Comms Dealer

South West Communications Group has been appointed as Toshiba's authorised distribution partner to support partners and resellers across the UK.

swcomms has operated as a Toshiba reseller for 30 years and will leverage its experience in the maintenance of Toshiba's phone systems to provide countrywide support and spare parts to other companies looking after Toshiba customers.

Brian Lodge, swcomms MD, said: "We have built up a bank of knowledge and expertise on all of Toshiba's voice products, so we are best placed to offer support to other partners and resellers who need to escalate any issues they cannot resolve themselves.

"Our engineering and post sales teams are accredited to the highest level and have worked with Toshiba on product development over the years."

NFU Mutual, providers of business, personal and farming insurance services, has appointed managed communications provider Azzurri Communications to unify its entire UK-wide agency network under a centralised, hosted telephony solution.

This will enable NFU Mutual and its agencies to work over a single cloud-based network, record calls for training and security purposes, provide automated payment card industry compliant options to protect its customers' card details, and improve agencies' productivity.

Azzurri's ICON Communicate solution will include a fully managed suite of communications services incorporating IP telephony, call recording, core management and PCI DSS-compliant credit card payments capabilities, and will be deployed throughout NFU Mutual's 300-plus UK branches.

The service also supplies NFU Mutual with 'Five Nines' availability, equating to a maximum of only five minutes of unplanned downtime per year.

Working with more than 900,000 customers nationwide, NFU Mutual delivers insurance, pensions and investments to rural communities.

"We needed a solution that included three core aspects - a centralised hosted telephony solution, call recording and PCI DSS capabilities - to simplify our branch-to-branch communications, improve productivity and to protect our customers and our staff," said Tim Mann, CIO at NFU Mutual.

"PCI DSS compliance and call recordings are important to us. Giving our employees the ability to take details in a reassuringly safe and concise manner gives our customers greater confidence in our systems, and by extension our wider brand. As a highly governed and regulated financial organisation, it's a fundamental business requirement."

Chris Jagusz, CEO of Azzurri Communications, added: "Internal efficiency, regulatory compliance and reliability are all watchwords at board level in any organisation, but NFU Mutual recognised the further importance of these principles - assuring and growing customer confidence.

"Using our cloud-first capabilities our design satisfies NFU Mutual's needs in a way that's suitable for the scale and distributed structure of the organisation."

Ultima Business Solutions has been awarded Partner of the Year by Check Point Software Technologies.

Martin Collins, Head of Networking and Security for Ultima, received the award during Check Point Experience (CPX), a three-day European conference held in Nice.

For more than 15 years Ultima has worked with Check Point's enterprise security portfolio, offering enterprise clients protection against increasingly sophisticated cyber security threats.

Collins said: "Ultima invests heavily in staff training to ensure our technical consultants are highly capable in providing end-to-end solutions for our customers.

"An example of this is the recent certification we've been awarded as one of only a handful of specialist UK partners that are providing businesses with zero-day malware protection using Check Point's latest 'sand Blast' technology."

Scott Dodds, CEO of Ultima, added: "Not only do we have the skillsets to work with enterprise vendors such as Check Point, but also our risk management division allows us to bring together leading technologies, people and processes.

"This enables Ultima to adopt a more holistic approach towards reducing risk and ensuring business continuity for our customers."

Cloud and network provider Exponential-e has enhanced its channel engagement model with the launch of a new incentive programme, Winning Ways.

The scheme is designed to strengthen channel engagement by offering a reward experience to those individuals within Exponential-e's partner network that drive sales through a value-add approach.

Michala Hart, head of channel strategy at Exponential-e, said: "Winning Ways has been designed to be a fun and rewarding scheme that benefits those sales people who get to know our product portfolio and drive revenue for both their business and ours.

"We want to encourage our channel partners to build stronger and long-term relationships with the end customer, and believe that with added incentive, the results will come."

