Comms Dealer

Avaya's UK and EMEA marketing team is headed up by two new faces following the appointment of Ross White as Head of UK Marketing, supported by Nick Main who has been promoted to the role of Head of Channel Marketing for EMEA.

White leads all UK marketing activity with oversight of all country and joint partner marketing, channel communications, social media programs, and SI/SP and distribution relationships. He has over 15 years of experience in IT and telecommunications marketing. Since joining Avaya in 2004, he has held a number of positions within the company, most recently Head of Channel Marketing EMEA.

Main joined the team in 2016 as EU Channel Marketing Manager.

Ioan MacRae, MD, Avaya, said: "Nurturing an ecosystem of diverse and rare talents is a huge part of the value our customers and partners expect from us. The decades of experience Nick and Ross share show just how well suited they are for these expanded roles, and the potential we see in them to deliver even more."

Vodafone UK has recognised its top performing B2B partners at its annual Partner of the Year awards held in Manchester on July 5th.

The awards celebrate the performance of Vodafone's partners over the last financial year, recognising those who demonstrate superior capability across the Vodafone portfolio and provide excellent service for UK businesses.

The winners are judged on a number of criteria, such as sales volumes and accreditations achieved. The segment category awards (Total Communications, Advanced and Specialist partner categories) also consider how the programme's training and marketing benefits have been used by partners.

This year's winners are:
Total Communications Partner of the Year - Onecom
Advanced Partner of the Year - Garnell Corporate Communications
Specialist Partner of the Year - New Image Communications
One Net Partner of the Year - Connect Telecom
Connectivity Partner of the Year (new category for this year) - iTalk Telecom

Helen Freestone, who has recently been appointed as Director of Partners and Alliances for Vodafone UK, said: "It's a privilege to be able to recognise so many of our partners this year, particularly as the new programme, with a focus on capability and customer service, continues to generate success for both our own and our partners' businesses."

Natilik's Rory Tempest has been promoted to the Chief Marketing Officer role following a four year stint running a successful commercial sales function at the firm.

CEO Mike Danson said: "As we continue to grow and our portfolio becomes deeper and broader, there has never been a more important time to have someone in our company responsible for linking what our clients really want from their IT and communications investments and what we can offer.

"Rory brings a wealth of experience about our clients, our market and our brand and now has the opportunity to fuse this knowledge to help provide clarity on how we can bring value to our clients and deliver to the outcomes that are most important to them."

Tempest added: "We continue to disrupt the industry and in doing so have achieved some amazing things with our clients, which we're dying to share with the global market. We're on course to achieve our five year objectives and storytelling will play a crucial part of that."

Storacall Voice Systems has joined forces with Enghouse Interactive to develop an integrated call accounting and call recording solution targeted at businesses with large volumes of inbound or outbound calls.

The new offering is primarily based around Enghouse Interactive's Proteus call management and call accounting software, which allows organisations to run comparisons of rate plans from multiple providers.

The Proteus software provides reports on call traffic and monitors the organisation's use of long distance or toll-based services to protect against internal and external fraud.

Proteus software has been combined with the Storacall-ST call recording solution.

Joe Jestico, Head of Business Development, Storacall, said: "We are witnessing growing demand in the marketplace from businesses for an integrated solution that enables them to exert greater control over the calls they are making and receiving.

"Positive customer engagement is seen as a key differentiator by a growing number of organisations today, but in delivering it they need to address potential pain points by ensuring they manage call quality and agent performance efficiently."

Tony Davies, International Partner Director, Enghouse Interactive, added: "We are looking forward to pooling our resources and capabilities to meet the increasingly urgent need of organisations today for call management and call recording."

The number of cyber attacks targeting UK-based businesses increased by more than half in the second quarter of 2017, according to a new report from business ISP Beaming.

Firms were, on average, subjected to almost 65,000 Internet-borne cyber attacks each in the three months to June, an increase of 52% on the first quarter of 2017.

While two-thirds (68%) of attacks hitting corporate firewalls targeted connected devices such as networked security cameras and building control systems, there was a substantial increase in attacks on company databases.

On average, each UK business experienced 105 attempts to take control of their database applications per day in the second quarter of 2017, compared to just 14 in the first three months of the year.

Sonia Blizzard, MD of Beaming, said: "Major organisations have been brought to their knees by global cyber attacks and our research shows the likes of Wannacry are just the tip of the iceberg.

