Comms Dealer

Telecoms firm Voneus has thrown Gloucestershire village Miserden a connectivity lifeline following its designation as having the slowest average broadband speed in a report by cable.co.uk. 

Plans are in place to deliver high speed connectivity by Spring 2016 through home broadband offering, Voneus Together.

Voneus has assisted Miserden Estates since late 2015 to understand and resolve the challenges faced by local residents and businesses in Miserden, as a result of inadequate broadband speeds.

Voneus is working with the Estate Office and has held public consultation meetings at the village hall, attended by MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, to develop a plan to roll out high speed broadband for the residents and businesses of Miserden.  

Voneus Sales Director, Gary Day, commented: "Obviously we're delighted that the Voneus Together offering will enable all residents and businesses to access high speed broadband and bring Miserden from the perceived dark ages into the 21st Century.

"Staying connected is an essential part of business and everyday living. Voneus Together is a service we are proud to provide for Britain's rural communities." 

Capgemini has secured a one year contract extension to provide the UK's Ministry of Defence (MOD) with a secure managed service that delivers the Purchase to Pay (P2P) capability it runs for its trading partners.

The £9.17m renewed contract builds on a relationship established in 2000.

Under the extended contract, which will run until December 2016, Capgemini will continue to provide application and infrastructure services to allow the MOD to make secure transactions with over 2000 of its suppliers.

Approximately £14bn of trading spend is processed through the P2P service each year.

Paul Nannetti, CEO of Infrastructure Services at Capgemini Group, said: "This is a significant contract for us and is testament to the strength of our capabilities in managed services.

"Our strong relationship with the MOD has made this a successful collaboration, and it is a great achievement to be going into our 16th year of working together."

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has reported Q1 net revenue of $12.7bn, down 3% from the prior-year period but up 4% on a constant currency basis.

"During our first quarter as an independent company we saw the progress that comes from being more focused and nimble," said Meg Whitman, president and chief executive officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

"We delivered a third consecutive quarter of year-over-year constant currency revenue growth, and excluding the impact of recent M&A activity, we saw revenue growth in constant currency across every business segment for the first time since 2010."

Enterprise Group (ETOLF) revenue was $7.1bn, up 1% year over year, up 7% in constant currency, with a 13.4% operating margin.

Servers revenue was down 1%, up 5% in constant currency. Storage revenue was down 3%, up 3% in constant currency. Networking revenue was up 54%, up 62% in constant currency. And Technology Services revenue was down 9%, down 3% in constant currency.

Enterprise Services revenue was $4.7bn, down 6% year over year, flat in constant currency, with a 5.1% operating margin. Infrastructure Technology Outsourcing revenue was down 8%, down 2% in constant currency, and Application and Business Services revenue was down 3%, up 3% in constant currency.

Software revenue was $780m, down 10% year over year, down 6% in constant currency, with a 17.4% operating margin. License revenue was down 6%, down 2% in constant currency, support revenue was down 13%, down 9% in constant currency, professional services revenue was down 7%, down 2% in constant currency, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue was down 9%, down 7% in constant currency.

Financial Services revenue was $776m, down 3% year over year, up 3% in constant currency, net portfolio assets were up 4%, up 9% in constant currency, and financing volume was down 4%, up 3% in constant currency. The business delivered an operating margin of 12.9%.

It wasn't so long ago that employers were right to believe that they were driving the jobs market. I'm not just talking about the last recession, but even further back through the boom times of the nineties and noughties, writes Clive Jefferys of recruiter JMA Network.

Back then every job seeker had to secure their own career chances and work hard to win a hirer's offer.

Before the Internet the knowledge of where new jobs existed lay squarely with the hirers and their advertisers. It seems incredible that trade magazines used to carry 60, 70, 80 pages of job adverts, often every fortnight. Then the jobsites were created, using the web to carry job information direct to candidates. This sparked a revolution that has slowly turned advantage to the worker.

During the 2008 recession unemployment refused to rocket upwards, barely exceeding 2 million (half of the grim early 1990s). Ultra low interest rates kept companies in business, people in their jobs and houses. This was a good thing and the landscape of employment is now very different.

Today's jobseeker can pick and choose who gets attention. It's much like shopping for a new car from identical car showrooms. Let's say you want to buy a Ford Focus and whichever dealership you visit, the product and pricing is identical, each one looks lovely, shiny and new. So who gets the deal?

Today our buyer gets to pick the lucky winner based on other, often intangible, benefits on offer. Better support from the service department, extra warranties, use of hire cars, bottles of champagne, maybe a free Little Mix CD if that tickles your fancy.

Yet in the 1960s when new cars were in short supply, people considered themselves lucky to get one and would wait six months for delivery.

Not so today. New cars and new jobs are ten-a-penny.

So if you want to sell a car or hire a new member of staff, the only solution is to work harder to get the deal.

It's not just about money. The benefits are more important - flexible hours, home working, pensions, healthcare, gym membership, longer holidays and better working environments all count too. 

Exertis has added Samsung's new SCM-Compact solution to its UC portfolio.

The product features desktop CTI applications, call management solutions, call recording, contact and call centre applications for up to 512 users.

Utilising Samsung WLAN technology, wireless IP desk phones and supporting multiple mobile handsets including android and Apple iOS, small to medium sized business can deploy a wireless IP solution, particularly where incumbent infrastructure on site does not facilitate an IP deployment.
 
