Comms Dealer

Advanced has appointed Andy Williams as Head of Professional Services, bringing more than 15 years experience in top-level consulting in the UK and USA.

His software market career includes six years at Dell and prior to joining Advanced he was a Consulting Director with Vista Consulting Group (VCG), part of Vista Equity Partners which acquired Advanced last year.

Since joining Advanced in April 2015 as VP of Strategic Projects, Williams has overseen multiple projects to transform the business.

Following its acquisition, Advanced has implemented new company-wide systems, realigned its business units, opened two new state-of-the-art offices, undergone a major rebrand and embarked on an ambitious recruitment campaign.

Williams said: "I was interested in Advanced due to its successful history and impressive growth. It was also clear that Vista has a strong vision for the company which I knew from my experience of working for them with their portfolio companies meant it would be an exciting time to join.

"I'm looking forward to creating a strong professional services community within the company, ensuring our resources are in the best positions to support our customers.

"I will also be reviewing and standardising processes across the company as well as ensuring we are using our new internal systems to best effect."

Gordon Wilson, CEO, Advanced, added: "Andy is well versed in Vista's approach and has a great breadth of knowledge and experience in transforming business operations to great effect. 

"With his experience and skills of senior-level strategic planning, complex global transformations and systems implementation programmes, I am confident that he is the right person to lead us forward in delivering high quality customer services."

Williams started his career as a management consultant for Accenture working with a variety of companies like Dell, Vodafone and BT. He then spent six years with Dell working on global transformation programmes including setting up new companies across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Zen Internet has opted for Strategic Imperatives' Elevate billing platform as a springboard for the ISPs next phase of growth.

Chris Platt, Head of Systems, Zen Internet, said: "Billing is a strategic service that our business depends upon. In the past 20 years Zen has grown from a small-scale start-up to a highly responsive CP with more than 400 staff and we have no plans to stop there.

"We performed penetration and vulnerability testing on Elevate, and the system is intuitive and user-friendly. Elevate's SaaS nature meant that a pre-configured version of the service was up and running quickly and we were able to process the first live bill run within days."

Strategic Imperatives Head of Business Development Tim Sayer added: "Elevate leverages Amazon's AWS to keep the infrastructure highly scalable and cloud-based, giving Elevate an 'elastic' capability while allowing it to work in real-time, responding instantly to changes in customer and pricing data, immediately recalculating, and giving Zen constant oversight of its business performance.

"Our two-factor authentication and finance industry level encryption ensures total security for Zen and its customers. Zen can now plot its commercial roadmap using Elevate's time-based capability, enabling it to plan, deploy and test future propositions in real-time."

Video specialist Imago ScanSource is gearing up to host the third annual Business Breakthrough event on May 26th at The Brewery in the City of London.

The event has attracted almost 30 vendors including Polycom, NEC, Samsung and Barco.

Imago ScanSource will also be working with Array Telepresence to show the new i-Kandy video conferencing solution; and with Vidyo and Polycom to demonstrate the latest enhancements to the VaaS-t cloud-based services.

Alongside vendor displays and demonstrations, Imago ScanSource is organising a series of technical and enterprise focused seminars presented by speakers from the broadcast, AV and global tech industry.

A number of new announcements are expected to be revealed in the 'Whisper Suite' and in the 'Cloud Suite' visitors will be able to access help with their cloud strategies from some of the industry's key cloud players.

James Vickerage, Vice President, Imago ScanSource UK and Ireland, said: "Vendors, resellers and users can come together to network, learn and share best practice. They can see the most current solutions and gain an understanding of what is coming down the line."

A new partner programme launched by security firm Sophos simplifies the complexities of managing multiple security solutions across multiple customers, claims the firm.

A growing number of enterprises are turning to MSPs to protect them against the rapid growth of sophisticated cyber attacks that are capable of targeting any area of vulnerability in the IT estate.

This means managing endpoint, server, network, web and email security products across multiple platforms and increasingly on employees' mobile devices.

The mix of traditional and next generation technology available from multiple vendors has placed additional administrative burdens and extra costs on MSPs.

The new Sophos MSP Connect programme provides access to the company's portfolio of endpoint and network security products.

MSPs are now able to manage all Sophos solutions for every customer through a centralised management platform, Sophos Central.

Within Sophos Central is Sophos Central-Partner, a specialised dashboard that allows MSPs to distribute licenses, add new customers on demand, cross-sell and upsell services, drive recurring revenue and have a clear, real-time perspective on all customer activity.

MSPs can respond to security incidents faster and track alerts of all levels directly from the dashboard, so time spent handling incidents, including minor ones, is more productive and effective.

"MSPs benefit from aggregate licensing models, and with Sophos they will also benefit from more effective synchronised security," said Scott Barlow, vice president, global MSP, Sophos.

"The Sophos Central-Partner dashboard will enable MSPs to manage security for endpoint, mobile, network, email, web, wireless and data privacy solutions in a single pane of glass, which is essential when business owners and employees are working in and out of the office with multiple devices."

