Comms Dealer

James Kenn has joined Exponential-e as regional business manager with a remit to drive expansion in the north of England and Scotland.

"Digital infrastructure is at the heart of achieving regional prosperity and we have experienced a strong appetite for our services," stated John Kyrillou, Sales Director at Exponential-e.

"Since opening in Manchester last year we have achieved in the region of 60% increase in revenues. As the UK's vision for a northern powerhouse starts to take hold, we are confident that James will be able to blend his skills in business development, client consultancy and leadership to open up new opportunities for us." 

Kenn brings 15-plus years experience in B2B sales with a focus on managed IT services to enterprise organisations across a number of industries including retail, FMGC, automotive and construction.

Prior to joining Exponential-e he was a Business Development Director at Vodafone where he developed sales strategies for cloud-based managed convergence solutions.

He also spent 14 years at BT where he nurtured CXO relationships for high value accounts, supporting organisations with strategic initiatives including M&A activity.

Kenn said: regional business manager, Exponential-e. "I am confident that I will be able to use Exponential-e's heritage to achieve regional prosperity and support the progression of the brand moving forwards."

Connectivity and co-location company SSE Enterprise Telecoms has become the UK's first national service provider to buy dark fibre capacity over CityFibre's newly acquired long distance network (LDN).

The 15-year agreement secures capacity along a 48 kilometre stretch of network between Reading and Slough and provides SSE Enterprise Telecoms with access to significant additional fibre capacity to better serve their customers.

Colin Sempill, MD of SSE Enterprise Telecoms, said: "It is encouraging to see the breadth of fibre assets available both regionally and nationally from CityFibre. We look forward to a long-term, mutually rewarding relationship as each of our businesses continues to grow rapidly."

Rob Hamlin, Commercial Director at CityFibre added: "This agreement with SSE Enterprise Telecoms marks our first LDN transaction and the beginning of a key trading relationship with a major national service provider."

VIA's on track to take the chequered flag as sponsor of Rick Parfitt Jnr's bid to win the 2016 British GT Championship which kicks off at Brands Hatch on April 17th.

The racer was crowned 2013 GT4 champion and he enjoyed success during last year's British GT Championship as a part of the Ginetta team.

This year he's switched to Team Parker Racing, and his partnership with VIA will see his Bentley Continental GT3 emblazoned with the firm's trademark blue logo.

The seven-race season includes on track showdowns at Rockingham and Silverstone before drawing to a close at Donington Park in September.

Rick Parfitt Jnr said: "To drive a Bentley Continental GT3 for Team Parker Racing is a dream come true and I can't wait for the first race of the season at Brands Hatch. I would like to thank everybody at VIA for their ongoing support."

Iain Worthington, Financial Director at VIA, said: "We are proud to be sponsoring Rick ahead of what promises to be the most exciting British GT Championship to date. We will be cheering him on from the pit lane and it will be a great honour to see our VIA logo pass that chequered flag."

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."