Comms Dealer

Nimans has hosted a half-day Panasonic NS700 partner event staged at the Aztec Hotel and Spa in Bristol and designed to introduce resellers who are new to the Panasonic brand to the system.

"Since its launch in September 2014 the NS700 has become one of our fastest selling systems ever and the event was designed to explain the reasons why," said John McKindland, Head of Solutions, System Sales at Nimans. "It was a resounding success with virtually everyone that attended signing up on the day."

Virtual1 has cut the price of Ethernet by up to 25% following the 6-8% reduction of Openreach's Ethernet Access Direct annual rental prices.

New CFO Magnus Batsvik-Miller commented: "My first priority as CFO at Virtual1 has been to look at how we can help our partners win more business in reaction to the Openreach changes.

"While it reduced its pricing to the entire market on the 1st of April by up to 8%, Virtual1 reacted by furthering those reductions with up to 25% over its entire Access portfolio."
 
Tom O'Hagan welcomed Openreach's changes following the conclusion of Ofcom's Business Connectivity Market Review, saying: "The reduction in the cost base to all suppliers helps us reduce the cost of ownership of access circuits in the UK and will drive the uptake of Ethernet even further in the SME space.

"Watch this space for further price reductions and promotions throughout the coming year."

Sennheiser has received the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2016 for its D 10 Series.

The Red Dot seal is awarded annually to products that stand out from the competition due to their design and innovation.

In total, the international jury of 41 designers, design professors and specialised journalists assessed over 5,200 products, submitted by candidates from 57 nations.

Andreas Bach, President at Sennheiser Communications, said: "We created the headset range to bring the freedom of wireless communication and voice clarity within reach of more everyday users."

Webroot has added Cloud Harmonics to its global network of value-added distributors.

Cloud Harmonics is expanding its product portfolio with Webroot BrightCloud Threat Intelligence for Palo Alto Networks to help its network of VARs and MSPs improve their customers' ability to detect and block malicious IP threats at the network perimeter.

"Adding threat intelligence from Webroot, a Palo Alto Networks ecosystem partner, to our portfolio gives more than 400 channel partners in our network access to its cybersecurity solutions," said Anand Desai, vice president of marketing and emerging technologies at Cloud Harmonics.

"Enterprises and mid-market users can now use global threat intelligence, with behavioral analysis, to protect themselves the moment a new threat is detected anywhere in the world."

According to the Webroot 2016 Threat Brief, more than 100,000 net new malicious IPs are launched every day.

Since cybercriminals change hosts and IP addresses frequently, new threats emerge constantly and firewalls need accurate and timely updates.

BrightCloud Threat Intelligence for Palo Alto Networks integrates with Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls to detect and block malicious incoming IPs.

Global network access company The Kenton Group has set up a new business unit, Kenton Optical and Fibre Technologies, building on its network access, demarcation and connectivity solutions.

The new business division, headed up by Andy Howard, will provide optical networking and fibre solutions and services to carriers, operators, service providers, enterprises and governmental organisations throughout the UK and EMEA.

"Kenton Optical and Fibre Technologies was created in response to customer demand for optical, OTN, WDM and 100G service delivery platforms and networking equipment," explained MD John Larkin.

"These capabilities expand our connectivity solutions and allow us to address new customer segments."

Howard has worked in the optical networking industry since 1997 within engineering, product management and sales at companies including Nortel Networks, Transmode, BTI Systems and Cyan.

Larkin added: "Howard's experience and our creative engineering team will make a winning combination."

BigTec UK, the data centre arm of distributor Exclusive, is to supply Nuage Networks from Nokia as part of its SDN solutions proposition.

The Nuage Networks SDN overlay helps large enterprises simplify network operations, deploy applications with more agility and adapt network services in a secure multi-vendor cloud environment, says the firm.

Big Tec UK will distribute the full Nuage Networks portfolio, which includes the Virtualised Services Platform (VSP), Virtualised Network Services (VNS) and Virtualised Services Assurance Platform (VSAP).