Utilize scooped Best Marketing Campaign at the European Business Excellence Awards, and were also finalists in the Best Company Culture and CEO of the Year categories.

Warren Davies, founder and MD of Utilize, collected the award at a black tie event at Celtic Manor organised by business coaching firm ActionCOACH.

"Winning Best Marketing Campaign is a testament to how all of our team represent the company," said Davies.

"We have always maintained that our biggest assets are our staff and our company ethos which is centred on working with the common goal of improving our customers' technology.

"Our DNA for Success has been written by our people and sets out, in our words, the reasons we want to grow, how we can achieve this growth, our vision, our values and our culture.

"The continued support of our team helps us to promote the open, honest and transparent environment we are so proud of and continue to build.

"This ensures that Utilize can continue to deliver great customer service and endorse an innovative and intuitive attitude, where everything is achievable."

Lonap Chairman Trefor Davies (pictured) will use M2M technology to raise awareness of Cancer Research during a charity walk from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood's Bay.

A tracking device supplied by Pangea will inform Davies' followers about his location and the environmental conditions.

"I wanted to make the journey a highly interactive multimedia experience by allowing followers to track my progress in real-time," said Davies.

"It's great to work with a company that is willing to get involved and use their technology to raise awareness for causes like this."

Pangea MD Dan Cunliffe added: "In an increasingly connected world, Pangea believes that IoT and M2M can do more than just connect devices, appliances or vehicles.

"For Pangea, #ConnectingTrefor is about connecting people with a great cause. This is the first of our many corporate social responsibility initiatives."

Davies will be walking from 1st May to 12th May in memory of his mother and his wife's father, and welcomes anyone who wants to join him along the way.

The 2016 Managed Services and Hosting Summit to be held in London on 21st September will examine the rapid changes taking place currently in the industry and among IT customers.

The way companies are buying IT is changing, creating threats and opportunities for existing MSPs and new market entrants alike, just as IT models themselves are undergoing fundamental change.

The Managed Services and Hosting Summit 2016, now in its sixth year, will focus on how the market is changing and what it will take for MSPs to succeed in this brave new digital world.

A positive customer experience is critical to a company's brand and, ultimately, its bottom line.

With the proliferation of technology and devices, the customer has become smarter and more powerful.

Customers now decide when and how they want to interact with brands and this has had a direct impact on the way companies sell to their customers. While macro trends such as social, mobile, cloud, big data and IoT are forging a new era of engagement, customers are ultimately becoming far more disruptive than the technology itself.

In the first keynote, 'The Age of the Customer', Tiffani Bova, Salesforce's Global, Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist (and former Gartner VP, Distinguished Analyst and Research Fellow) will address how companies of all sizes can create new business practices that leverage technology to strengthen customer relationships and accelerate sales and growth.

Attendees will hear actionable takeaways on how to create a customer-centric business and long-lasting brand loyalty.

The UK Managed Services & Hosting Summit 2016 is a management-level event designed to help channel organisations identify opportunities arising from the increasing demand for managed and hosted services and to develop and strengthen partnerships aimed at supporting sales.

www.mshsummit.com

The industry's most prestigious sales awards event staged at the The Park Lane Hotel, London, on May 5th (and sponsored by KCOM), has recognised and rewarded the best sales and marketing teams in the comms channel.

Hosted by TV presenter Dan Walker, best known for presenting the BBC's Football Focus and BBC Breakfast, the awards luncheon celebrated the top revenue generating teams from the distribution, vendor and reseller sectors of the channel.

Stand-out winners were Entanet, Provu and Focus Group, all scooping a brace of awards with Focus collecting the coveted Comms Dealer Sales Team of the Year accolade (pictured).

Comms Dealer Editorial Director Nigel Sergent said: "Channel teams that truly understand the needs of customers and shown innovation in their approach to sales impressed our judges most.

