Comms Dealer

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: New business start-ups usually have a limited budget and an eagerness to grow the company with a strong focus on sales rather than setting the foundations for an identity and clear vision. It is understandable that there is so much emphasis on sales but unfortunately this often leads to yet another faceless addition to the industry with little differentiation.

Start-ups usually want a logo and a website to get started. While these are undoubtedly essential tools for any business, steaming ahead without answering some basic questions about what your business wants to deliver and represent may result in having to continually readdress this question with unnecessary marketing expense further down the line.

Addressing key strategy questions does not even have to dip into your budget. There are a few basic questions that you should spend some time thinking about as these will form the axis on which your new business will spin. How do you want to be known? What do you want to achieve? What do you bring that is different? What problems are you addressing for clients? What type of business do you want to grow? Where do you want to be in one, three and five years time?

Once you have identified the answers to these questions only then is it time to get started with your logo and website. Having this clear vision will make your brief to the marketing agency a lot clearer and therefore a quicker, more cost-effective exercise.

Anyone seeking a foretaste of how rural communities will be connected in the future need look no further than the activities and ambitions of pure fibre network builder Gigaclear, according to Chief Executive Matthew Hare.

Hare is on a mission to liberate rural areas from inefficient broadband. He started Gigaclear from scratch in December 2010 with a business model directed at building and operating ultrafast, pure Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) broadband networks in rural communities where the existing fixed network infrastructure under performs. "The aim is to give these communities faster and more reliable broadband than is available anywhere else in the UK," he said. "Living in a rural area doesn't mean you have to tolerate bad broadband. Using FTTP technology, properties in rural parts of the UK can experience speeds of up to 1Gbps, up to 33 times faster than the UK average. Once built, the future proof network can keep up with the increasing demand for better, faster broadband to meet the connection needs of a modern, digital society."

Prior to setting up Gigaclear, Hare was founder and CEO of Community Internet Group and ts.com, both privately owned providers of Internet and data services in the UK. He is a Director and Council Member of the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) and has also been involved in numerous network, wireless, data and telephony businesses such as Vodafone, Millicom, Microtel (Orange UK) and Liberty Communications.

When working for the Kinnevik Group in the 1990s he persuaded the UK Government to allocate 168Mhz of spectrum for fixed wireless access for Liberty Communications, a triumph that Hare rates as one of his biggest achievements to date. Looking ahead, he expects Gigaclear to become the largest rural FTTP network operator in the UK.

"We'll get there by doing more of what we are already doing, but better, cheaper and faster," stated Hare. "From a commercial perspective, there are over one and a half million homes and businesses in Britain that could benefit from our services and we want to reach those people as quickly as possible. In 2016, Gigaclear plans to build its network to at least 40,000 additional properties, so there's plenty of opportunity for further growth."

In 2015, Gigaclear had a headcount of 63 and the firm's turnover was £1.4 million with a gross profit of £0.6m. The company successfully reached its target of delivering pure fibre broadband to 15,000 properties last year. Its network serves individual households, small and medium businesses (including schools, hotels, business parks, factories, farms and offices) and the occasional enterprise.

The venture kicked off in earnest in May 2011 when Gigaclear bought Rutland Telecom and built its first fibre network in Hambleton, a small village with a population of 140 people, opening for service in October of that year. "Once we had demonstrated what was possible Gigaclear was ready for take-off," stated Hare.

To date, Gigaclear has built 60 rural fibre networks and has a strong pipeline with a further 25 in construction. Over 20,000 properties in rural parts of Oxfordshire, Essex, Northamptonshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire, Hertfordshire and Gloucestershire are live as a result, with 10,000 more already in construction.

Gigaclear has secured significant investment to build its network. Initially this was via 102 private individuals through the Government's Enterprise Investment Scheme, but in 2014 Woodford Investment Management became Gigaclear's first major institutional investor, followed by Prudential Infracapital last year. In January this year, Gigaclear secured an £18 million debt facility from the European Investment Bank (IEB). The loan is the largest one of its kind awarded to a UK company. "We're a capital intensive business so this loan was an important next step in our expansion strategy," commented Hare.

"Moving from a company that has private investors to one with funding from institutional investors has made a big difference to the business. It has accelerated our rate of growth. The strong financial support of our shareholders lets us get on with the job of delivering future-proof broadband without delay. Furthermore, securing BDUK contracts expands our growth opportunities."

Last month Gigaclear announced a £24 million new equity investment that will accelerate the build of its FTTP network. Building on these commercial investments, in 2015 Gigaclear secured contracts to deliver superfast broadband to customers as part of the Government subsidised BDUK programme to bring broadband of at least 24Mbps to 95 per cent of the UK. Gigaclear has won three substantial BDUK contracts in Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Essex.

The company is also developing its wholesale channel with service providers selling through the Fluidata aggregation platform and through direct connections at Telehouse East and Equinix LD4. "The majority of our customers are currently contracted directly with Gigaclear for service," said Hare. "Over the next few years we expect a substantial shift to our wholesale partners."

A recent consultation from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, National Broadband Scheme: Market Engagement on Procurement Approach, opens up a range of different potential models that can be used to deliver better broadband in the UK, Hare believes. "We are interested in seeing the impact of the plan to give priority to ISPs offering open access networks," he commented. "Combined with breaking down procurement into smaller lots, we expect to see a significant increase in the number of companies bidding for projects to serve the 'final 10 per cent'."