John Bird, Exertis Head of UC Systems and Support services, said: "In the last year we've seen the demand for IP handsets overtake traditional TDM technology and this conversion rate will increase significantly over the next 12 months.

"Resellers can install an IP solution using SCM Compact with Samsung WLAN to negate the need to install costly structured cabling on site. This can become a single vendor 'office in a box' solution that will help resellers increase wallet share and promote end user lock-in."
 
Exertis is running a number of sales and technical training days during March and April to enable resellers to become accredited to sell the product.

Exertis can also provide white label support services for resellers to help them in specifying, deploying and maintaining the installation.
 
Exertis provides a full complement of Samsung products - mobiles, tablets, audio visual, notebooks, printers, wireless LAN and UC.
 

Glasgow-based Exsel Group has enabled City Cabs in Edinburgh to become Scotland's first taxi company to offer free Wi-Fi across its network.

By the end of March all 440 fleet vehicles will be fitted with Wi-Fi systems running on the O2 network.

"We are delighted to be providing free WiFi access across Edinburgh in partnership with CityCabs," stated Tom McDonald, MD, Exsel Group.

George Aird, City Cabs MD, said: "Working in partnership with Exsel we are enabling the business community, tourist and the general public to stay connected at all times."

Cheltenham Gold Cup sponsor Timico Technology Group is giving horseracing fans a free bet to stake their claim to a £250,000 prize fund.

The Timico 250 competition, launched in partnership with Cheltenham Racecourse for this year's Festival, will pay out a total of £250,000 to entrants correctly predicting the order of the runners taking part in the Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup on Friday 18th March.

Tim Radford (pictured), Chief Executive Officer at Timico, said: "Everyone likes a flutter on the Gold Cup, although it's not often you get a free bet, but with the Timico 250 competition that's exactly what we're offering.

"All entrants need to do is correctly predict the finishing order of this year's Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup runners. We wish everyone taking part in this fantastic competition the very best of luck!"

Sophia Dale, Communications Manager for the south west region of The Jockey Club, added: "This year's Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup is gearing up to be as exciting as ever with some of the best chasers in the world lined up to take their chance in the feature race of The Festival.

"Timco 250 will allow people to have a go at winning the huge prize pot and is something really fun that the sponsor has come up with. Good luck!"

The competition is limited to 20,000 entries in total and to one email address and full valid address per entry.

In the event that there are multiple correct entries the prize fund will be divided equally between all winning entries.

Entries will open at midday on 16th March 2016 at www.timico250.co.uk. The competition will close at 2.30pm on 18th March 2016 or once the number of valid entries reaches 20,000, whichever is sooner.

The high profile sponsor spot for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the feature race on the final day of The Festival, became available for the first time in 36 years, at the end of last year and Timico will sponsor the race for the next four renewals.

VoIP hardware distributor ProVu Communications has been ranked among the top 50 fastest growing companies in the Northern Tech Awards for the second year in a row.

Run by the technology investment bank GP Bullhound, companies are ranked by their revenue over the last three years.

ProVu MD Darren Garland said: "We continue to grow year-on-year, and this award validates all the hard work the ProVu team have put in. We came 23rd in the rankings last year, so I am looking forward to seeing our position this year."

The 2016 awards will take place at The Titanic Hotel, Liverpool on 23rd March.

The prevalence of wearables in the enterprise has sparked a growing concern for IT security, according to Centrify, a specialist in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats.

In research, 69% of wearable device owners say they forego login credentials, such as PINs, passwords, fingerprint scanners and voice recognition, to access their devices.

While 56% of wearable owners use their devices to access business apps such as Box, Slack, Trello, Dropbox, Salesforce, Google Docs, Microsoft Office or a combination of these.

Despite the lack of login credentials and ready access to corporate data, 42% of wearable owners cite identity theft as their top security concern when it comes to their devices.

Lack of IT management and device control comes in second (34%) and a general increase in breaches of sensitive work data or information comes in third (22%).

"As wearables become more common in the enterprise, IT departments must take serious steps to protect them as carefully as they do laptops and smartphones," said Bill Mann, Chief Product Officer for Centrify.

"Wearables are deceptively private. Owners may feel that due to their ongoing proximity to the body they're less likely to fall into the wrong hands.

"However, hackers don't need to take physical possession of a device in order to exploit a hole in security.

"The best news is that solutions already exist that can easily wrap wearables into the identity management picture."

DeutschlandLAN NFON, the cloud telephone system based on NFON's technology, is now available via the Telekom Cloud Portal.

As strategic partners NFON AG and Deutsche Telekom have tailored their solution to the requirements of small customers who aim to replace their existing ISDN system with a modern IP telephony.

The goal of the partnership is to give small and medium sized businesses a simple, flexible and central cloud telephone system and to enable these business to setup and administrate their system independently.

Users are able to intuitively set additional functions such as call management, voicemail or call routing via a web-based user interface.

"Our future-proof telecommunication solution is supporting mobile working and enables family-friendly telework models," stated Dirk Backofen, Senior Vice President Marketing Business Customers at Deutsche Telekom GmbH.

"The cloud solution can be extended at any time with several locations or home offices able to be integrated and over 150 functions are available from the first extension."

Dr. Gerald Kromer, CEO at NFON AG, added: "All-IP is not a trend any longer as many areas of life and work have already implemented a digital transformation. Now, business communications is witnessing the relentless change."