"Real success is only achieved through teamwork, and having seen every entry that was passed onto our esteemed panel of judges, I am fully aware of the work put into these awards and the quality of the submissions has been amazing.

"All of our finalists are to be congratulated on their achievements and deserve wide recognition for their hard work."

For more information on this year's Sales Awards please visit www.cdsalesawards.com

COMMS DEALER SALES AWARDS 2015 WINNERS

Reseller Sales Team of the Year up to £2.5m - Loop Voice & Data

Reseller Sales Team of the Year £2.5m-£5m - NSN

Reseller Sales Team of the Year £5m-£7.5m - Berry Telecom

Reseller Sales Team of the Year £7.5m - Focus Group

Reseller Best Marketing Campaign - Lily Comms

Service Provider Channel Account Team of the Year - plan.com

Service Provider Channel Marketing Team of the Year - Channel Telecom

Service Provider Channel Marketing Campaign of the Year - Fidelity Group

Distributor Channel Account Team of the Year - ProVu

Distributor Channel Marketing Team of the Year - ProVu

Distributor Channel Marketing Campaign of the Year - Pragma

Vendor Channel Account Team of the Year - Entanet

Vendor Channel Marketing Team of the Year - Entanet

Vendor Channel Marketing Campaign of the Year - BT Wholesale

Channel Marketing/PR Agency of the Year - Blabbermouth

Comms Dealer Sales Team of the Year - Focus Group

Managed Services Provider GCI has finalised its leadership team with the appointment of Mike Ayres as CCO and Phil Smith as COO.

GCI CEO Adrian Thirkill stated: "I have worked with both Mike and Phil for many years at Colt and Easynet and we achieved some great things together.

"They are talented, consistent and have the backbone to always push for better and see beyond 'same old, same old'.

"Importantly, I also always remember our time together as good days, fun borne of success. I am delighted therefore that we have reformed a winning team."

Ayres, previously MD Business Markets (UK) at Easynet and then Senior Vice President Strategic Channel at Interoute, commented: "Across the organisation we have a very good team at GCI.

"I look forward to doing everything possible to provide strong support to my team and a great service to our customers.

"And, through the discipline of collaboration and partnership - and the traditional values of decency, honesty and integrity - I hope to earn the trust and respect of both our people and our customers."

Smith previously with Colt, CGI and Capgemini, noted: "Our many years working together have built empathy and confidence in each other's ability, but it was fun too and I feel the GCI alchemy will be just as good, if not better.

"I believe the team at GCI is primed and ready to take things to the next level. I also believe that in an progressively commoditised sector, GCI will serve our customers better by developing an increasingly proactive and consultative approach."

Thirkill added: "We now have a full exec team from CEO to CMO and it's a capable blend of experienced new joiners and proven GCI seniors.

"Collectively, the leadership team shares the single vision of realising GCI's full potential and supporting our people, customers, partners and alliances to the absolute best of our ability.

"More simply, we now have the right people on the bus and we'll now pull together to keep GCI not only pointing in the right direction. Our announcement only last week regarding our acquisition of Fusion Media Networks is just one early indicator of that."

Ayres and Smith join weeks after Mike Constantine joined GCI as CTO.

Will Kennedy has joined Solar Communications as Sales Director, moving from Intercity Telecom where he was Sales and Marketing Director, and formerly Sales Director at Daisy.

He brings more than 17 years experience in the telecommunications and managed services sector to Solar.

Solar CEO John Whitty commented: "Will's significant experience and strong vendor relationships means that he is the ideal person to support our ambitious plans as we take our customers on this exciting journey."

Kennedy added: "The market opportunity is huge and Solar is well primed for growth, with a proven track record in business communications delivery and established relationships with leading vendors.

"I share John's vision and ambitions for the company and I look forward to leading our sales team in the delivery of new and improved technology solutions to new and existing clients.

"Investments already made by Solar have equipped us with the technology to incrementally improve the daily operations and business performance of our clients' business through the adoption of new technology."