Hare's priority is to 'build, build, build!', and he rates the steady increase in demand for reliable, high quality bandwidth as Gigaclear's biggest opportunity. But his greatest challenge is acceleration. "To build more ultrafast FTTP networks we need to greatly expand our range of sub-contractors while maintaining the quality of built infrastructure," he said.

Hare has worked in the communications industry since 1984 and still exudes a passion for the transformative power of technology. "Telecoms in particular is an enabler for change and innovation," he enthused. "And Gigaclear is transforming how rural communities connect with the world. We want these communities to be better connected forever, so we are delivering a reliable ultrafast broadband network of the future, designed for the modern digital society. We are trustworthy, secure and here for the long run."•

The capabilities of billing systems will only be curbed by a lack of imagination and investment - such is their potential as a true platform for integration and innovation.

Demand for cloud-based systems has emerged as a major trend, not just in the billing space, but across the whole industry. So much so that Inform Billing provides its Eclipse software via the cloud as a matter of course, unless a customer requests otherwise. "Continued investment in cloud-based solutions that will simplify deployment as well as improve resilience will remain a key factor in our development," explained Shaun Bodsworth (pictured), Managing Director. "Using more up-to-date cloud-based technology will allow us to significantly advance our integration strategy and market share."

Inform Billing's proposition is two-fold. The first is geared towards new entrants in the comms market. "With this segment we base our proposition on simplicity of set-up, ease of use and we take care of hosting, servers, back-ups and licensing for our customers," added Bodsworth. "Our bureau service is priced as an entry-level option to help those starting out to get off on the right foot. Our second proposition is directed towards the established reseller looking to enhance their billing capability. This offering focuses on scalability of the software, reliability and the capacity for bespoke development alongside the existing complex feature set."

Inform Billing has doubled in size over the past two years. The company has developed close relationships with its customers and is able to respond swiftly to their development requests. "We strongly believe in the value of competition and have worked hard to position ourselves as a credible alternative for the larger reseller," added Bodsworth. "As an independent UK billing provider and a specialist in our field, we continue to promote the importance of independent billing options for resellers, rather than network or aggregator provided options.

"While we have always supported resellers to become self-sufficient with their billing and increase control and visibility over their customer base, we are finding that more and more resellers are happier to take advice and guidance from us and use our bureau billing team as an extension of their own. In the future we see the gap widening between those who want to buy 'Billing as a Service' and those who simply require a software solution."

The trend for outsourced services will continue to grow with a greater requirement for solutions that provide 'Billing as a Service', in addition to the traditional market for buying or renting a billing platform, believes Bodsworth. "Years ago a billing system was a large investment costing £20k-plus upfront," he stated.

"This is no longer the case, and the change in model has created an opportunity to nurture relationships, continue investment and essentially become more profitable as our customers succeed. The current trend, especially for fledgling companies, is to extend that link further by outsourcing all elements of billing to a specialist, freeing up precious time to go out selling and to grow the business."

According to Bodsworth there's a host of opportunities in non-core markets and Inform Billing has to be selective when choosing which opportunities to pursue. Any diversion into a new business stream requires significant development to take a product to market that is 'off the shelf' but still meets a variable set of complex demands. "With the move to more subscription-based revenues comes opportunities outside of the traditional telecoms and IT arena," added Bodsworth. "This includes, but is not limited to, the growth in IoT and M2M markets. Our biggest challenge is to develop systems flexible enough to cope with these emerging opportunities, yet to still maintain the core functionality required by the masses."

In the midst of such a dynamic market it should come as no surprise that Inform Billing has an ongoing development cycle and reinvests around 40 per cent of revenue into development. "This year is turning out to be a year of development launches for Inform Billing," he said. "We will see continued improvements with a major relaunch of our Eclipse billing software before the end of the year, reaffirming our commitment to cloud-based solutions, but retaining the flexibility for those who want to manage their own hosting and hardware. We will also be releasing enhancements to our accompanying Enlighten customer facing web billing portal, and increasing our capacity to integrate with third party systems."

According to Stephen Redman, Head of Customer Services at Aurora, the traditional telecoms reseller will cease to exist and the broader portfolio that resellers are now offering requires a solution that can cope with the complex billing demands of different product types. "The paradox, however, is that as the underlying complexity grows, solutions need to become simpler, easier to use, and integrate with businesses and complementary systems," commented Redman. "We have already added a number of features to the Affinity solution."

He agrees that trends in the cloud and 'as a service' are reshaping the billing landscape. "Flexible billing solutions that can support a range of hosting options while maintaining high standards of service are a key aspect of Aurora's solution delivery," stated Redman. "The industry is in a constant state of change, bringing both challenges and opportunity. Against this backdrop all resellers are seeking to differentiate their solution and for Aurora this challenge is an opportunity to tailor our solutions, from the modular aspect of the Affinity software that needs to integrate with other reseller systems, to defining the appropriate hosting and service solution."

As the world moves to a more connected environment with end users possessing multiple devices that are all talking to each other, the implications will extend to billing, pointed out Redman. "The need not only to hold and store data, but to understand and be able to act on it will play a greater role," said Redman. "For billing, this means that systems need to provide stakeholders with the means to analyse data quickly. It's no longer about waiting for a bill to arrive. Analysis needs to be as close to real-time as possible."

Aurora has relaunched its roadmap and this year will see through an evolution of the Affinity solution. Some of these developments are enhancements to the software suite. Others, noted Redman, will be 'revolutionary' changes that will help Aurora's customers to gain a competitive advantage.

For Nick Jarret, Group Billing Manager at Nine Group, the biggest industry change has been the adoption of cloud-based alternatives to previously deployed on-site solutions. "As software companies continue to move their products to the cloud and open their doors to APIs, integration between these systems is becoming more common and the flexibility, time and cost-savings of having a hosted solution is starting to be realised," he said.

