Comms Dealer

Pure fibre network builder Gigaclear has secured an additional £24m in new equity to drive the build of new Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) networks to UK homes and businesses.

Led by Infracapital and Woodford Investment Management the investment was fully subscribed by Gigaclear's existing shareholders. 

This new equity investment follows hard on the heels of the 25m euros EIB loan facility announced in January.

Gigaclear offers customers speeds up to 1Gbps via fibre optic cable in areas typically underserved by the existing large broadband providers.  

The company has built and operates 60 rural fibre networks with a further 25 in construction. It targets a market of 1.5 million households and businesses across thousands of rural communities seeking ultrafast and reliable broadband.

Ed Clarke, co-founder and Director, Infracapital, said: "Having successfully secured several BDUK contracts and completed this round of fund raising Gigaclear is well placed to deliver its 2016 roll out plans."

Matthew Hare, Chief Executive, Gigaclear said: "We are building to tens of thousands of potential new customers this year. The strong financial support of our shareholders lets us get on with the job of delivering future-proof broadband without delay."

Gigaclear was advised in this transaction by Cameron Barney LLP.

Azlan has appointed Simon Bennett as Business Unit Director IBM Dell/EMC and Lenovo Enterprise, and Peter Spreadbury as Director of Software.

They join the board under the leadership of Rob Tomlin who was appointed as Managing Director of Azlan in January.

Bennett has 15 years industry experience and has worked at Azlan for almost seven years, previously operating as General Manager of Sales, and before that Internal Sales and Operations Manager.

In his new role he will be responsible for managing key enterprise infrastructure partners, including IBM, Dell, EMC, Lenovo, Avaya and Brocade.

Spreadbury was previously at SCC for 13 years, latterly as Software Director and previously as Director of Vendor Alliances.

Prior to SCC he worked in various senior roles at Hewlett Packard and has a total of 28 years IT industry experience.

As Software Director at Azlan he will be responsible for managing the relationships with leading vendors such as VMware, VERITAS, Citrix, Nutanix, IGEL, and Atlantis.

Tomlin stated: "Both Simon and Peter have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the market and a deep understanding of partner needs. They will make vital contributions as Azlan advances its strategy."

Exa Networks and Diva Telecom are to leverage CityFibre's newly acquired network assets in Leeds and Bradford, adding 350 new sites in the region.

Exa Networks has committed 250 new connections and will focus on leveraging the city's dark fibre network. The firm has also agreed a national deal with CityFibre to target the education sector where it has a strong presence as a provider of connectivity and filtering services. 

Diva Telecom has a large customer base in Leeds and has made an initial commitment of 100 connections.

With a combined duct route length of approximately 190 kilometres CityFibre's Leeds and Bradford networks are among the larger assets acquired in the January acquisition of KCOM’s national fibre and duct network assets for £90m.

Mark Cowgill, co-founder of Exa Networks, said: "We anticipate huge demand for our services across CityFibre's national fibre footprint."

Diva Telecom MD Erica Lewis said: "Diva looks forward to a new suite of pure fibre services that will cement our reputation as innovators."

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive of CityFibre, stated: "Commercialising our national network assets is of paramount importance to us, and so we are very pleased to be adding two key partners to our ranks.

"Exa and Diva are both highly commercial organisations with great local market knowledge and a hard-earned reputation for delivering value to their customers. This is the beginning of our journey together.

"Since the acquisition, we have contracted commitment of over 450 new sites in less than 90 days, underlining the importance of an alternative infrastructure provider to BT Openreach."

Data centre hardware market revenues fell 1% from the year-ago quarter as customer demand shifted from hardware to software.

According to US-based TBR's 4Q15 Data Centre Benchmark, vendors' average revenue and gross profit slipped year-to-year as demand for legacy hardware implementations declined.

However, benchmarked vendors still achieved $23bn in revenue and avoided more severe declines by adjusting their go-to-market portfolios and selling models to capture emerging opportunities.

"Industry standard server (ISS) has a growing impact on the global data centre hardware market," said TBR Data centre Senior Analyst Krista Macomber. "TBR estimates average ISS unit shipments increased 1.8% year-to-year, indicating the growing impact of hardware commoditisation and the low pricing strategies used by vendors such as Lenovo and Huawei."

Commoditisation of high-end storage hardware and competitive pricing across the storage market drove down benchmarked vendors' proprietary server and storage revenues 0.4% and 7.7% year-to-year respectively.

TBR believes vendors will increase investments in emerging areas such as flash, object storage and hyperconverged. However, as the number of customers transitioning to public cloud solutions is growing, the value proposition of storage solutions will shift from hardware to software.

Networking hardware revenue continued to record the highest growth of benchmarked segments in 4Q15, with market leaders Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Huawei and Juniper achieving year-to-year revenue growth in this segment.

"As the networking hardware market has not been as heavily impacted by commoditisation as the server and storage markets, the proliferation of software-defined networking (SDN) will have an increasing impact on vendors' growth strategies. To adapt, vendors must evolve their R&D, alliance and acquisition strategies to enhance their SDN and cloud capabilities," said TBR Data centre Research Analyst Kathleen Kilbourn.

Leyland-based TES Wireless Communications has won a deal with Blackpool Transport to upgrade its radio communications systems.

The managed service contract involves the provision, commission and maintenance of a three site MPT1327 trunked radio system that enables an always-on connection between bus or tram drivers and control rooms.

