Comms Dealer

Maintel has completed the acquisition of Azzurri Communications following an 'overwhelming' vote of approval from its shareholders.

The acquisition positions the combined company as one of the largest integrators in the communications sector, with revenues for the last financial year of over £140m.

Eddie Buxton, CEO at Maintel, said: "The overwhelming approval by shareholders has further confirmed to us that this acquisition will prove beneficial for employees, customers and partners of both companies, providing enhanced scale and visibility of the combined group."

Chris Jagusz, CEO of Azzurri Communications, added: "The combined group will be able to offer its customers a broader range of services in hosted cloud and data solutions."

Six Degrees Group (6DG) has acquired application hosting provider Insite, a specialist provider of Microsoft Dynamics AX hosting and managed services in the cloud.
 
Established in 1994, Insite owns and operates its own tier 3 aligned data centre where it hosts private cloud infrastructure, dedicated to each client, upon which it builds tailored platforms to operate ERP and CRM platforms, predominantly but not exclusively for Microsoft applications.
 
Insite is a Microsoft Gold Partner for Server and Data platforms, plus Hosting, bringing Microsoft Azure public cloud knowledge to 6DG.
 
Insite goes to market directly and through partnerships with major ISVs.

These partners handle the application development and rollout with Insite providing the PaaS elements.

Insite includes application performance monitoring, highly pro-active support and security controls within its service wrapper. End users include Greenwich Leisure, Tarmac Building Products, Crew Clothing, Joules and Countrywide Farmers.
 
Alastair Mills, CEO of 6DG, commented: "This announcement is a continuation of our stated strategic goal to enhance our capabilities in mission critical application hosting, with a secure and compliant wrap, for business and government customers.

"It also provides Microsoft Azure expertise in the public cloud for both IaaS and PaaS, as well as a strong ISV partner channel."
 
James Barden, MD of Insite, added: "The technical capabilities of both businesses are highly complementary and our approach to the way we work with customers is a close fit.

"We are looking forward to introducing new capabilities from Six Degrees in addition to the expertise in mission-critical hosting we have been delivering to our customers for many years."

Arrow Electronics has announced its participation in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Programme.

Arrow will leverage its global base of value added resellers and managed service providers to sell Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Enterprise Mobility Suite and Dynamics CRM Online subscriptions in the United States and Europe.

Arrow will grow its sales of Microsoft cloud through value added services delivered globally to the channel, including cross-vendor solutions, go-to-market playbooks and cloud assessment-migration toolkits, in addition to billing and support services.

Steve Robinson, Vice President of Arrow's global cloud business, said: "As a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Programme partner, Arrow is well positioned to provide and enable a range of Microsoft cloud solutions through our channel partner community."

Phones were ringing off their hooks at Leicester City FC when it secured the Premier League crown with two games to go after Spurs drew 2-2 with Chelsea on Monday night, with the club's comms solution, supplied by SpliceCom, not dropping any balls during the influx.

Leicester held Manchester United 1-1 at Old Trafford, despite finishing the match with ten men, the day before, requiring their North London rivals to win all three remaining games to stay in contention for the Premiership race.

The Fantastic Foxes, as they're affectionately known, had already qualified for the European Champions League next season.

Leicester City has been using an on-premise cloud-ready SpliceCom voice solution, including Vision Business Management application, to handle their evolving unified communication needs, since 2010.

The SpliceCom solution utilises some 200 IP and analogue handsets around Leicester City's King Power Stadium, training ground and other key locations, running as a single unified system.

Paulo Sousa, Sven-Goran Eriksson, Nigel Pearson and now Claudio Ranieri have all utilised the phone tagged 'Manager' on the SpliceCom system over this period.

According to Martine Morgan, Leicester City's Purchasing Manager, the greatest advantage of the SpliceCom solution is its flexibility. "Leicester City now receives a tailored level of service that reflects the clubs changing needs throughout the season.

"What doesn't change are the benefits that this great solution provides to us, our partners and most importantly, our fantastic supporters."

Data centre operator Next Generation Data (NGD) and channel distribution partner Exertis UK have introduced a data centre as a service (DCaaS) bundling deal designed to enable low risk, high margin business opportunities for resellers with customers taking first steps into cloud, unified communications hosting, disaster recovery management and many more applications.

Exertis will offer resellers rack server hardware including Dell, Lenovo and Fujitsu bundled with NGD's Data Cube ready-to-run DCaaS hosting platform.

This comprises a quarter rack configuration, connectivity, power supply, cooling infrastructure, and a wide range of high speed network connectivity options.

Half rack and full racks are also available. This is run through Exertis' own billing system which allows resellers to bill end users with their own logo and headers without needing to invest in a platform of their own.

"Our data centre infrastructure package allows resellers easy access to high margin annuity revenues plus additional product and accessories sales opportunities, all with the peace of mind that comes with having NGD's secure, resilient data centre facilities and engineering support services behind them," said Gareth Bray, head of commerical enterprise Exertis.

Ben Senouillet, NGD's client account manager, added: "Exertis channel partners can use NGD's data centre to develop their own- label private and hybrid cloud services, offering all the benefits of the cloud to their customers while keeping keep control of the infrastructure."

NGD's 750,000 sq ft facility was opened six years ago and so far the company has invested over £30m in its campus.

The Tier 3 facility features 100% green and carbon tax exempt power supply, multiple low latency carrier and ISP connectivity options, and meeting and conference facilities. Some of its major international customers include BT, CGI, IBM and Wipro.

intY has joined the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Programme, enabling it to distribute and provide direct billing, sell combined offers and services, as well as directly provision, manage and support Microsoft cloud offerings to Partners and Customers.