"One of the most exciting developments is the changing profile of our customers. As the telecoms landscape continues to merge with other technologies, such as IT, we're supporting new customers who are branching out into telecoms from other backgrounds. Telecoms billing can be a complicated process, but it's something we've perfected over the 20 years that we've been providing bureau billing services to help resellers."

Nine has over 150 resellers using its Cascade WEB Billing system, giving the company a pool of feedback and suggestions that help to shape its development roadmap. "Our biggest challenge is deciding which of the many ideas to implement first," commented Jarret. "We've spent a long time developing the framework of Cascade WEB to be scalable, secure and resilient; and we're in a favourable position to build on our successes and integrate further ordering options and third party software, while accommodating new products and improving customer visibility, management and control for our resellers."

Integration to third party systems and automating from the point of order through to cash collection are also hot topics, noted Jarret. "Our customers are our drivers, so we can see first-hand the areas where we can add the most value," he said. "If you're able to integrate your ordering with your supplier and your billing information with your CRM, there's no reason you can't build on this to automatically recommend relevant products to the customer, demonstrate potential cost savings and allow them to place the order without you having to lift a finger.

"Billing systems will continue to evolve as new technologies emerge, but I envisage the ongoing movement being towards complementing third party software packages to offer resellers complete business solutions. I expect the future of billing systems to be in gateway solutions."•

Having completed a number of Gigabit City projects the message to the industry from CityFibre is that whatever the connectivity challenge where viable, 'we aim to build', and Aberdeen was no exception.

CityFibre's Gigabit City project is well advanced, bringing pure fibre infrastructures to entire communities. Its intention is to show that anything is possible, again and again, by leveraging its 'well-planned city approach' to building modern networks and overcoming all challenges that cross its path. The sheer agility of what CityFibre has done in Aberdeen is one example of how it has shifted the planning process to a new level. Moreover, CityFibre's work with cloud and application hosting firm Brightsolid is emblematic of its slick city-by-city approach to becoming a credible national infrastructure network alternative.

Brightsolid is the technology arm of DC Thomson & Company and has served the energy sector for 20 years. The firm is based in Dundee Technology Park and operates purpose built tier III data centre facilities in Dundee, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The Aberdeen site, located west of the city, was primarily designed to serve the oil and gas industry, one of the most data intensive industries and a sector that is under financial pressure given falling oil prices. The facility helps to reduce the cost and risk of end user IT requirements by bringing offshore operations onshore wherever possible.

"After our first data centre was built in Dundee we saw significant adoption across energy, financial services and public sector organisations with the main concern being security," said Richard Higgs, CEO at Brightsolid. "With a capacity of 200 racks Dundee soon started to hit capacity. Many of our Aberdeen-based oil and gas customers at that time were served by the Dundee site, and after listening to more than 70 energy organisations we identified a requirement for a carrier neutral facility in Aberdeen. With the help of our parent company we decided to make a £5 million investment to transform the connectivity experience for the area. We also wanted to offer a rich choice of connectivity provider, including satellite provision."

The Aberdeen facility holds over 400 racks and is designed with the latest cooling technology called Ecofris, a system that enables Brightsolid to pass power savings on to customers. Furthermore, the company was the first Microsoft cloud OS partner in Scotland certified for Azure Hybrid Cloud, and one of a handful in Europe. Not surprisingly, CityFibre's Aberdeen project did not go unnoticed. "When we saw that CityFibre was bringing a modern fibre network to Aberdeen to create a Gigabit City it made sense to bring that connectivity into the Brightsolid data centre," added Higgs.

"The CityFibre links in and around Aberdeen are a vital contribution to our core network which gets our customers anywhere in the UK in under 20 milliseconds. The 100 per cent resilient path from CityFibre is also a selling point. Connectivity is the backbone of what we provide and it's vital that our core network surpasses the expectations of our customers."

The Brightsolid data centre would have been at some point within close reach of the CityFibre network, but the network itself was not built when conversations with Brightsolid began. As with any network build there comes a time when the talking stops and something must happen, the quicker the better. After CityFibre planners visited the site to assess the connectivity requirements the decision to invest in a two month programme of work to connect the site was made within one hour. Three months later just over three kilometres of network had been built and connected, including a tricky crossing of the A96 and close collaboration with Scottish Gas Networks.

It goes without saying that Brightsolid's reputation for being flexible sometimes depends on its partners acting quickly, and CityFibre's no-nonsense approach dovetailed with Brightsolid's modus operandi. "As a technology company we must be agile, and CityFibre shares the same 'if it makes sense, let's just get it done' attitude," added Higgs. "We value this approach immensely. CityFibre's decision to invest in a programme of work to connect the site was made quickly. From start to finish it took 12 weeks to get us connected to a brand new network."

The obstacle confronting many technological projects is an inability on the part of stakeholders to work together effectively, often made worse by a stubborn dismissal of new ways of doing things that can release whole regions from a past blighted by poor connectivity. According to CityFibre, it's all about great planning and forming partnerships such as its link-up with Scottish ISP IFB, CityFibre's anchor partner in Aberdeen.

"Our 'well-planned city approach' is the building block of every Gigabit City build," commented Rob Hamlin (pictured above), Commercial Director at CityFibre. "We start the process by looking at the location of business and retail areas, local authority sites, data centres, exchange buildings and mobile sites etc to ensure the built network passes as close as possible to areas of anticipated future demand. We also run early demand aggregation campaigns to establish exactly where other demand clusters are."