"The inconvenient truth about data centre virtualisation is just how tough it becomes to manage multiple hypervisors, multiple clouds and an explosion in the number of virtual endpoints," stated Jason Dance, MD for BigTec UK.

"With Nuage Networks SDN technology organisations no longer will find it prohibitively complicated to scale up and harness the true power of their underlying networks.

"Nuage Networks works in tandem with our other vendor technologies, particularly security and software defined WANs."

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has chosen NetApp to revamp its data infrastructure in collaboration with S3 Consulting.

ZSL owns London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo and runs conservation projects in more than 50 countries.

It runs a large number of applications that are central to its research and academic output as well as its daily operations, including ticketing and membership systems, all of which produce a significant mass of data.

Five years ago, ZSL adopted a network-attached storage model with NetApp. As the business evolved, ZSL was ready for a refresh to bring more storage capacity and faster speeds to support its growing organisational needs.

Through its partner S3 Consulting, ZSL upgraded to NetApp FAS2500 series hybrid storage arrays to provide an infrastructure that could cope with its growing data needs.

Nick Napier, Head of ICT at the Zoological Society of London, said: "We now have an intuitive platform that is easy to manage. The benefits of how and what we can now back up are a huge step up from our old solution, and we now have a fully future-proofed investment."

Elliot Howard, UK & Ireland Country Manager for NetApp, added: "The availability of data is vital to any business or research body, and for ZSL access to this data at any time means it is able to continue with vital research, while also maintaining a high quality of customer service in its zoos."

Robert Galt, CTO for S3 Consulting, stated: "ZSL recognised that as the demands of the business were growing it needed to make a change to how it delivered on storage and backup as part of their virtualised infrastructure."

Over 250 global channel partners converged on Unify's Partner Conference staged in Barcelona to hear the vendor's growth plans and also learn that that more than 50% of product sales are now conducted through partners.

Unify (acquired by Atos in November 2015) has witnessed its partner programme more than double in size to over 2,000 partners in more than 50 countries, along with 13 new distributors.

During the past year there has been a 30% increase in the number of partners completing certifications on the Unify portfolio, with more than 25% holding Master or Professional level certifications.

Additionally, in the six months since making Circuit certifications available over 370 partners have begun selling Circuit to their customers.

Jon Pritchard, CEO of Unify, said: "In Barcelona we shared how we continue to enhance our business to drive greater business to our partners."

The Chess Partner Services Conference 2016 staged at the Hilton in Northampton and attended by 150 partners proved to be a springboard event for a number of new products and initiatives.

The 'Back to the Future' themed conference had a particular focus on 'products of the future' and was the backdrop to the roll out of new commercials including a reduction in the cost of fixed lines, calls and data; and the introduction of three mobile airtime revenue share options.

The event included a keynote on the IoT, demos of the Chess Cloud PBX solution and the launch of Chess Insurance which enables partners to attach insurance to handsets at point of sale via an online portal.

Chess Partner Services MD John Pett stated. "This year's conference was a key milestone with the launch of new commercials, new products and the Elite Partner Programme.

"It was an opportunity to give our partners the recognition they deserve and illustrate what we aim to achieve in 2016."

The Elite Partner Programme enables partners who beat their previous quarter's performance to redeem points for prizes, including a trip to the Northern Lights or a weekend in Paris.

Chess Partner Services also launched a 30 day Never Beaten on Price Challenge.

Pictured going 'Back to the Future' is Chess CEO David Pollock and John Pett.

Mitel will be making a $15m payment against its existing credit facility following a period of strong cash generation.

This is Mitel's second voluntary debt payment this year, bringing the total debt repaid in 2016 to $40m.

"Consistent with our commitments to shareholders, we are taking cash generated during the March quarter in excess of our working capital requirements to make our second voluntary debt reduction payment in 2016," said Steve Spooner, Chief Financial Officer.

Mitel's results for the first quarter of 2016 for the period ending March 31, 2016 will be issued before the market opens on May 5th, 2016.