"UK businesses were targeted more than 700 times each on a daily basis by hackers over the last three months, who focused on hijacking connected devices and databases.

"The majority of cyber attacks are automated computer scripts that search the web for weaknesses and attack company firewalls constantly looking for vulnerabilities.

"Businesses need to keep these vital defences up-to-date, prioritise security over convenience and ensure employees understand both the evolving threat and their cyber security responsibilities."

Mitel has acquired the business assets of troubled Toshiba Unified Communications Systems.

Mitel has confirmed that there will be ongoing access to existing Toshiba products and services and that a number of Toshiba sales, support and R&D employees will join the Canadian vendor to maintain support for existing Toshiba customers and partners.

The transaction also includes a transition services agreement to provide product and service continuity.

The deal reflects Mitel's strategy to focus on expanding its position in the UCC market.

"In a rapidly changing and opportunity rich technology landscape, Mitel is helping customers find a seamless path forward whether in the cloud, on premise or a hybrid of both," said Rich McBee, CEO of Mitel.

AIM-listed CityFibre has acquired Mobeus-backed Entanet for £29m in a cash deal that enables the alternative fibre infrastructure provider to focus on wholesale fibre services and speed up the commercialisation of its fibre assets. CityFibre expects to realise synergies of over £3m per annum within three years by combining its fibre infrastructure with Entanet's wholesale products, systems and relationships with channel partners.

Entanet has over 1,500 channel partners which substantially increases CityFibre's wholesale capabilities and its relationships with service providers.

The combined businesses create a wholesale provider with full fibre infrastructure, giving Entanet's partners access to CityFibre's growing national footprints to deliver gigabit-speed services.

These will be offered alongside Entanet's existing connectivity portfolio of fixed, wireless and mobile data connectivity services as well as hosted voice and telecoms.

Entanet CEO Elsa Chen (pictured) said: "Our partners will soon be able to take a strong and highly competitive proposition to the market, reaping the rewards of CityFibre's national full fibre infrastructure footprints and next generation products.

"They will continue to enjoy the full support of Entanet's long-established and mature channel strategy.

"Together, we are creating a new breed of wholesale service provider that will empower channel partners to change the connectivity market landscape."

CityFibre CEO Greg Mesch (pictured above) said: "With Entanet now part of the CityFibre family, our combined offering will accelerate the take-up of services over our growing network footprints, leveraging Entanet's channel partner network and continuing to transform digital connectivity for thousands of UK businesses."

CityFibre also intends to double its market value by raising a further £200m – £185m of which will be underwritten by Citigroup, finnCap, Liberum and Macquarie. CityFibre aims to raise further proceeds through an accelerated bookbuilding process and additional proceeds of up to £15m through a non-underwritten offer for subscription.

CityFibre plans to expand its fibre metro networks from 42 UK towns and cities today to not less than 50 towns and cities by 2020; and will begin constructing a Fibre to the Home FTTH) network to address the residential market in five to ten UK towns and cities during 2018.

This follows CityFibre's successful participation in the FTTH trial in York which demonstrated strong demand from ISPs and consumers for gigabit speed FTTH services.

CityFibre is now in advanced negotiations with ISPs that will market full-fibre broadband services to consumers, deployed over its networks.

Mesch added: "We are building Gigabit Britain, driven by growing demand from Internet Service Providers and their customers to switch to full-fibre infrastructure.

"Our announcement to enter the residential market is the first step in our vision to bring gigabit connectivity to millions of UK homes and small businesses.

"This is about more than just better broadband - this is about future-proofing the digital infrastructure we've all come to rely on at work, at school, at home and in our communities. It's also about stimulating the market, creating jobs and growth.

"The Government and Ofcom recognise that investment in alternative fibre networks will catalyse growth in the UK's digital economy as well as reduce the country's reliance on BT Openreach.

"With Entanet now part of the CityFibre family, our combined offering will accelerate the take-up of services over our growing network footprints, leveraging Entanet's channel partner network and continuing to transform digital connectivity for thousands of UK businesses.

"Today's capital raising also better positions CityFibre to undertake larger projects coming forward with the public sector as well as mobile operators in readiness for their small-cell roll-outs and 5G services."