This approach often exposes clusters of businesses that are not adequately served, or in some cases frustrated, by the quality of existing connectivity options or service delivery. "A planned build is sometimes split into a number of phases in order to achieve the optimum reach or to prioritise an anchor tenant," added Hamlin. "Even if an area is not included as part of the early phases there is always an opportunity for future expansion."

Once a city-wide deployment begins, the physical installation of the cables and connection of a city's key sites proceeds rapidly. If network is already in place due to an acquisition for example, CityFibre will carry out full checks and undertake any improvement work to ensure it is robust enough to pin its reputation on and offer guaranteed SLAs.

As with all of its cities, CityFibre also considers ongoing expansion opportunities and plans ahead accordingly. "Ultimately, a well planned network can function as a backbone for deployment of fibre to individual homes as well as businesses, providing residential access to true choice and ever-richer forms of digital services and entertainment," commented Hamlin.

CityFibre has evolved what amounts to a technical edge on the ground during the assessment process, where obstacles are looked at and weighed up from a different perspective - not as found. "Although Brightsolid's particular network build was relatively simple with just a few hurdles to overcome, including the need to cross the A96 and time spent working in the trenches with the Scottish Gas Networks team, it's not always so easy," stated Hamlin. "When we hit challenges during a network build we look for solutions and make the most of our agility. That's what we did for Brightsolid, using an entirely different route into the building from all other providers, and getting it installed before it was open for business."

South of the Scottish border, CityFibre also opened a new digital front in the connected future of Leeds and Bradford last month, both now Gigabit Cities with ultra-fast Internet services available through CityFibre's launch partners Exa Networks and Diva Telecom. Other initiatives aren't far behind. After all, why should past forces in the market be allowed to determine what we may experience of the future? This question is best answered through agile partnerships, believes Hamlin.

"The way in which a provider works is vital in our industry, whether that's at the infrastructure, data centre or pure connectivity provisioning level," he said. "As well as ticking all of the boxes in terms of technical, product and solutions prowess, it is crucial to be innovative, easy to do business with and be flexible enough to meet the customers' modern day connectivity requirements."•

While call management rides the crest of a cutting edge technological wave, the term ‘call management' is stuck in reverse. Here, we argue the case for a new, more fitting name, ‘unified intelligence', to take its rightful place in the comms wordbook.

Here's an irony. The comms industry is infamous for attaching inventive jargon and modern acronyms to cutting edge technology, but the language of past glories sometimes outstays its welcome, languishing out of place and growing weak by definition. One such term is ‘call management', and Phillip Reynolds (pictured), joint CEO at Oak Innovation, grapples with the old label. "As someone who has been in call management for 30 years I really struggle with the term ‘call management'," he stated. "Historically, call management, call logging and communications management were all synonymous. But these days, with more sophisticated telephone systems, the advent of email, instant messaging, live chat and video conferencing available to every business from one employee upwards, the face of call management has changed beyond recognition."

Nomenclature aside, call management today is all about customer engagement, marketing, customer service and delivering efficiency across a broad platform of communications technologies. It's no longer the domain of large call centres with big budgets, it's available to every single business and is mandatory in this increasingly competitive world, according to Reynolds. "The focus should be on capturing all customer interactions, almost becoming marketing platforms," he said. "We recently changed our strapline to ‘innovation in business communication' which reflects everything we do at Oak, and where we want to take the industry. It's all about managing every form of business communication, not just telecoms. I would think ‘unified intelligence' would be an apt description of understanding and measuring customer interactions, as well as quality measurement in call and data recording, and of course the reporting analytics to back this up."

There's more value in data if it can help to sell more, provide better customer service, or raise retention rates. The drivers for future call management solutions must therefore be aligned to these business objectives. "Future call management solutions will be bought as part of the IT infrastructure as opposed to the current telephony bias," added Reynolds. "With the move to hosted and cloud-based solutions all of Oak's new products can be run in hosted and virtualised environments as well as the traditional CPE deployment. And with the entry level market being eroded by hosted we are seeing a seed change in an industry that's slow to evolve. This really is a cultural shock where everything takes ten times longer than the computer industry, and a trend that the telecoms channel has to embrace."

With the move from just telecoms management to all forms of communications management, Oak is seeing the big shift towards a data solution. The company is itself embracing this change by increasing R&D spend on both sides of the Atlantic, through buying other businesses for their technologies, changing its recruitment policy and by building a marketing team to spread the word on new developments. "We're currently releasing Clarify, a new mid-market real-time call recorder with sophisticated quality measurement; as well as updated versions of Evolve, our contact centre management software, and our Adapt progressive and predictive diallers," explained Reynolds. "These support the growth in informal call centres as well as increasing demand for more sophisticated call recording."

Oak has always aimed to be a one-stop-shop for resellers, offering call recording, call reporting and analytics, plus screen popping with CRM integration, all available for the SME and mid-market. "The launch of Clarify complements our existing RecordX call recording solution, so everything is covered from an entry level system right up to 4,000 extensions," added Reynolds.

"These are exciting but changing times. With good planning and wise investment, call management, or should I call it unified intelligence, will be a growth industry of which I'm happy to play a part. It's funny how things go full circle: I was developing cloud-based solutions in the late 70s and early 80s on Unix platforms. Now my team, led by my eldest son, are doing the same on Linux!"

Bart Delgado, Managing Director of Akixi, has witnessed significant growth in the enterprise space. Hosted service delivery has now entered the greenfield site and microsite markets, and Akixi has seen good uptake with multi-site deployments. "These traditionally required complex and costly, sometimes unreliable, technologies in order to provide some element of centralised management across disparate sites," said Delgado. "But hosted call management delivers this function as standard, out of the box and without a premium."

