by lower sales in mobility and datacenter products.

"The portfolio of Tech Data's business has changed over the last few years as we have driven into more of the retail with new products from new vendors, and so we become slightly more second half oriented, than we have been historically, and I see that continuing," added Dutkowsky.

"In Europe, software had an unexpected dip in demand in Q1, resulting in sales that came in at the low end of our guidance range. Despite an uncertain and mixed demand environment, the team executed well, outgrowing the market in a number of product categories and countries.

"Strong sales on broadline products were largely offset by a sharp decline in mobility products across most of our handset vendors."

Ingram Micro's VP and MD in Australia, Matt Sanderson, has been appointed Country Chief Executive at Ingram Micro UK&I as of July.

He has previously worked at both local country and regional level in EMEA, leading Ingram Micro UK&I to three years of growth between 2010-2013.

The announcement comes as current UK&I Chief Country Executive, Brent McCarty, returns to the US to lead Ingram Micro's global sales.