Comms Dealer

Hats off to Luminet for collecting the Best Wireless accolade at ISPA's 2017 awards event.

Luminet was shortlisted in three categories - Best Wireless, Best Business Broadband and Best Business Customer Service.

Luminet has experienced strong growth, fuelled in part by its new channel programme which is underpinned with its 100% SLA guarantee via its wireless and fibre infrastructure.??Sasha Williamson, CEO, said: "We have invested millions into our network, computing services and customer service. It is hugely rewarding to be recognised by our Trade Association and to be formally given the title of Best Wireless."

Henry Pepperall has joined Exponential-e as CFO bringing with him 23 years experience in leading financial operations for high growth businesses.

His most recent high profile role was Financial Director at Kelway where he oversaw the acquisitions and a management buyout before managing the completion of the CDW acquisition of Kelway in 2015.

Prior experience includes a stint at Electrolux where he rose to Financial Controller turning a loss making services division into a profitable one.

Pepperall commented: "Exponential-e has achieved exceptional growth, delivering 40% EBITDA CAGR over the last three years. I'm joining at a pivotal time, as the business now starts to plan its next phase of growth."

CEO Lee Wade said: "Henry brings a wealth of senior leadership experience in managing complex financial operations in changing climates. His expertise will be invaluable as we deliver on our ambitious growth plans over the coming years."

Wade also welcomed the return of Jazz Sandhu as Marketing Director, who re-joined the company after serving as Head of Marketing for two years from 2012-2014.

Lyceum Capital backed Sabio has acquired fellow contact centre player DatapointEurope to create £60m business that supports 250 enterprise customers on three continents. Datapoint Europe has a strong European footprint with headquarters in Madrid, Spain, and offices in Barcelona, Milan, Paris and Utrecht. 

The move builds on Sabio's acquisition of SaaS solutions provider Rapport.

"Geographical expansion is critical to Sabio's growth plans, so the acquisition of DatapointEurope, with its broad reach across Europe and the Americas, is an important next step for the company," stated Sabio's Chief Executive Officer, Andy Roberts (pictured).

"DatapointEurope's international footprint entirely Sabio's existing strong presence in the UK and the Asia-Pacific markets, enabling the combined operation to address the demand for innovative global customer experience solutions."

Sabio has built out its infrastructure to support a larger business operation to drive annuity revenues via hosted and managed service offerings

"We've already demonstrated our ability to leverage value from this model, adding DatapointEurope will allow us to accelerate the process on a much broader geographical basis," stated Roberts.

DatapointEurope CEO Rafael Aranda added: "There's a particularly close fit in terms of our culture and values, along with a shared commitment to making our organisations a great place to work.

"Both organisations hold key strategic technology partnerships, and are recognised for their ability to deliver complex customer experience solutions based on our industry's core technologies."

DatapointEurope is a founding partner of the Intelligent Communications Alliance (ICA), a global solutions integrator helping multi-national clients.

"By combining Sabio and DatapointEurope's expertise we aim to develop the ICA further," said Aranda.

Simon Hitchcock, Partner at Lyceum Capital, commented: "The acquisition significantly expands the European operations of Sabio and better positions it to serve increasingly large international clients."

Zen Internet has been named Best Wholesale ISP at the 2017 Internet Service Provider Association (ISPA) awards.

Dave Hudson, Zen's MD for Wholesale, collected the award at a ceremony at the Café de Paris in London.

Judges praised Zen's wholesale full fibre (FTTP) network, which they said was challenging the dominance of the largest providers, and its two-way engagement with partners.

Hudson said: "This award is testament to the dedication of all Zen's staff, and to the hard work we've put in over the last two or three years to create a differentiated wholesale connectivity offer."

Worldwide IT spending is expected to grow 2.4% this year according to calculations by Gartner.

Analyst John-David Lovelock said: "The impact of digital business is giving rise to new categories. For example, the convergence of 'software plus services plus intellectual property'.