He also noted that more customers are demanding flexibility in size, tenure and even level of functionality. "Today's business is having to respond more dynamically to the demands of their customers, and as such they are favouring suppliers that are able to deliver to them on the same commercial basis. They want to be able to turn services on, off, up and down without costly penalties or long-term commitments."

Cost-effective call recording along with innovation in call management with UC and CRM integration means that SMEs can now take advantage of powerful solutions that deliver flexibility and real business intelligence. This comes at a time when more and more end customers are reviewing their business processes and communications strategies as they consider migrating to cloud-based offerings. "The availability and accessibility of business intelligence solutions, along with the same level of functionality that is present in premise-based offerings, are key factors behind the move to cloud telephony," said Tony Martino, Managing Director of Tollring.

"Expectations of business analytics applications are running high and call management intelligence has never been better. Market demand and the development of the cloud are shaping these products and services."

According to Martino, the channel is being forced to embrace cloud services to remain competitive. "The shift to the cloud is uncovering the need for new features in any call management suite, such as proactive system monitoring for revenue assurance, fraud alarming and voice quality monitoring," he said. "These cutting edge features, along with new utilisation monitoring tools for partners, can deliver a competitive advantage to the channel."

Fraud has always been a hot topic and presents its own challenges in the telecoms world, but the latest developments in cloud-based call management solutions are positively impacting the way the channel manages customers and their usage behaviour. And while recurring revenue opportunities are synonymous with the cloud, the immediacy of cloud applications and the convergence of services makes revenue management an ongoing challenge for channel partners, believes Martino.

"The channel not only has the ability to proactively advise on products and services based on customer usage profiles, but also to protect their revenue streams through rich real-time data feeds that highlight any variances to the billing team," he added. "Revenue assurance tools are becoming not only a way for the channel to bill accurately, but also a means to differentiate. Another area of significant interest is SP Analytics - enhanced value for the channel through utilisation of analytics, automated billing and self-provisioning."

For Martino, business and UC analytics are the new terms that describe Tollring's vision. It is about bringing together information from many sources, not just from calls, to deliver customer insights. "Business analytics is becoming a strategic pillar," he said. "Call management is a fundamental element of business analytics. This is evident in the fact that call management is becoming more about UC than calls. The adoption of new UC technology is being driven by the demands for business analytics to empower end users in making decisions and achieving RoI.

"In the not too distant future, this will be seen in SIP-based communications and the rapid adoption of Skype for Business and other UC tools that will extend call management and recording solutions to include real-time communications, VoIP, instant messaging, UC, video and collaboration."

End users will be looking to consolidate their suppliers and work more intelligently. So the channel must remain relevant and become experts in their fields, delivering experience, expertise and advice. "They must become the trusted advisor to ensure their customers are investing in the right technology for their business," stated Martino.
"For those customers that have made investments in the past, providers must advise them on how things have changed since they last purchased. They need to be mindful of where customers are in terms of their understanding of latest technologies, their buying attitudes and the timing of their investments.

"Customers adopting the latest cloud services and communications technology will be keen to prove that investments are right for their business and they need to understand how their people are consuming services. Analytics and BI services can help our partners to prove their relevance, and in turn, help their customers to measure efficiencies from these transformational projects."

Tollring's iCall Suite (iCS) call analytics and recording solution is sold 100 per cent via the channel. In the coming months, Tollring will launch the latest iteration of iCS call analytics and recording globally - one single solution deployed in the cloud, as a hybrid model or on-premise, and accessible on any device. "This will cover all of our channel needs as our partners look to expand their offerings," noted Martino. "We feel the hybrid model provides partners with a strong entry level solution to the cloud."

Tollring will continue to deliver call management as a suite of fully integrated modules, and intends to take what it has learnt in the UK and replicate its successes in global markets. Partnerships with significant global players such as BroadSoft, Mitel and Samsung offer a foundation to do this.

"As a software developer, we've achieved incredible growth," said Martino. "There are big opportunities for both us and our channel partners. We must evolve continuously to ensure that our products and services are relevant to what our partners and customers need and want today. Plus, we must keep an eye on what they will need tomorrow." "

Here follows a lesson in advanced determination, by Shahram Baherzadeh, Managing Director at Essex-based Loop Voice & Data.

When starting out, most would-be business owners are likely to give up if faced with obstacles the size of mountains. But Bagherzadeh's story is one of robust persistence, so much so that no barrier proved insurmountable. Bagherzadeh started his company in 2000 with no sales experience, no telecoms experience, zero finance knowhow, no management experience and the bank wouldn't lend him any money. Having found a home in comms after leaving the hospitality industry he worked from a box room for three years. "I realised there was great potential in telecoms and started Wireless Telecommunications as a sole trader," he said. "I knew that I could offer better customer service. In 2003 Wireless Telecommunications became a limited company and in 2009 we adopted Loop Voice & Data as a trading name."

Bagherzadeh arrived in the UK in 1987 and studied English as a foreign language at Mid-Warwickshire College. He then passed a BETC first diploma in 1990 and worked in a number of restaurants around the UK. "My previous experience in hospitality ingrained a culture of customer service and hard work," he added. "Our biggest opportunity is customer service which is lacking in this market. But what we deliver is high."

