Comms Dealer

Citrix has appointed Darren Fields as Regional Director, UK & Ireland, reporting to Michelle Senecal de Fonseca, Area VP for Northern Europe.

Fields joins Citrix from Vodafone Group Enterprise where he was Head of Northern Europe Cloud & Hosting, a division within the business.

He has held a number of internationally focused senior leadership roles across a variety of hardware, software and telecoms companies.

Prior to joining Vodafone he was global head of sales, cloud services at Telefonica, where he was responsible for executing an IaaS business strategy in Brazil, Germany, Spain and the UK.

Content Guru is confirmed as a Key Supporter at Enhancing Housing Services Through Innovation & Technology 2017, organised by GovNet.

The conference takes place on Tuesday 11th July at Victoria Park Plaza, London, and includes a variety of talks and seminars, as well as an exhibition showcasing digital solutions for social housing.

The conference will bring together organisations that provide technological solutions to the social housing sector, with senior leaders from central and local government, Housing Associations and related charities in attendance.

The event aims to increase operational efficiency and overhaul industry practices across the social housing sector, through digital transformation and raised levels of tenant engagement.

Martin Taylor, CMO and Head of Public Sector at Content Guru, commented: "The social housing sector is under increasing pressure to solve the housing crisis and improve tenant experience through innovation and cost-effectiveness.

"The spotlight is now firmly on the safety requirements of social housing, adding this to the list of key issues to address."

The Government's new £400m Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund falls way short of the mark, claims Lorrin White, MD of ICT firm Bamboo Technology Group.

"Any investment in our national broadband infrastructure is to be welcomed, but £400m falls well short of what is needed to bring true fibre-to-the-premise to everywhere that needs it," she said.

"Roads and railways are still important, but reliable, widely available, and high-quality Internet connectivity is the most critical infrastructure for growth in the 21st Century, yet we are quickly falling behind the rest of Europe when it comes to broadband speeds.

"This challenge will only be compounded by Brexit. The need to invest in our critical national infrastructure has never been more urgent."

Three Daisy Wholesale partners will join Sir Ben Ainslie and the Land Rover Ben Ainslie Racing team to sail in the Solent as winners of an incentive scheme.

Jola Cloud Solutions, KSM Telecom and Solution Consultants ICT will join the British challenger for the 25th America's Cup and sail on-board the Foiling 'AC45' with Sir Ben Ainslie himself.

Garry Growns, Sales Director of Daisy Wholesale, said: "These three partners sold the greatest number of seats of our hosted voice solution, HV.Select.

"We're delighted to be able to offer these once in a lifetime experiences as incentives to our partners, and to reward them for their fantastic sales achievements."

Over 150 SpliceCom partners descended on events in Southampton, Heathrow and Manchester to gain first hand insights into the vendor's latest services and products

Unveiled were the SelectVoice 1,000 IP voice platform for cloud, on-premise and blended deployment; an admin portal; Yealink SIP phone integration; Macfarlane conversation management Contact Centre; Navigate II IP softphone/phone partner with Skype for Business integration; WebPartner client portal; Vision v1.7 Business Management & Call Centre; and ISIP ISDN to SIP Converter.

Splicecom also launched IRIS, its new reseller portal and a new accreditation scheme.

"With this year's launch, our whole focus has been on making life easier for our channel partners," said Head of Sales for the UK and Ireland, Stuart Bell.

"With SelectVoice we've taken huge steps forward when it comes to selling, installing and maintaining our solutions.

"And by extending our support for SIP handsets, in particular Yealink's extensive range of desktop and wireless devices, we've widened our addressable market."

CityFibre's Mark Collins, Director of Strategy and Policy at CityFibre, has responded positively to the Government's new Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund.

"We welcome the launch of the DIIF fund. Addressing the yawning fibre gap which sees the UK at just 2% full fibre penetration versus countries like Spain on 80% is essential," he said.

"This fund will help to underpin investor confidence and catalyse competitive full fibre roll-out. We look forward to engaging with government to explore how the DIIF could accelerate our future plans."

Staff from the UK offices of Onecom helped raise more than £2,000 for the mental health charity MIND with a sponsored run.

Workers from across the business took part in the event on Thursday (June 29th) as part of ongoing celebrations for the company's 15th birthday.

In total 114 members of staff from across Onecom's 12 regional bases raised £1,281 for MIND, each running a mile-long route around the office where they are based. A further £1,000 was donated by Onecom's management to top up the donation.

MIND was picked by employees in a company-wide poll as their chosen charity to support in 2017.

Aaron Brown, COO, said: "We're pleased that we have raised a significant amount for MIND and will continue to support the charity with more fundraising activities in our offices around the country during the coming year."

Security vendor FireMon has appointed a new EMEA head tasked with building more channel alliances.

James Clegg, FireMon vice president of EMEA, was previously at Juniper Networks company BTI Systems where he helped grow business through partner networks.

Clegg also previously served at Crossbeam, Arbor Networks and Gigamon, and is experienced at selling into the managed service provider, mobile and financial sectors.

Clegg replaces Ottavio Camponeschi, who joined the company as VP EMEA in June 2015. Camponeschi was based at FireMon's Munich office, but Clegg will primarily be based in the UK.

US-headquartered FireMon entered the UK last year with a distribution agreement with Westcon.

FireMon addresses network security infrastructure, policy and risk management issues with a suite of products that arm security and IT personnel with contextual intelligence to identify threats within their networks and to make quick decisions.

"James joins FireMon as an experienced and successful leader in the security sector through his ability to create high-performance sales teams focused on strategic selling and creative deal innovation," said Peter Kobs, chief revenue officer at FireMon.

"He will drive FireMon's expanding EMEA business volumes through forming strategic channel partnerships."

Irish audio visual distributor Fusion Technologies has been acquired by EET Europarts, its second acquisition in a week and its first company owned in Ireland.

Fusion was founded in 2004 and has grown to become one of Ireland's leading trade only distributors of AV products.

"Fusion Technologies has a strong position in the Irish market. It is a perfect match for us to grow our pro-AV and digital signage business further," said John Thomas, CEO at EET Group.

Fusion MD Damien Brennan will take on the lead role as MD at the newly established entity EET Europarts Ireland.

Cato Networks has bolstered its play in the SD-WAN market with a converged SD-WAN, security and a global backbone cloud service.

Alon Alter, Vice President of Business Operations, said: "There are a lot of misunderstandings around the scope of SD-WAN and what it actually covers. For example, how SD-WANs address global networking, network security, cloud and mobile requirements."

Cato Networks' solutions have increasingly replaced the MPLS connections which have been used for connecting branch offices and data centres, he says. Hence the push for wider and stronger channels.

"The problem we address is that legacy networking and security solutions were built for the static networks of the past, not for today's cloud and mobile focused businesses," added Alter.

"What we see today is that the channel is looking for answers when global customers want to rapidly deploy a new branch. A new location in a remote location can take three months with MPLS, with a Cato solution it is almost immediate.

"So the channel not only gets to provide an incentive and solution but it gives them access to a security budget that they may not have been able to reach before."