Comms Dealer

High Wycombe-based Olive Communications is to significantly scale up its operations following a £15.25m funding boost. Business Growth Fund (BGF) has invested £10m growth capital while Barclays has provided £5.25m in new debt facilities.

Olive has seen revenues climb from £11m in 2012 to almost £30m at the end of this financial year, and has featured in the Sunday Times Tech Track for the past three consecutive years.

The funding package will be used to expand Olive's customer base and develop its range of services.
The business also plans to grow its 150 strong team with appointments across its three sites in High Wycombe, Hatfield and Towcester.

Martin Flick, CEO, said: "Over the past few years we have experienced continued growth. The results have been impressive on a self invested basis but we have ambitions to develop our product offering for customers and partners even further."

"BGF's minority, long-term funding model gives us the flexibility to do this. At the same time, we keep control of the business."

Mark Nunny, an Investor at BGF who will also take a seat on the board of Olive, added: "Our flexible equity will give Olive the headroom to invest organically for growth and consider acquisitions as part of its strategy."

GCI has repositioned as a managed UC provider and under the leadership of incoming CEO Adrian Thirkill the company will develop a UK Centre of Excellence for UC that builds on its Skype for Business pedigree, its standing as a Microsoft Gold Partner for Communications and Hosting, Vodafone Platinum Partner status and Broadsoft expertise.

Thirkill said: "Customer demand for affordable per user, per month managed UC services is growing exponentially and now is the perfect time for GCI to step up to the plate.

"Today, many organisations are in an entirely pre-UC world, or one where selected disparate UC functions are employed to a limited capacity but not integrated. Our intention is to set the benchmark in managed UC services in a market valued at £14.7bn globally."

ICUK marked its 15th year in business with the launch of version 15 of its Control Panel portal, a celebratory cash reward for staff, the expansion of its network and a promo for channel partners.

The latest version of ICUK's platform offers partners free PSTN and ADSL activations plus new features and enhancements.

Neil Barnett, Head of Business Development, said: "A common barrier for partners are the upfront installation costs with telephone services and broadband, especially when attracting new customers who might be on a tight budget.

"Our free line rental installation and broadband offer eradicates this problem, and gives our partners an edge."

The company has also expanded its network infrastructure and upgraded its MPLS core to 20Gbps.

Tim O'Donovan, Technical Director, stated: "We've added more POPs in central London giving us access to more carriers and greater capacity.

"This year we plan to continue this expansion, allowing our partners and their end users to tap into the best possible resources for their broadband, hosting and Ethernet connectivity."

ICUK has achieved year-on-year organic growth based on a wholly technical bias and no sales team, and currently has circa 100,000 end users.

Founding Director Paul Barnett explained: "ICUK is made up of highly skilled technical people, developers and support staff, all dedicated to driving the constant development of our wholesale platform.

"We have always believed that if we can make something better the sales will naturally come, and they have."

Leslie Costar, founding Director, added: "Our team is everything, and our development people are very much the unsung heroes of ICUK. They dedicate every working hour to taking the platform to the next step."

Gamma's annual UK roadshow gets under way on March 2nd at Hopetoun House in Edinburgh, the first in a run of four 'Gamma does Downton' stately home themed events.

Previous roadshow themes include museums, universities and castles. Richard Bligh, Chief Operating Officer, commented: "We're always looking at ways we can improve what we do and our annual roadshow plays a vital part in making this happen.

"Feedback from our partners is fundamental to shaping our roadmap, helping us to come up with innovative ideas and staying ahead of the curve. Last year we welcomed over 600 channel partners to our roadshow and this year we're expecting even more."

During the roadshow delegates will hear about Gamma's latest product developments such as the launch of its MPLS-based solution, Converged Private Networks, and Gamma's new mobile service, as well as a first look at SIP Trunk Call Manager. Chris Daffin, Network Services Director at Maintel, added: "It's a great opportunity to get together and catch up with the Gamma team and other channel partners, all under one roof."

The roadshow also stops at Crewe Hall (March 3rd), Ragley Hall (March 8th) and London's 8 Northumberland Avenue (March 9th).

SAP experienced 'exceptional momentum' in the fourth quarter with fast growth in cloud and double-digit growth in its core license business, it has confirmed.

For the full year, cloud and software revenue grew by 20% or 12% at constant currencies and exceeded the outlook of 8% - 10% growth at constant currencies. New cloud bookings increased 103% in the full year to €883m and 75% in the fourth quarter to €344m.

"Our strength in 2015 shows that the S/4HANA innovation cycle is well underway," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. "Our completeness of vision in the cloud has distinguished SAP from both legacy players and point solution providers. We beat on cloud and software, we beat on operating income and we are ever confident that SAP will remain a profitable growth business well into the future."