His decision to enter the comms industry went against the advice of close friends who thought he had 'lost his marbles'. "Everyone I knew thought I had gone mad and tried to convince me otherwise," noted Bagherzadeh. "The journey has been painful, but I've proven that hard work and belief in yourself, no matter what, will pay off. Nobody can stop learning, either about work or in life, because every day there is something new."

Wireless Telecommunications' turnover for the first three years was circa £12k per annum. A move to bigger offices and the addition of an admin role helped to push revenues up to £30k. "I then employed one sales person and turnover increased to £155k," said Bagherzadeh. "By 2006 our turnover grew to £460k with three employees. Three years later we moved to a larger office and now have nine staff with revenues of £1.4 million and over 600 clients. The 10 year plan is to grow our indirect agents and to position Loop Voice & Data as the main telecoms company in Essex."

Bagherzadeh's work experience in hospitality is paying dividends, with Loop Voice & Data's customer churn registering at less than 1.6 per cent per annum. "We continually ask our clients about their needs and requirements to make sure we understand them and deliver what they need," he added. "I'm a great believer in 'people buy from people', and if your clients believe in you and trust you, then it is much easier to introduce them to new technology. Our priorities are to keep clients happy, stay abreast of the market and increase turnover. The challenge is maintaining high margins in the process."

Bagherzadeh's strict policy of product and service revision ensures the company is aligned with the evolving requirements of its target customers. This strategy has also defined a strong portfolio underpinned by relationships with key partners such as Pragma (LG), Trust (Mitel), TalkTalk Business, Gamma, Vodafone, Openreach, BT Wholesale and Virtual1. "A big change of direction for the company was moving from traditional telephony to the world of VoIP," noted Bagherzadeh. "I didn't want to stay behind technology advancements as customer demand increased."

The imperative to keep up with the pace of change and maximise margins is one of the reasons behind a narrowing of Bagherzadeh's product range in 2009. "We began to refocus and be known for what we specialised in," he explained. "The adoption of SIP and cloud telephony is growing at a fast rate due to lower data connectivity prices and greater regional availability. More of our clients are asking about SIP and hosted services, so we always review our products every three years to stay aligned with these market trends. End users are getting more and more clever, playing resellers against each other to get the best deals. VARs therefore need to develop what they are good at and be known for their specialisms." •

Serial entrepreneur Russell Lux thrives on a perpetual craving for winning ever greater sales, so not for nothing is the CEO's launch of TelcoSwitch a matter of significant channel interest.

Lux is best known in the industry as an 'entrepreneur', but the badge seems insufficient as it sits on the bonnet of a highly tuned selling machine, fuelled almost insatiably by adrenaline. Lux says he became an entrepreneur 'by accident'. But the 'entrepreneur' label doesn't do full justice to his achievements to date nor his renewed drive to disrupt a significant portion of the comms market via a top of the range sales model. "Sales is in my blood, my very DNA," he stated. "Selling gives me an adrenaline kick, and the launch of TelcoSwitch has taken this drive to a new level," he stated.

Lux was bitten by the sales bug when he was at university, selling computers to fellow students. His flair for making money put him on the path to establishing one of the UK's fastest growing IT companies, LuxTech, in January 2001. "I started the company from the spare room of my London flat," he explained. "LuxTech raised its first invoice in July 2001 and clients were gained through word of mouth. We targeted sectors such as solicitors and accounts who could recommend our services to others."

The strategy quickly paid off. In its first year of trading LuxTech generated sales of £80,000, a figure that multiplied to £400,000 in the second year, and a remarkable £1.2 million in year three. By 2009 the firm was populated by 80 staff and registered a turnover of more than £7 million. Based in London and Hertfordshire LuxTech offered an outsourced solution including IT equipment, IT consultancy, telecoms solutions and project management. In 2011 LuxTech was sold to Parachute IT.

Aiming to repeat this masterstroke and intrude on the stomping ground of household industry names, last month Lux ratcheted up his channel ambitions, greased the wheels of the TelcoSwitch rolling campaign convoy and entered hosted comms territory with a laser focus on the channel, a strategy that has already prompted Lux to perform an upward revision of projected new partner numbers this year. At the start of 2016 his aim was to sign up 45 resellers by the dawn of 2017. But a flurry of sign ups has prompted Lux to hike his target to 65. In terms of users of his platform, the goal is 25,000 seats in year one.

TelcoSwitch launched in 2015 as a supplier of unified turnkey hosted telephony services to the channel, offering a product and service suite that includes CallSwitch, SimSwitch, NetSwitch and SipSwitch, all designed for large and small businesses. Lux has pinned his hopes on the 'intuitive and simple' nature of TelcoSwitch's platform and the strength of its partner programme. He believes the innovative nature of its offering has the capacity to challenge the established market players by offering users a more rounded and flexible communications platform that fits neatly with the requirements of modern businesses.

"The communications market is vibrant and growing faster than ever," observed Lux. "Organisations of all shapes, sizes and industries are waking up to the business benefits that can be gained by having an effective communication platform installed within their network. But there is a dominant player in the space, so resellers who are focused on selling telephony are invariably going head-to-head with the same platform."

The partner programme is positioned as a viable 'alternative' and structured around three key pillars - Agency, Managed and Self-Service. Furthermore, Lux is poised to launch a partner portal that will be the main access point into managing the TelcoSwitch relationship. "Here partners will be able to register leads with a deal registration page, download co-branded marketing collateral, view up-to-date pricing and participate in academy training," added Lux.

"Most importantly, partners will access the core platform and billing system along with direct links to the Wiki where queries can be answered. TelcoSwitch will support its partners with as little or as much as they need to grow revenues from selling our voice solutions."