"These next-generation offerings are fuelled by business and technology platforms that will be the driver for new categories of spending.

"Industry-specific disruptive technologies include the Internet of Things (IoT) in manufacturing, blockchain in financial services (and other industries), and smart machines in retail. The focus is on how technology is disrupting and enabling business."

The worldwide enterprise software market is forecast to grow 7.6% in 2017, up from 5.3% growth in 2016.

"With the increased adoption of SaaS-based enterprise applications there also comes an increase in acceptance of IT operations management tools that are also delivered from the cloud," added Lovelock.

"These cloud-based tools allow infrastructure and operations organisations to more rapidly add functionality and adopt newer technologies to help them manage faster application release cycles.

"If the I&O team does not monitor and track the rapidly changing environment, it risks infrastructure and application service degradation, which ultimately impacts the end-user experience and can have financial as well as brand repercussions."

Dorset-based telematics company Trakm8 has kicked off a partner recruitment campaign to push its vehicle tracking, dash cam and optimisation solutions deeper into the fleet, insurance and automotive sectors.

According to the company resellers can help businesses overcome a number of transport related challenges such as improving fuel economy and road risk, increasing the utilisation of vehicles and reducing downtime.

"These improvements are driven by insights into vehicle whereabouts, utilisation reports, driver behaviour monitoring and vehicle health reports," said Chris Wilton, Channel Sales Director.

"Dash cam and multi-cam systems can reduce operational costs via lower insurance premiums and a reduction in accident rates."

To prove the point Wilton cited Euro Car Parts, a customer that has witnessed a 20% reduction in at-fault accident rates following the installation of cameras.

Trakm8's portfolio includes a route optimisation and scheduling system that calculates the best way to complete a company's delivery jobs using the least number of vehicles, while also achieving the lowest cumulative mileage and the most fuel-efficient route for each driver.

"There has never been a better time for businesses to introduce telematics to their product portfolio, with market trends still continuing to suggest significant industry growth over the next ten years," added Wilton.

Paula Johnston is to lead Node4's public sector push as the firm bids to become a 'major contender'. She brings 10 years experience and joins from Virgin Media where she managed the Public Sector Team across the midlands and south regions, and was named top sales performer in 2015.

As Node4's Head of Public Sector Sales Johnston will also draw on her previous experience as public sector Account Director at Airwave, where she won significant contracts to supply the Bluelight Sector with comms solutions including encrypted connectivity and UC.

Paul Bryce, Business Development Director, Node4, said: "This is an important hire as we work to position Node4 as a true end-to-end IT supplier for mid-tier, charity organisations and the public sector.

"Paula brings valuable experience in the sector, and we expect her to play a key strategic role in helping us achieve our growth plans."

Johnston added: "Now that Node4 is fully HSCN compliant and a G-Cloud 9 supplier, my priority is to build on our experience in this sector to ensure that Node4 is established as a major contender."

Advanced has acquired Hudman, developer of CentralERP, a cloud-based SaaS ERP system.

The move is expected to extend Advanced's reach into the SME business sector.

Gordon Wilson, CEO at Advanced, said: "This acquisition represents the first public step in the company's next chapter.

"Our business transformation over the last 12-18 months means we are well placed to focus on accelerating our growth and extending our delivery of solutions in the cloud, which represents the single biggest opportunity for us and our customers.

"Cloud technology is fast becoming the right choice for many organisations to drive efficiencies, manage costs, innovate and grow. It's important we help them embrace the cloud to secure this competitive edge."

David James, CEO at Hudman Solutions, added: "Our cloud first approach complements Advanced's strategy and its growth plans."

Jon Wrennall, CTO at Advanced, noted: "We're seeing an increasing number of newer businesses that either have a cloud-first strategy - in that they've never invested in a fully integrated on-premise infrastructure - or want to move quickly to the cloud to take advantage of all the benefits that make SaaS solutions so attractive.

