Comms Dealer

The Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (ITP) has launched a new Corporate Associate Scheme that aims to create networking and collaboration opportunities for the telecoms industry.

Crissi Williams, ITP's Head of Operations, said: "The ITP has been the voice of the industry for more than a century and Corporate Associates will play a vital role in its structure going forward.

"At present, we offer members networking opportunities, career development through training and qualifications, mentoring and our own apprenticeship scheme. By joining forces with industry partners we hope to strengthen and support the sector for another century.

"We would urge all telecoms businesses who are interested in shaping the ITP and taking advantage of the opportunities this presents to get in touch."

Corporate Associates are being asked to sign up for the scheme and nominate a set of company ambassadors from within their organisation who will advise on the ITP's work.

The free scheme will offer members discounts on accreditations for their workforce, access to the ITP's apprenticeship consultancy, entry to its seminars, discounted CPD packages and invitations to exclusive Executive Club events and C level dinners.

For more information about the programme, please visit: www.theitp.org/membership/corporate_associates

Exponential-e has launched a new optical VPN platform across nine of its key data centre locations.

The platform will cater for increasing enterprise customer demand for secure cloud and colocation services. It will deliver Exponential-e's high capacity optical VPN services to data centres operated by Ark Data Centres, Telehouse, Virtus and Equinix across the UK.

Huw Owen, CEO at Ark Data Centres, said: "The platform will give our customers access to a fully managed suite of IT solutions delivered by Exponential-e, providing them with a secure and flexible environment through which to support their growing businesses."

The optical VPN platform will be delivered over a next-generation multi-terabit optical transport network. This high capacity optical service - available at 10Gb, 40Gb and 100Gb speeds - is expected to deliver space and power savings to customers, while ensuring the solution offers total flexibility, high resiliency and security.

Chris Christou, Director of Engineering at Exponential-e, said: "The launch of our Optical VPN platform underpins our future growth strategy across key data centres in the south of England.

"Customers in these data centres now have access to all the necessary components required to support high bandwidth demands, including high capacity network services and inter-data centre cloud services."

ITSPA has welcomed the first five successful applicants to its updated Quality Mark, which was first introduced in 2009 and revamped in 2016 to more closely align with the evolving technological landscape.  

Voipfone, Hello Telecom, SureVoIP, VoiceHost and Gradwell have signed up to the new standard that's designed to highlight a company's commitment to best practice and delivering a reliable service.

Chair of ITSPA Eli Katz said: "We have made significant changes to the requirements of the original Quality Mark which reflect the maturing nature of the next generation communications industry.

"These changes have involved consultation with members to ensure the new requirements remain an effective tool for driving up standards as well as being a meaningful accreditation to apply for."

Among the new requirements are an adherence to the ITSPA Code of Practice and Best Practice Guidance documents; evidence that the applicant's platform design is resilient and that they deliver a reliable service, which will be measured by ITSPA as 99.99% availability between 8am and 8pm Monday-Friday using the VoIP Spear monitoring platform; transparent porting arrangements; active fraud control measures; evidence of access to the emergency services; easy to find information on complaints and dispute resolution; polices in place for nuisance calls and CLI presentation; evidence of Data Protection and Retention Compliance; and evidence of a single point of contact showing that there is an easy way to contact the member with issues arising.

Software provider Advanced has made its mark in the midlands with the opening of a regional HQ at the Mailbox in Birmingham and the launch of a recruitment programme to fill 1,000 roles over the next 18 months.

The positions are open to graduates and non-graduates of all ages and backgrounds wanting a career in IT.

At least 50% of new employees will come from a talent acquisition programme, and 400 of the new roles will be based in Advanced's newly refurbished midlands HQ which occupies 45,000 sq ft of space on the building's third level, making it one of the city's largest commercial accommodations on a single floor.

Gordon Wilson, CEO, said: "The launch of our new Birmingham office is a key milestone in our business growth strategy and the talent acquisition programme represents an opportunity for individuals considering a career in IT.

"We are passionate about identifying dynamic, high performing and motivated individuals who are invaluable to our future expansion and who will make a major contribution to our company culture.

"Birmingham is the clear choice given it has the UK's largest regional urban economy and is the most popular destination outside the South East for mass millennial migration."

Advanced has grown to a £750m company in eight years. Following its acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in March 2015 the business has undergone significant transformation and investment in its people and solutions, creating a platform for further growth.

Part of the transformation includes the appointment of a new C-suite comprising high calibre employees in the tech industry. The business is also completing a four stage programme of re-branding, relocation, restructure and recruitment.

Mark Rogers, Chief Executive, Birmingham City Council, said: "With over £1 billion of investment in the last year, the Greater Birmingham region is enjoying significant growth. We are building an unprecedented amount of modern office space and investing record amounts to improve transport links. Advanced's arrival demonstrates the strength of Birmingham's offer for major British brands looking to locate here."

Neil Rami, Chief Executive, Marketing Birmingham said: "With more than 6,000 firms in Greater Birmingham employing 36,000 people and delivering £1.6 billion to the local economy, Advanced is joining one of the UK's best performing digital economies.

"Tech companies are increasingly looking to our region's offer to set up, thrive and expand. The strength of this sector means Advanced has a large local talent base from which to recruit, with some 40,000 students studying computer science or business in Birmingham each year."

Advanced employs 2,000 people and has a customer base of more than 20,000 organisations including Virgin Trains, Harvey Nichols, Birmingham Children's Hospital and Carewatch.