The company also offers unlimited telephone support and dedicated training to all resellers, focusing on both the technical and sales elements of its product suit, all of which are turnkey solutions designed for SMEs, enterprises and governments worldwide, offering mobile, connectivity or hosted telephony communications. TelcoSwitch is also working on WebRTC integration for the platform.

"Digital transformation is gaining traction and for the comms channel there is a golden opportunity to deliver UC solutions that help end users deliver their objectives," commented Lux. "Businesses are looking at the cloud to enable them to take more risks and drive change within their organisations, and respond far quicker to broader market conditions.

"There is a desire for the channel to get involved in cloud solutions, and there is a strong market opportunity , but it also requires a change in mind-set to accommodate the different solutions and new customer expectations," stated Lux. "There is a significant opening for the IT channel to provide sound guidance, support and services to their customers, establishing an effective balance between on-premise and cloud-based services."•

The telecommunications arm of pub retailing business and brewer Marston's PLC is gearing up for channel expansion following a period of sustained and significant growth, according to Head of Telecoms Rob Derbyshire.

Last year, Marston's Telecoms broke through 25 per cent growth, accelerating away from the 18 per cent growth it recorded a year earlier. "2016 is more about consolidation, so we expect low double digit growth before targeting another 25 to 30 per cent in financial year 2017/2018," explained Derbyshire.

The appeal of Marston's Telecoms' proposition to the channel is undeniable, and Derbyshire plans to leverage the market gains already made to the advantage of a growing number of resellers. "We're aiming to be far more established within the channel community," he stated. "We have a wealth of expertise in Marston's that we leverage to support of our partners."

Marston's Telecoms was formed in 2008 by Mike McMinn, Group IT Director at Marston's PLC, to generate savings for the group through purchasing comms services on a wholesale basis. A big turning point for Marston's Telecoms was its transformation into a true wholesale provider of comms services. "What we haven't done well to date is properly articulate our offer to prospective partners," added Derbyshire. "This is why we're actively engaging with the channel and focusing on partner recruitment. Resellers seem to gravitate towards our personal experience in rolling out larger solutions. Most are looking to develop their proposition not only in SMB but also moving into larger corporate and flagship accounts."

According to Derbyshire, The deployment of Marston's Telecoms own network gave it a competitive edge in the retail space. "Our current focus is on our second core network upgrade in 20 months," he explained. "This is necessary due to the bandwidth required by customers and all of the interconnects we need with other carriers to offer an agnostic service. For the size of our business, this is a significant investment. We'll have a 50 gigabit core network in London delivered on state of the art chassis routers. This should provide our resellers with the reassurance that Marston's Telecoms is here to stay."

From a telecoms perspective, leveraging its PLC ownership has allowed Marston's to buy well from suppliers and in turn pass this benefit on to its channel partners. "We are also well positioned in that we understand first-hand what end users want because that is how we started," added Derbyshire. "So when it comes to assisting channel partners in delivering the right solution for larger bids we are able to provide relevant expertise."

Hosted VoIP and connectivity are the key growth products, although that's tempered by declining costs in connectivity, noted Derbyshire. "While customers are buying greater volumes of bandwidth it's still a race to the bottom," he stated. "We need to continue to innovate and drive down costs to remain competitive. Moving into 2016/17 we are developing software to provide partners with a greater depth of analytics so they can better manage their business."

The expectation of resellers from a support perspective has been a significant learning curve, pointed out Derbyshire. "We were originally geared up to support our parent company, a large PLC, and we've had to change our processes and add people to be able to support resellers in the way we want to," he explained. "Customer support is important to us so it is something we are constantly evaluating.

"Our growth will come from supporting a diverse and innovative reseller channel, and their growth will lead to ours. We will look for new ways to assist their growth and we won't be afraid to explore new avenues. The partnerships we develop have far greater substance than simply passing on a telecoms commodity. Our success is dependent on our partners' success so they really are the Marston's focus."

To bolster its support for partners Marston's Telecom is investing in more tools that will enable resellers to own the whole lifecycle of a product without needing to refer to the company. "This is still very much a work in progress, but we recognise it is key to growth in the channel," added Derbyshire. "That, and leveraging the benefits of SDN via these sorts of tools can offer partners a much more flexible solution."

The challenge of positioning Marston's Telecoms against larger market alternatives is also the company's big opportunity to articulate its point of difference, believes Derbyshire. "Financial strength, continuous investment, using what we sell and having a big FTSE 250 using our services are key reasons for resellers to partner with us," he added. "This is an exciting time for the channel. There's tremendous noise around hosted VoIP and coupled with greater connectivity demands this lends itself to a persuasive sell."•

Not surprisingly, billing platform pioneers have gone in precisely the direction of the industry, led by the cloud, big data and security, and, like Strategic Imperatives, they have themselves become agents of change.

The launch of Elevate early last year was a notable victory for Strategic Imperatives. It concluded the development of a comprehensive rating and billing engine and created a platform for a number of complementary services to be introduced this year that will, says Wail Sabbagh, Managing Director, take the company to the next level.

"Firstly, we plan to introduce intelligent fraud detection," he said. "Elevate already supports the standard threshold/alerting approach but this is no longer sufficient to deal with the sophisticated levels of fraud experienced by the channel. We have worked with a number of technologies over the last year as part of our R&D drive, in particular Amazon Web Services (AWS) Red Shift which has shown great promise. Our task now is to productise and refine what is an industry first."