"Integrating Hudman's technology and skill set into our existing product roadmap will ensure we support smaller organisations to positively disrupt their business and make a difference to the services they offer to their customers."

NG Bailey's IT Services division has racked up record sales for the second year running.

It's annual results to 24th February 2017 show a £76m hike in sales, up 27% on last year's £60m.

NG Bailey specialises in the design, supply, installation, management and maintenance of voice, data and structured cabling solutions to contracting, enterprise and public sector clients.

Group-wide figures rose from £408m to £500m and operating profits grew 100%, from £6m to £12m. The Group's forward order book rose by 10% to £902m.

The group attributes much of this growth to a diversification strategy that has seen NG Bailey move from a reliance on building construction to having a balanced portfolio across services (IT and facilities management), large scale engineering construction projects and traditional building construction.

CEO David Hurcomb said: "Our operating performance over the past year shows the strategy we put in place six years ago - when the construction industry was being heavily impacted by the economic downturn - was the right one.

"However, we cannot afford to be complacent. Each of our key divisions, including IT Services, performed strongly over the past year, but we are operating in what is still a challenging environment for our industry, and with a backdrop of continuing political and economic uncertainty.

"As a family-owned company, our independence provides us with the freedom to strategically reinvest our profits in areas that support future growth and enable us to be a sustainable business."

NG Bailey is investing £3m a year in staff training and development, and over the past 12 months has more than doubled the range of qualifications available in its apprenticeship programme.

Chairman Kevin Whiteman added: "Our financial strength, with no third party borrowings and net assets of £124m, allows us to invest for growth and to support the development of our people.

"We also recognise the opportunity, as a responsible business, to positively impact all our stakeholders, including almost 3,000 employees. That is why we are committed to environmental and social sustainability in order to build a better future for us all."

Luminet on track top hit 2017 reseller recruitment target?
Luminet is well on the way to achieving its 2017 target of signing up 400 partners having already on-boarded 140 resellers following the recent launch of its partner programme and automated portal, a move that refocused its strategy on market execution.

Luminet owns its own core and wireless 400 sqkm London network and has heavily invested in infrastructure, transforming itself from a wireless business broadband ISP to an intelligent managed services provider.

The firm's average revenue growth rate is 24% per annum and EBITDA has grown 16% year-on-year to circa £1.1m.

CEO Sasha Williamson stated: "Having already agreed 140 partnerships, with many more in progress, we are well on the way to hitting our target.

"With our connectivity and compute products and our partners' expertise, we have a surefire recipe for success that will enable us to have our best year to date."

Earlier this month Luminet sold its 28GHz spectrum license to Arqiva to sharpen its focus on wholesale, intelligent connectivity and computing services.

Luminet has become one of the first registered partners of the Connect Westminster Scheme, the newly launched Connected Voucher Scheme in that helps cover up to £2,000 towards an SMEs one-off connection charge within Westminster and the West End Partnership area.

Luminet is well on the way to achieving its 2017 target of signing up 400 partners having already on-boarded 140 resellers following the recent launch of its partner programme and automated portal, a move that refocused its strategy on market execution.

Luminet owns its own core and wireless 400 sqkm London network and has heavily invested in infrastructure, transforming itself from a wireless business broadband ISP to an intelligent managed services provider.

The firm's average revenue growth rate is 24% per annum and EBITDA has grown 16% year-on-year to circa £1.1m.

CEO Sasha Williamson stated: "Having already agreed 140 partnerships, with many more in progress, we are well on the way to hitting our target.

"With our connectivity and compute products and our partners' expertise, we have a surefire recipe for success that will enable us to have our best year to date."

Earlier this month Luminet sold its 28GHz spectrum license to Arqiva to sharpen its focus on wholesale, intelligent connectivity and computing services.

Luminet has become one of the first registered partners of the Connect Westminster Scheme, the newly launched Connected Voucher Scheme in that helps cover up to £2,000 towards an SMEs one-off connection charge within Westminster and the West End Partnership area.