Comms Dealer

IBM is set to make this the year of mainstream adoption of its cloud analytics tool Watson.

In a push to ISVs and developers, it is adding all major European languages this year and claims some 80,000 developers world-wide.

It has also signed deals with major integrators such as KPMG and other European vendors such as SAP. It indicates that having invested heavily in managing the early uptake with a good deal of hand-on time with partners, it expects cognitive computing become pervasive and deployed at scale.

"We are finding that it is not necessary for developers to build new apps - rather it is infusing Watson into existing solutions," says Phil Westcott, who manages the Watson ecosystem programme across Europe.

"We have reduced the barriers to entry, make delivery cost-efficient and seen a step change in its adoption. Watson is being used in a wider range of solutions, since, for example, the APIs have increased quarter on quarter, with new ones being added weekly"

For users, the effect of wider deployment should go un-noticed. "Watson is embedded naturally; it becomes the engine room, while capable of producing more elegant solutions."

The major verticals seem to be retail, healthcare and financial services, with education also a surprisingly strong area, but since it is applicable anywhere where there is unstructured data, it can go anywhere.

"The cognitive era has arrived," said Lynne Doughtie, KPMG LLP Chairman and CEO. "KPMG's use of IBM Watson technology will help advance our team's ability to analyse and act on the core financial and operational data so central to the health of organisations and the capital markets. In addition to the possibilities for enhancing quality, the potential for cognitive and related technologies to help us pursue new business offerings is extraordinary."

One current initiative is focused on employing supervised cognitive capabilities to analyse much larger volumes of structured and unstructured data related to a company's financial information, as auditors "teach" the technology how to fine-tune assessments over time. This enables audit teams to have faster access to increasingly precise measurements that help them analyse anomalies and assess whether additional steps are necessary.

One limiting factor is the available skills in working with unstructured data; IBM has been working with universities across Europe to boost students' exposure to cognitive computing systems, but the cutting edge will remain with the ISVs and developers, particularly those looking to add it to existing solutions.

In the wider aspect Aberdeen University has just become one of only four UK Institutions to have access to the Watson Engagement Advisor solution and its experts. It will initially be used by students undertaking the Department of Computing Science's Semantic Web Engineering module. It will eventually be offered more widely across a range of relevant programmes. Academics at the University are already undertaking cutting-edge cognitive computing research using Watson.

Researchers are collaborating with a team of IBM scientists on the EU Marie Curie K-Drive project, which investigates ways of understanding and utilising big data and knowledge graphs for applications, such as those in the treatment of cancers. This involves using IBM Watson's question & answering, knowledge representation and dialogue capabilities. The results of the work will also form the basis of new research proposals from the University for the EU Horizon 2020 Programme.

As Paul Chong, Head of the IBM Watson Group for EMEA told last month's European Software and Solutions Summit in London, "We are moving systems that determine the response using rules-based solutions, to a probabilistic state. This reflects the way humans think."

Although Huawei reported 37% revenue growth in local currency year-to-year for 2015 and is on track to capture the top spot over rival Ericsson (which just announced a 1Q16 revenue decline and major reorganisation), the company unveiled a strategy shift at its recent annual analyst conference.

Rather than focusing only on the network, Huawei Rotating CEO Eric Xu declared that the company will go full-cloud - placing its bets behind a unifying transformation of all parts of the company to cloud solutions for service providers and enterprises.

The move is spurred by Huawei's growth problems. Namely, with the near completion of the last major LTE radio network rollout in China on the horizon, Huawei must look elsewhere to fuel its Carrier Network business growth, which comprises 59% of the company's revenue.

Huawei has already taken steps to diversify - growing its Enterprise business to 7% of revenue and its Consumer Devices business to 33% of revenue - but the company cannot build additional revenue streams fast enough to compensate for its slowing carrier business.

Like its peers in information and communications technology (ICT), Huawei faces the major challenge of transitioning from a hardware-oriented manufacturing firm to a proactive, services-led, software-centric firm.

Huawei needs to make this shift to adjust to its customers' changing business models, which increasingly rely on software-defined digital services. This transition will not be easy and will take several years to unfold, but Huawei's management seems unified in its belief that cloud, or 'cloudification' as Huawei terms it, is the answer. The company demonstrated meaningful progress on its journey and trajectory toward achieving this goal at the analyst summit.

While analyst TBR believes Huawei has chosen its new direction wisely (a move validated by Ericsson's reorganisation, which will focus on cloud solutions as well), the company needs to accelerate its transition. One way to do so is to address the separations that exist between Huawei business and product units.

For example, although Huawei has a complete and maturing IT portfolio within its Enterprise Business Group, this solution is only gradually being introduced within the Carrier Group, largely toward data centre opportunities and often only through the Global Technical Services solution team.

The Enterprise Group maintains a separate services and solutions team with independent goals. The company could advance its scale in IT solutions and cloud faster if it moved beyond network- and carrier-focused strategies and began to operate more as an IT company, addressing multiple verticals with a larger investment of resources, says TBR.