Six Degrees Group (6DG) has pocketed cloud service provider Carrenza, strengthening its position in private and public cloud markets. Carrenza provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud services for hosting mission-critical applications and websites for customers spanning public, private and third sectors.

The CSP has witnessed significant growth in providing cloud services to corporate customers and Government bodies with increasing demand for integration solutions for the public cloud - three sectors that are strategically important for Six Degrees.

Founded in 2001, Carrenza became one of the early adopters of enterprise cloud computing with the launch of Carrenza Cloud in 2006.

In addition to its own IaaS and PaaS capabilities, it is also a public cloud integration specialist with key partnerships supporting customers using Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMWare's vCloud Air and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Private sector customers include RBS, de Bijenkorf and Majestic Wine. A strong third sector presence includes household names like WWF and AgeUK.

The firm is an official security certified G-Cloud provider and its public sector base includes Government Digital Service (GDS), DWP and HMRC.

Alastair Mills, CEO of 6DG, commented: "This announcement ticks three major strategic boxes for Six Degrees.

"Firstly, it strengthens our capabilities for professional and managed services in application and web hosting for mission-critical environments.

"Secondly, it gives us a major presence in the public sector where Carrenza is a strong G-Cloud player.

"Finally, it brings public cloud integration capabilities that, especially for AWS, are increasingly part of the mix for end user customers in an increasingly multi-cloud world."

Carrenza CEO Dan Sutherland added: "This is a logical development for both 6DG and Carrenza. Our heritage in the public sector - with complex private clouds and public cloud integration - is strong and we believe our team can play a vital role in the continued growth of the group."

Managed services provider Claranet is working with business continuity firm Data Deposit Box to strengthen its cloud backup and disaster recovery services in EMEA.

The solution is aimed at SoHo, SMBs and SMEs and will offer Claranet's customers more flexibility, reliability and control over their data backup and data management practices.
 
The move also marks Data Deposit Box's first foray into the European market with a managed services provider.
 
Neil Thomas, Claranet's Product Director, said: "Businesses are increasingly aware of the damaging effects of data loss and our customers are no exception, which is why we are continuing to build out our disaster recovery capabilities."
 
Troy Cheeseman, President and Chief Operating Officer at Data Deposit Box, added: "We are actively looking to build out our presence in EMEA which makes Claranet, with a strong footprint in six European markets, financial stability and broad customer base, an ideal strategic contact.

"Our solution complements Claranet's existing portfolio, and we look forward to consulting with Claranet and its customers to bring our disaster recovery tools to market."

SAP's Chief Executive Bill McDermott says he has 'perfect and clear confidence' that Europe's largest software company will meet its full year targets despite a warning that first quarter results will be weaker than expected.

The first quarter is usually a slow one for SAP, but results are clouded by moves away from on-premise sales.

Sales of software licenses to corporate clients, particularly in Brazil and the US, fell 13% during the period as business customers continue to shift to cloud-based software instead of older software packages.

Cloud subscriptions and support revenue was worth 0.68bn euro (2015: 0.50bn euro), an increase of 35%.

"The first quarter is our seasonally smallest quarter," said Luka Mucic, CFO of SAP. "With a robust pipeline across our entire portfolio we are on track to achieve our full year outlook."

Satellite Internet has connected the third and final village selected to take part in a UK Government-funded Market Test Pilot (MTP) by providing high-speed internet to Broomfield in North Somerset.

Working with Connecting Devon & Somerset (CDS), Broomfield Parish Council and the wider community, Satellite Internet was able to provide 24 properties with substantially enhanced broadband connectivity within a very limited deployment timeframe.

Satellite Internet Business Development Director David Hennell said: "Despite the short timescales we were confident that we could provide the necessary infrastructure to make this third MTP deployment a success. However, we couldn't have achieved this without the enthusiasm and support of Broomfield Parish Council and the closeness with which we, the Broomfield community and CDS have all worked, ensuring that the installation has been a success."

Somerset County Council deputy leader councillor David Hall said: "The ability to access high-quality communications infrastructure is critical to businesses and an important part of improving quality of life. The more people across Somerset and Devon who are connected, the better for everyone."

Solar Communications is to stage two customer events in Manchester and London to showcase the firm's technology and communications portfolio.

Called 'solar Vision 2016', the events will bring together more than 100 Solar customers to witness presentations from some of Solar's senior leadership team and technology partners including TalkTalk, Mitel, Datto and ShoreTel.

John Whitty, CEO at Solar Communications, said: "Through our Solar Vision 2016 initiative we can ensure our customers know exactly how technology is evolving and how new solutions can help them achieve their business goals, save money, improve staff productivity and simplify their communications estate.

"Unified communications in particular is set to take off and is a market that experts estimate to be worth around $25bn by 2020. However, at this moment in time, just one in five SMEs have adopted this technology.

"There's a huge opportunity for organisations to take advantage of developments in UC and differentiate the way they operate from their competition."

A collaboration between Silver Lining and multi-channel payment service provider NetPay has come to fruition with the launch of SLPay, a secure phone payment service.

The move was prompted by an increase in enquiries from Silver Lining customers wanting to include merchant services in their managed service packages.

It is estimated that in 2014, £802bn was spent in the UK on goods and services using debit and credit card phone payments, a trend that is set to rise to £900bn by 2024.

Allan Packer, Managing Director, Silver Lining says: "We believe that only by listening to and understanding our customers' communication and data requirements can we offer the right bespoke solution."