Telcos are missing out on SMB SaaS opportunities, according to research by BCSG.

Previous research conducted on behalf of BCSG suggests this market may potentially be worth $22bn to UK and US operators, yet many are failing to realise this opportunity because of the failure to implement a best practice model that considers SMBs needs.
 
While many telcos are struggling to generate new revenue when offering software as a service to the SMB market, other, mature SaaS vendors are experiencing significant customer growth.

Good examples include cloud-based accounting software firm Xero and retail ecommerce firm Shopify, who each added hundreds of thousands of paying users last year alone.

Spurred to investigate this dichotomy, BCSG's analysis has identified several key reasons why telecoms operators are falling short in their ambitions.

According to the study telcos are failing to properly understand the customer and their needs and develop effective customer journeys, among other factors.

"Multiple reports and research, including our own, shows there's huge, latent opportunity for telecoms operators to generate substantial new revenues from cloud services provision," said Alan Marsh, Product and Marketing Director at BCSG.

"While telcos have had some success selling to tech-savvy 'early adopters', SMBs in the mass market are less willing and able to find their own way.

"Our analysis shows that low sales among mass market customers comes from failing to build awareness and appreciation of value effectively in the early stages of customer engagement.

"Understanding and building engaging, multi-channel customer journeys that span the full customer lifecycle will be key to unlocking the potential from this sector."

Pebbletree marked its 10th anniversary by filling a retro phone box with balls of varying sizes and launching a competition to guess how many balls.

Contestants entered via Pebbletree's website and Pebbletree customer Richard Pierpoint scooped the 13 night luxury cruise prize following an inspired punt.

Pierpoint, Director of FlexiSail, a boat and yacht sharing business based in Lymington, stated: "I thought there might be around 4,000 balls, but seeing that there were balls of different sizes it was anyone's guess.

"Looking down at my keyboard, 4,321 came easily to my fingertips and just made sense! They say that your first hunch is often right!"

Pierpoint and his wife Sue will to sail from Southampton to Spain and the Canary Islands aboard Celebrity Cruises' Eclipse ship in October 2016, having beaten off 1,500 entrants.

Janni Thornton, MD and co-founder of Pebbletree, said:
"After pushing this competition to customers through our notification system we were over the moon to discover that it was a customer that had won the competition.

"We wanted to splash out for our 10th anniversary, and after all, without our customers, we wouldn't have made it this far, so a big prize such as the cruise just made sense to us."

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Zen Internet has appointed Jon Bauer as Technical Director with a remit to lead the firm's next generation network strategy.

He brings 15-plus years experience in the technology, media and telecommunications sector, and prior to joining Zen he was Director of Technology at TalkTalk, having held many other senior positions with the company.

Bauer will head up the Network & Infrastructure division at Zen as it kicks off a multi-million pound investment programme to build a new national network.

"I have joined Zen to advise and deliver on the evolution of its network from a reliable and efficient one to a carrier-grade telecommunications infrastructure that will deliver and support the next generation of connectivity, IT and telecommunications services," stated Bauer.

"When complete, the new Zen network will provide the company with a solid platform on which to further build its credentials as a wholesaler."

Darlington-based Fifteen Digital narrowly missed out on the 'Most Ingenious' gong at the Best of Darlington Awards, coming in as runner up.

The Best of Darlington Awards recognise the local businesses of the town and their achievements, and the Most Ingenious Award category honoured businesses who see opportunities and solve problems through creativity and inventiveness.

A new service launched by Genius Networks called Intelligent SIP enables service providers, SIs and comms providers to offer reduced infrastructure costs for multi-national communications deployments, according to James Arnold-Roberts, CEO of G3 Comms and Genius Networks.

"For businesses expanding globally, the cost of SIP trunking infrastructure, such as gateways and session border controls, multiplies with every country and carrier connected to the communications system.

"Genius Network's Intelligent SIP aggregates multi-carrier and multi-country SIP connections allowing delivery on a single trunk, reducing the cost of deployment significantly and simplifying integration with other communication systems."

According to Arnold-Roberts, Intelligent SIP will be particularly suited to businesses using unified comms and contact centres with high usage of voice communications across global sites

He added: "Intelligent SIP is aimed to help businesses that want to expand into overseas markets and require fully managed, cost-effective global communications with a focus on Quality of Experience."

Distributor Midwich has listed in AIM, placing 36,157,010 new and existing ordinary shares at 208 pence each by Investec Bank, which will equate to a market capitalisation of around £165.3m on admission.

The proceeds will go toward paying down the debt, repaying existing shareholder loans and fund the final cash consideration relating to the acquisition of Kern & Stelly, a German distributor, the company stated.

The company has operations in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Australasia.

"This represents an important milestone in the group's history, and becoming a public company will enhance Midwich's competitive position as a specialist AV and document solutions distributor to the trade market," said Stephen Fenby, Managing Director of Midwich.