Truffle's study of the French software business shows that sales are growing for the 8th consecutive year, up to €12.8bn, with a jump in profits to €1.1bn.

R&D investments are on the rise again, reaching €1.2bn with developments driven by the SaaS and cloud computing revolution.

"2015 was a good year: Revenues grew by 9%, profits almost doubled, R&D investments increased by 15%, a lot of skilled jobs were created and the total industry workforce expanded to 107,000 employees, with a very low propensity for churn.

"French software publishers are leading by example, driving the economy forward and proving that entrepreneurial spirit, risk-taking and a commitment to innovation are crucial factors to success and growth. They uphold our country's position on the world stage and contribute to the French Tech sector's reputation," said Bernard-Louis Roques, Co-founder and CEO of Truffle Capital.

Talking to IT Europa, he said: "A number of sectors have resisted the SaaS transformation for the past 4 to 5 years for various reasons, including data privacy, security, extended duration for amortization of past IT investment (both software end hardware) in client/server, or even aversion to change.

"The public sector was notably resistant to SaaS. As the vendors have reassured those sectors with appropriate solutions to their concerns and usage has swiftly gained ground with new generations of CIOs gaining access to decision making positions, the SaaS wave has overflowed all resistances. Over the past two years SaaS solutions have represented a big share of new sales, which doesn't yet translate into the same proportion in overall sales as the inventory is vastly license based."

The main issue for the software industry in France lies in the scarcity of financing available through capital markets were vendors tend to be undervalued in comparison with other international capital markets, particularly the US. The difference in valuation creates arbitrage opportunities. It might trigger a wave of M&A transactions, an example being the recently announced take over bid on Cegid, number six on the Truffle 100 list, led by Private Equity funds.

The revolution brought by SaaS and cloud computing solutions continues to strongly impact the industry. In order to keep adapting to customers' changing habits and demand growth, 74% of the top 100 French software companies now offer SaaS solutions (compared to 68% last year). 64% of the companies believe that this trend will continue to greatly influence the market, which is also driven by mobile applications (61%) and big data (33%).

"The digital sector is doing well and is getting better every year, " says Axelle Lemaire, Secretary of State for digital technology at the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Digital technology.

"These figures attest that the French economy has taken the right path, guided by the French government which has provided an unfailing support to innovating stakeholders at the forefront of the digital transformation with the aim of accompanying and fostering the digital transformation of our economic and industrial landscape.

"For over two years now, the success of the French Tech initiative has enlightened the strength of innovating digital ecosystems located in Paris (40 incubators, 80 collaborative workspaces, 20 digital fabrication workshops and around 1,500 startups) and in the 13 major cities with the French Tech label gathered within one national network.

"This cartography of French innovation will soon be completed by the launch of thematic networks allowing other territories to join the French Tech dynamism,"

Laurent Calot, CXP Group CEO, added: "French companies are now more mature and are gearing up to a mutation into the digital era. In nearly all sectors.

"They have to adapt to new uses of their customers but also to business needs expressed by their employees, he says. Business models are deeply impacted. In Sales and Marketing, Omni channel management and social networks deeply change the customer experience.

"And the Internet of Things is emerging in some more technical fields (industry, automotive, health, Smart Cities etc). HRD are implementing social collaboration tools, open mobility solutions and analytic approaches that improve talent management and boost company competitiveness.

"Software writers can be confident for the future: trends linked to the digital revolution will most certainly keep on driving the software industry in several years to come."

True Telecom has reported the most profitable start to a year in its history after surging sales and the introduction of a field sales operation in January helped its first quarter revenue to rise over 300%.

The jump in figures mainly reflect continuing record sales across all parts of the business from direct sales to channel.

The company benefitted from its strong position in the market due to the growing popularity of SIP, hosted VoIP, mobile, fibre, broadband and traditional lines and calls, with the addition of merchant services to its portfolio also gaining traction and performing well.

Stuart Griffiths, Chief Executive, called the results 'a giant leap' towards achieving True Telecom's ambition to become one of the largest SME suppliers in the market, hailing Q1 2016 as the start of a 'very special and exciting time' for the company which now has 'all bases covered'.

"Our performance in the first three months of 2016 puts us in a prime position to post yet another record period," said Griffiths.

"True is on course for an all-time record month in April and on target for a new record quarter in Q2."

As well as establishing field operations Griffiths said the positive results also reflect the company's focus on growing its outbound teams and improving profitability through rapid customer adoption.

"Within the next quarter we are aiming to add 2,000 small to medium enterprises per month from our direct outbound teams alone," added Griffiths.

Director Mark Baines is also upbeat about the outlook for 2016 and beyond, saying the company's 'dedicated and diligent' approach to breaking sales records will continue to raise expectations.

"We are executing our growth strategy well," he said. "It's a great time to be involved in such an exciting business, and with a great team driving True Telecom forward we are confident that the records will continue to tumble."

The Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (ITP) has revealed more details about its annual seminar on the June 23rd at the BT Centre, London.

This year's seminar will reflect the history and future of telecommunications with key topics discussed by industry leading lights.