Sabbagh has also set his sights on creating a unified billing and provisioning implementation that manages the full customer lifecycle from provision to bill across multiple tier 1 networks. "We are moving closer to achieving our ambition," he stated. "The next step is to further integrate Elevate with CPconnect, our SI service that provides a unified interface to multiple network providers such as Openreach, BT Wholesale, TalkTalk and Vodafone. This year we plan to add support for zero touch TalkTalk billing integration in addition to the WLR3 capability we made available last year."

The running message is that billing is no longer regarded as a product, it's a strategic service that must be delivered against strict SLAs. With this in mind Strategic Imperatives set about re-writing the billing landscape. "We asked our customers one question, 'What would a perfect billing system look like?'," said Sabbagh. "We took their answers and our experience of turning complex requirements into intuitive solutions and launched a multi-million pound project to design and develop a system from the ground up. We threw out the rulebook and created Elevate."

Sabbagh defines his vision of billing as The Power of Now, a term that describes a key driver for Elevate which he believes will change how communication providers view and use their billing platform. "The Power of Now is all about real-time," he said. "Elevate works in real-time, responding instantly to changes in customer and pricing data, immediately re-calculating and giving clients a constant oversight of their business performance, with all the data they need at their fingertips. Elevate's real-time approach is reflected in the visually rich and dynamic dashboards created by users from a library of widgets and reporting tools."

At the heart of Strategic Imperatives' proposition are SaaS-based solutions with no on-premise requirements, best of breed integration using published APIs, an intuitive user experience and no contractual tie in. "We are also committed to equivalence and bringing solution parity to the market," stated Sabbagh. "Our pay-as-you-use pricing and start-up packages level the playing field for resellers regardless of their size. We provide the same solutions and service wrap to channel giants such as TalkTalk, Vodafone, Daisy, Gamma and Plusnet as we do to the smallest reseller, enabling a provisioning and billing level playing field and ensuring minimal technological barriers as resellers build their businesses."

Another step change in the channel's expectations of a billing system is reflected in the shift in attitude towards technology, business support systems, processes and propositions, pointed out Sabbagh. "Best of breed integration, automation, SaaS and usability are now fundamental requirements that cannot be easily retrofitted to existing systems," he observed. "We have also gained a far better understanding of the nature of a true cloud proposition. Gone are the days when a cloud offering simply meant hosting an application remotely. Communication providers are now asking about dynamic scaling, disaster recovery and security, all difficult questions to answer when a product is based on legacy technology."

Integration has also become a key driver for most businesses, regardless of size, as they seek to build processes based on best of breed platforms rather than a 'one size fits all' solution, pointed out Tim Sayer, Head of Business Development. "Nearly every business we speak to is asking about the availability of our APIs as they seek to integrate billing with CRM, order management, accounts/ledger, collection and other systems," he said.
Sayer also noted that high profile security breaches inside and outside of the comms sector reminded everyone, again, about the importance of security in all manner of software systems.

"One of the inherent benefits of AWS is an enterprise level of security that's out of reach for most software developers and the majority of communication providers," added Sayer. "But it's an integral part of what we deliver to our customers because of the way we have leveraged the AWS architecture. Closely linked to this is the impact of fraudulent usage on many communication providers, so we, and other vendors, have provided a suite of tools to allow suspect activity to be monitored, alerts raised and action taken."

Using Amazon's enterprise cloud infrastructure has enabled Elevate to offer high levels of security with the introduction of automated vulnerability scanning, two factor authentication and financial grade encryption. Big data is another key trend that will influence the billing market, noted Sabbagh.

"Hats off to our colleagues at Union Street who have used big data principles to introduce the recent Benchmarking service," he commented. "We have big plans in this area, fraud detection and analytics in particular. The AWS infrastructure enables Elevate to utilise massive data warehouse engines such as Amazon Red Shift as part of our proposition to offer a big data service that would otherwise be financially out of reach of all but the largest network operators."

Such propositions, along with connectivity, networking, cloud services, complex bundling and complementary services must be at the heart of a modern billing system, not just an add-on to a bygone era, believes Sabbagh. "The future of billing systems is driven by their unstoppable evolution from standalone products to being an integral part of a fully integrated open service platform utilising best of breed CRM, billing and provisioning services, based on agreed industry standards," he added. "We also see a market for a library of complementary micro services such as payment management, banking integration and credit scoring, all flourishing as part of an open integration architecture."

We have seen that Strategic Imperatives' go to market strategy is defined by the cloud, big data, security and the evolution of the channel. Here's another reason why. "Cloud is key for true SaaS," said Sabbagh. "In developing Elevate we utilised AWS, the same infrastructure that supports many of the world's Fortune 500 organisations. Our approach eliminates the need for complex infrastructure and will seamlessly grow with our customers' business.

"In terms of billing systems, our biggest opportunity lies with those resellers who, after reviewing their IT stack, have come to realise that the future lies with SaaS-based, integration led and open billing platforms. The channel has always recognised that it operates in a world where it must adapt to survive, and the same is true of billing systems.

"When we introduced Elevate our intention was to transform the billing market. Elevate has pioneered the introduction of auto-scaling which instantly delivers greater capability and capacity on-demand. We call this approach 'elastic magic' because users never experience unpredictability or reduced performance when their processes ramp up demand, and it runs so smoothly that it feels like magic."

Another topic on which Strategic Imperatives exerts a telling influence is focused on the development and elevation of industry standards. "We are working with industry bodies to establish and maintain standards for the benefit of everyone," said Sayer. "We've become advocates for the channel, engaging in collaborative discussion and forum participation around regulation, processes and technology. We're well regarded as industry experts by our clients and the industry regulators who call upon our expertise to validate proposed changes to the channel ecosystem.

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