Megabuyte analyst and Comms Dealer contributor Philip Carse commented: "The announcement is yet another signpost in what is clearly very strong investor support for fibre network infrastructure, and comes barely a day after the launch of the UK Government’s own £400m fund, which is aimed at triggering a total of £1bn investment, and few weeks after Gigaclear raised another £111m. 

"In particular, this funding is aimed at full fibre infrastructure, taking it to the premise rather than the fibre to the cabinet variety preferred by BT, which inevitably limits the speeds available. 

"We assume that BT’s competitors such as Sky and TalkTalk will be leading the queue to use the new FTTP networks, whilst a whole host of B2B service providers will increasingly start to use CityFibre metro networks, rather than rely wholly on BT Openreach or BT Wholesale.

"Meanwhile, the Entanet acquisition appears expensive at first blush, but comes with a compelling strategic rationale in terms of gaining a large swathe of wholesale partners as well as access to systems (a focus for Entanet investment over the past couple of years). 

"It will also boost CityFibre’s engineering and software development employee base. Mesch also noted that Entanet’s existing customer base will provide strong support for expanding to certain new towns and cities. The price looks much more modest if the target £3m per annum synergies can be achieved."

Panasonic Business has appointed Nuvias as its first pan-EMEA distributor for its range of business IP phone handsets.

The initial roll-out will focus on established markets for Nuvias, including the UK, Benelux, Germany and France, along with Southern Europe and the Nordics.

"As a full end-to-end unified communications solution provider, backed up with the technical skills and experience to support service providers and resellers, Nuvias adds an exciting new dimension to our distribution across EMEA," said Raphael Studer, European Partner Account Manager for SIP Products at Panasonic System Communications Europe.

"The Nuvias Unified Communications Practice will be able to replicate its well-proven and successful model to drive sales through both existing and new channel partners."

Steve Harris, EVP Unified Communications for Nuvias (and formerly managing director of SIPHON Networks), commented: "Panasonic is one of a number of unified communications vendors taking advantage of Nuvias' growing UC capability to increase EMEA sales.

"Nuvias' drive to expand its Unified Communications Practice will also help existing and new reseller/integrator channel partners across EMEA to benefit from the opportunities presented by the rapidly expanding UC market."

Appliances for backup are falling out of favour in EMEA as purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) vendor revenues declined 12% year over year to reach $191m in the first quarter of 2017, according to IDC.

Capacity shipped for 1Q17 totalled 235PB, an increase of 5% from 1Q16, but this growth mainly came from open systems products, with capacity increasing 11% year on year. Total EMEA PBBA open systems vendor revenue decreased 11% year on year during the first quarter, with revenues of $178m.

Vendor revenue in Western Europe was down 8% year on year in 1Q17 to $156m.

"Although the economic and political turmoil is still impacting consumer confidence, delaying modernisation investment projects are negatively affecting the PBBA market in some Western European economies, but PBBA spending increased in other countries such as the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway) at 57% YoY, Italy at 29% YoY, and Netherlands at 21%.

The PBBA market in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) is slowing down the trend of recovery significantly and declined 24% year on year in 1Q17. This is very close to the 25% decline in 1Q16.

Growing IaaS provider OVH has closed a 400m euro funding round from a pool of nine banks to support its five-year global expansion strategy.

The France-headquartered firm currently has 270,000 servers deployed within 20 data centres across five countries in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

OVH delivers its cloud services - private, public and hybrid - to more than one million customers worldwide and it generated revenues of almost 400m euro for the year.

"This new investment will permit OVH to follow its global expansion strategy, which began in autumn 2016 with a 250m euro investment from KKR and TowerBrook," said OVH.

OVH had previously announced an ambitious development and investment plan worth 1.5bn euro. The company has already begun the execution of this plan, notably with the opening of data centres in new geographical zones. A total of three data centres are now located in Australia, Singapore and Poland, with a fourth and a fifth under construction in Germany and the UK (which will eventually have a total of three data centres).

Nicolas Boyer, chief financial officer of the OVH group, said: "This new financing provides us with an increasingly robust banking pool, renewing confidence in the group's international strategy and positioning. In addition, the entry of US investment bank JP Morgan into this pool reflects our position as a global player in cloud computing.

"We will continue to implement our strategic plan through international deployment, consolidation of our position in the digital market, acceleration of our growth among enterprise customers, and by reinforcement and structuring of our organisation to take full advantage of market opportunities."