Philip Nugent, Technical Director at Mpirical, will open the event with an overview of the history of telecoms, highlighting the convergence of PSTN, Internet, mobile, LAN and IMS Systems, as well as examining key milestones.

The future of the network will be examined by Dr Timothy Whitley, MD Research & Innovation and Adastral Park, BT. Paul Adams, Marketing Director, Nokia, will discuss the case for 5G, while Ray O'Hanlon, BT Technical Solutions Architect, at Cisco will look at the future of the cloud and data centre.

The session will be followed by questions and answers.

"The future is about allowing people to interact with everything digitally‚" said Crissi Williams, Head of Operations at the ITP. "In essence, to have the digital world as a natural extension of our lives."

Tickets are free for members and £99 for non-members and include lunch. For more information please visit: https://www.theitp.org/calendar/event/view?id=555 

Abzorb's latest portal revamp reflects continuing developments to order processing, in particular for mobile services, enabling resellers to better manage their mobile proposition and make faster connections.

"These improvements include the ability to allocate bars/services, amend tariff and bundle pricing, and an automated allocation of a relevant mobile number when creating a mobile order," stated Mark Riddell, Head of Indirect Channel.

New mobile functions such as improved bundle management mean changes made to a connection's bundles integrate directly with Abzorb's network level provisioning processes.

Another key development is the Abzorb API, a toolkit for partners who build their own software and want to integrate more closely with the Abzorb's systems.

"This means managing mobile orders, connections, bars, SIMs, customers and tasks can all be processed from their own in-house systems, reducing or eliminating the need to retrain staff," commented Riddell.

Abzorb has also introduced a white label reseller branded customer care portal enabling customers to manage their own mobility requirements.

Riddell added: "More portal developments are on the way, such as the ability to authorise reseller orders for distributor users, hosted centrex ordering, tighter integration with the Syniverse MNP platform, more useful informatics and reporting, and a fresh new design across the portal."

Distributor Exclusive Networks has done a deal with Security intelligence vendor Exabeam to cover UK enterprise sector, with a view to expanding this into further EMEA territories later in 2016.

In France, Certes Networks, a software-defined security specialist has partnered with Exclusive Networks France to push its CryptoFlow enterprise application security and breach containment solutions in that market.

The UK move supports Exabeam's 100% channel model, which is focused on recruiting specialist partners, market-maker VARs and international/global SIs.

Exabeam's solutions deliver user and entity behavioural analytics (UEBA) for hunting-down and cornering elusive threats that have propagated within the corporate network.

"Sooner or later, every enterprise is affected by threats that penetrate outer defences and secretly work their way across to the most sensitive or valuable data assets.

"Clues to these dangerous attacks are typically undetectable or hidden in masses of logs and other security big data.

"This is what Exabeam was designed for; putting security operations teams straight on the scent and in for the kill," said Graham Jones, Country Manager at Exclusive Networks UK.

Distributor ALSO Group says it increases profits in the first quarter 2016 by 18.5%, with a record sales level.

Profitability rose faster than sales as margins improved. "We improved our earnings quality continuously," said Gustavo Möller-Hergt, CEO of ALSO Holding AG.

Net income for the first quarter 2016 was €14.1m up from €11.9m in the previous year (+18.5%). Profit before tax (EBT) rose in the same period to €20.3m. Sales were up 2.6% in the first quarter of 2016 to €1.916bn.

The company says it again outperformed the overall market, with a slight decline in sales in the Central European region countered by a much improved business in Northern/Eastern Europe.

In a trading statement a couple of weeks before it announces annual results for last year, Datatec, the holding company behind distributor Westcon and integrator Logicalis, has warned of mixed global economic conditions and a currency headwind.

As a result, it says, Group revenues for FY16 are expected to be $6.5 billion, which is in line with the prior year, but costs have risen.

It now expects earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation in H2 FY16 to be marginally above H1 FY16. But EBITDA in FY16 is expected to be approximately 22% below the $206.4 million for FY15.

Group gross margins have improved in H2 FY16 and are expected to be approximately 13.5% for FY16, up from 13.1% in H1 FY16, however.

As anticipated, operating profit in FY16 was impacted by the strength in the US dollar (reporting currency), ongoing restructuring in Westcon EMEA and Logicalis UK and foreign exchange losses, particularly in Angola.

The Group has increased its provision against trade receivables to reflect the weaker economic conditions in some markets.

Exertis is to distribute Yealink's VC series designed for the SME market, offering enterprise-grade video conferencing without high costs or advanced technical expertise.

Michael Thompson, Exertis UC business manager, said: "Yealink delivers a friendly UI with easy-to-use buttons allowing almost all operations to be carried out in just three simple steps.

'This means that even small businesses with no specialised IT staff will find the Yealink VC series easy to use. Auto deployment, USB recording, no licenses and no update costs are designed to make installation and operation pain free for both the reseller and end user alike."

Exertis will be offering the VC400 solution, VC120 end point, VC110 end point, VC Desktop Client and T49G video phone. Resellers can take advantage of free certified training, a partner programme and if required on-site technical and sales support from a Yealink VC product specialist.