TES Wireless Communications has provided communications solutions to a number of transport networks including London Underground, Manchester Metrolink and Metro do Porto.

Keith Edwards, MD of TES Wireless Communications, said: "Blackpool Transport is an iconic business recognised by millions of people who have visited the town and travelled on the buses and trams. Its operation covers 4.4 million passenger miles per year, the equivalent of 18 return journeys to the moon.

"The system we are providing is unlike a mobile network so won't have coverage issues, drop out or be switched off in an emergency situation."

During the course of a year Blackpool Transport carries 20 million passenger, 10 million during the holiday season, so communications systems are an integral part of the network's ability to ensure both passenger and staff safety.

Solar Communications has launched Solar Cloud UC using Mitel's MiCloud Office cloud platform that delivers hosted voice, unified communications and collaboration to SMBs.

Solar will offer multiple deployment options, starting with a standard IP telephony system with the option of adding multiple scalable features such as instant messaging, presence and softphone functionality as well as contact centre features when they required.

Solar's CEO, John Whitty commented: "We have worked with Mitel for over 20 years and this new agreement opens up new opportunities for our customers to benefit from a cloud platform delivered through Solar."

Mayflex has formed a distribution agreement with cybersecurity firm Netscout Systems.

Ian Davey, Sales Director at Mayflex, commented: "The products provided by Netscout fit within our existing product portfolio and allow us to provide customers with a range of tools to test their infrastructure installations and analyse site wireless requirements."

Gary Staley, worldwide VP of Channel Sales at Netscout, added: "By partnering with Mayflex, one of our key UK Platinum Partners, we expand the footprint of our Handheld Network Test portfolio in Europe."

Ultracomms has been certified as compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) v3.1, achieving PCI DSS Level 1 accredited service provider status for its platform.

Ultracomms uses DTMF (dual-tone multi-frequency) clamping technology to mask payment card data from entering the contact centre, so the person handling the call is unable to see or hear the card details, making screen and continuous call recording safe for organisations and customers.

Ultracomms completed its certification following an audit by independent QSA Coalfire, confirming its solutions are compliant with the PCI DSS for Level 1 merchants who handle over 6 million card transactions a year. As a result, Ultracomms will shortly be included in the MasterCard and Visa Europe lists of approved service providers.

Robert Bates, Chairman of Ultracomms, said: "Clients are more sensitive than ever to the potential for financial and reputational damage caused by security breaches and fraud involving payment card information. Achieving PCI DSS Level 1 certification is a significant milestone for Ultracomms."

Ericsson is to further invest in NodePrime to acquire 100% of its operations based in San Francisco.

NodePrime's platform is designed to support the command and control of the complete ecosystem of data centre components.

Integrated into the Ericsson Hyperscale Data centre System 8000, this software platform enables discovery, analysis and automated configuration of existing and new data centre hardware platforms.

This allows data centres to become hyperscale and adopt distributed infrastructure.

James Malachowski, co-founder and CEO of NodePrime, said: "Our vision from the start was to transform the infrastructure into a single entity where it's entirely possible to grasp the management of hyperscale data centre infrastructure through the collection of trillions of associated metrics inside one view.

"Now being part of Ericsson, together we are creating a power shift for enterprises to make decisions on their own terms and scale with precision at the speed at which businesses need to respond today."

Anders Lindblad, Vice President, Head of Business Unit Cloud & IP at Ericsson said: "We believe in innovation coming from the Silicon Valley area and will continue to increase our presence and distribution of such innovation."

The pace of digital uptake isn't reaching its potential, resulting in widening gaps between service delivery and customer expectations, according to new research by Dimension Data.

In the 19th edition of its annual Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, organisations are unclear about who owns, oversees, and manages the digital channels in their contact centres.

That's because there's a lack of management focus which impacts the effectiveness of the design of their digital solutions, and by consequence, how customers engage with their businesses.

This year, 1,320 organisations across 14 industry verticals in 81 countries in Asia Pacific, Australia, the Americas, Middle East & Africa, and Europe contributed to the research.

"While telephone interactions in the contact centre are managed, tracked and quality controlled, the same performance rigour isn't always applied to digital channels," said Rob Allman, Dimension Data's Group Principal Director, Customer Experience and Collaboration. "This can lead to an inconsistent and degraded customer experience across a brand or services company."

Half (50%) of the benchmarking report respondents said they track quality on digital channels compared to 89% on phone.

Some 82% reported that they have processes to identify sales opportunities on phone compared with 60% on digital.

Measurement of cost and time per interaction is also missing on the majority of digitally assisted-service channels, which suggests an absence of consistency in management approach.

Allman says new contact channels are being designed in isolation and often without any involvement from the contact centre.

"Our research reveals that almost half (47%) are excluded from, or are partially involved in the design phase of new technology solutions in contact centres, while 55% have little, or no involvement in solution approvals.

"In fact, 2 in 5 (40%) organisations said that their digital channel systems don't meet existing business needs, and 19% are confident that their future requirements will be met."

Joe Manuele, Group Executive of Dimension Data's Customer Experience and Collaboration Business Unit, added: "New digital technologies must be designed with how they'll be consumed in mind. Organisations also need to understand the user experience and customers' expectations if they want successful adoption of the technology and achieve the desired business outcomes.

"The complexity of providing customers with a connected experience frequently spans multiple channels including Internet, web chat, social media, and phone. This requires greater capability and understanding of the customer journey when engaging with an organisation's contact centre. To be effective, the technology solutions need design, ownership, and especially a human touch."