Following the link-up, intY owns the customer lifecycle, allowing it to sell Office 365 plus additional Microsoft services.

"We are excited about the opportunity that we can bring to the channel by becoming a Multi-Tier Distributor under the Microsoft CSP Programme," said Craig Joseph, Chief Operating Officer at intY.

Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft, said: "By joining the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program, partners will deepen customer relationships and expand business opportunities in the cloud."

Pangea has launched a new partner programme and manifesto that, says the firm, puts partnerships and collaboration top of the agenda.

Dan Cunliffe (left), Managing Director of Pangea, said: "We don't just want to be an M2M and IoT connectivity provider, we want to bring value to our partners by working towards a shared goal, helping them devise business strategies that help them get ahead of the competition, and providing training to help them win more business.

"Our job is to ensure our partners can provide a best in class IoT service and offer bespoke commercials to help win more business."

Operations Director Chris Romeika (left) added: "We are a relatively young company, but we have a proven and successful track record. Also, the nature of our company allows us to be adaptable to our clients' needs and celebrate their achievements with them."

Avnet has reported Q3 2016 (ending at the end of March 2016) revenues down, though within its expected range even as the sequential decline was slightly below normal seasonality given an expected drop in select high volume supply chain engagements at EMEA, Asia and weaker than expected demand in certain legacy technologies at Technology Solutions (TS).

Revenue of $6.2bn represented a decline of 10% sequentially as compared with the usual seasonal range of down 9% to down 5%. On a year-over-year basis organic revenue decreased 7.2% in constant currency as TS was down 13.6% and EM (the components business) declined 3.3%. Gross profit margin increased 57 basis points sequentially and 44 basis points year-over-year with both operating groups contributing to these improvements.

CEO Rick Hamada said: "TS revenue came in at the low-end of our expectation as all three regions experienced weaker than expected demand in select areas of legacy data centre products which resulted in organic revenue declining 22% in constant currency as compared with the typical seasonal range of down 19% to down 16%. All three regions were experiencing a double-digit decline".

Year-over-year growth in networking and services was offset by declines in storage, servers and software. Gross profit margin increased year-over-year and all three regions were driven by portfolio actions and product mix.

"Despite the double-digit decline in certain legacy technologies, TS delivered significant growth in areas where we have been investing, such as our all flash array storage business, which grew over 40% and our converged infrastructure solutions business which we were up nearly 20% from a year ago quarter."

The traditional hard drive, the 'spinning disk storage environment', is declining by more than 20%, but about 40% of Avnet's revenue is in the hybrid and all flash array where it sees hybrid arrays growing 15% and all-flash arrays growing at more than 40%. "But net-net that whole storage package for us is down year-on-year, because of that mix today".

Rick Hamada added: "The the area of biggest gap to our expectations was in the north, primarily in the UK. Central region, Eastern region and actually the Southern region are still performing to what we expect."

Ingram Micro's Q1 saw the effects of a poor start to the year. The global giant, whose sale to a Chinese conglomerate is on track to finalise in the second half of the year, shows signs of clearing the decks for the event, boosting margins and making investments.

"We saw stabilisation of global IT demand in March, which has continued into April, however, IT spending was muted in the first two months of the year, particularly for high volume categories including PCs, smartphones, servers and storage," said Alain Monié, Ingram Micro CEO.

"While we did not capture the full revenue and operating income opportunity available to us in the quarter, our focus on higher value business continues to show results as we delivered a 97 basis point increase in consolidated gross margin, buoyed by strong improvement across all regions.

"We have also increased the pace of some of our strategic investment as we focus on building and enhancing the global capabilities that will support our mid- and longer-term business objectives."

Worldwide 2016 first quarter sales decreased 12% in dollar terms to $9.3bn, with gross margin of 6.77%. This compares to sales of $10.6bn with gross margin of 5.80% in the 2015 first quarter.

The translation of foreign currencies versus last year had a negative impact of 3 percentage points on worldwide sales.

Approximately $200m, or 2%, of the reduction in 2016 first quarter worldwide sales was related to the company negotiating 'a favourable change in contract terms' with some customers in Europe, as highlighted last quarter, which leads to recognising these sales on a net basis versus a gross basis as the company did in the first quarter of last year.

Additionally, last year's first quarter benefited from approximately $100m, or 1%, in North American mobility distribution business that the company elected to exit this year due to profitability levels that did not meet the company's objectives.

The remaining sales decline of 6% was primarily related to soft demand for high volume product categories, particularly in consumer markets, which was consistent with the broader overall IT market demand in the quarter.

Significantly higher gross margin was the result of a focus on driving a better mix of higher value sales and solid returns on invested capital, as well as recent acquisitions, it says.

During a round table discussion at the recent European Software and Services Summit in London, Kevin Sparks, EMC channel head UK&I, expressed strong views on the role of partnerships and alliances.

"Not every application should sit in the cloud, we need to be careful when 70% of the IT budget is still spent on traditional computing," he said.

"Compliance also means access to data in a common format, in order to get the data access. We also talked about the use of service providers to get the mix of on-premise and off-premise IT modernisation. There is an opportunity to use service providers to do the analytics built on that data."

There was much discussion around co-opetition - working with partnerships of various types. The reality is that there is new world and lots of different opportunities.

People working in the cloud may want to bring it back in-house for data compliance or cost reasons; we have customers who want to put just certain applications in the cloud. A lot of this relies on transformation skills, we know there are shortages in certain areas."

And the value of this sort of event? "The whole bringing people together helps them realise they are not alone; there are opportunities to partner, there is a broader ecosystem there and it is not just necessarily about a product, piece of software, or services, but potentially the whole thing - how they bring it together and leverage those partners.