"Our tremendous 2015 results validate our strategy of innovating across the core, the cloud and business networks to help our customers become true digital enterprises," said Luka Mucic, CFO of SAP. "We have transformed our company and made it leaner by shifting investments from noncore activities to strategic growth areas enabling us to capture the tremendous growth opportunities in the market. This puts us on a strong path for the future reflected in an increase of our 2017 ambition."

Looking beyond 2016, SAP is raising its 2017 ambition to reflect both the current exchange rate environment and excellent business momentum. By 2017 SAP continues to expect its rapidly growing cloud subscriptions and support revenue to be close to software license revenue and is expected to exceed software license revenue in 2018. Assuming a stable exchange rate environment going forward SAP now expects non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue in a range of €3.8bn - €4.0bn in 2017. The upper end of this range represents a 2015 to 2017 CAGR of 32%.

SAP continues to anticipate that the fast-growing cloud business along with growth in support revenue will drive a higher share of more predictable revenue. Given the current software license revenue momentum it now expects the total of cloud subscriptions & support revenue and software support revenue to be in a range of 63% - 65% of total revenue in 2017.

Red Hat, set to be a $2bn business soon, and still growing at around 20% a year is drawing up its list of targets for sales in Europe this year, and it looks like telecomms companies are top of its list.

EMEA GM Werner Knoblich talked to IT Europa this week: "There is a telco push this year - we are recognising the potential in the market, and the move to using OpenStack. The telcos want a system that can cope with moving resources around their networks - similar to enterprise use of virtualisation, but able to cope with changing workloads," he says.

OpenStack is the Open Source Cloud computing platform aimed at public and private clouds, and backed by the likes of Red Hat, HPE, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Dell, EMC, NetApp etc.

"We see OpenStack for telcos in the same way as we saw Linux for financial services in the late '90s - the investment banks made Linux mainstream; it was all about trading platforms, and they just got faster speeds and lower latency with it. Linux became accepted in the enterprise not because of cost, but functionality. They legitimised it and we can see the telco industry doing the same for OpenStack."

The telcos as an industry seems to have decided that OpenStack will be the technology to virtualise the networks, he says. And it is a huge business with even bigger potential. So far Red Hat has sold just to the IT departments of telcos but, on average,10% of telco technology spend is on IT and 90% in the network area.

Telcos are looking to roll out services on their networks so they must have the management and flexibility; telcos today are all about appliances, running dedicated software from the NEPs, he explains. This means dedicated systems, and potential lock-in. So as bandwidth use rises, they need to be able to move resources around to match traffic.

"It is like what VMware did, abstracting hardware from software; this gives much higher utilisation and this is fundamentally what they are doing - everything becomes software defined and become a VNF - virtual network function, which become software appliances, sitting on a neutral platform. They want to mix and match applications from the other vendors and today this is almost impossible."

They see Red Hat as in a strong position, he says "We are independent and neutral - we don't have any hardware and there's no lock-in, and that is why there is now a big drive for this. From an OpenStack perspective in Red Hat, telco is a really important market - we have reorganised and from March 1 will have a dedicated force in EMEA."

This is not just in go-to-market and sales, but on the product side he has dedicated engineering teams, and is advancing the telco requirement upstream. "We don't want to create a version of OpenStack for them - like the carriers wanted their own version of Linux and we resisted that. This is important - they don't need a carrier grade OpenStack - they need an OpenStack that is carrier grade. It is a subtle difference. We ensure they get advances and perhaps telco-specific features earlier but it is not a different product. This then goes into the mainstream product."

OpenStack is the plumbing but even hotter is the overall digitalisation and the differentiation of products which comes from software - it is the communication and integration platform for the future. Openstack is so popular with vendors because nobody wanted to see the repeat in cloud of what happened in virtualisation where VMware became a dominant player. IBM, Intel, HP, Cisco, etc all support OpenStack for this reason, and are investing millions of dollars in its development.

The platform now has huge resources behind it. And now that VMware has released its own version of OpenStack, this is a key indicator. Other heavy users such as banks are also backing OpenStack but it is not yet a product for the rest of the market, he thinks "This will take some time. The big guys will make it happen first."

But there is a problem with finding enough skills to work with the platform. OpenStack skills are not so much a matter for partners yet so much as for the individuals with the knowledge. "OpenStack, like any new sophisticated technology is seeing a skills shortage. That is why we doing a lot on training - we are known for the excellence of our online education and we have increased it further to make it easier to consume in smaller chunks."

Some partners have seen the trend and have committed to it and getting trained up; they find they can charge higher rates and there is a lot happening on the skills development, especially among the integrators who are interested in selling those capabilities onwards.

Pinnacle Technology Group is gearing up for growth by acquisition and market consolidation and has kicked off 2016 with the proposed acquisitions of Ancar B and The Weston Group for a net consideration of £5m (subject to shareholder approval). Both businesses are based in Leeds and give Pinnacle a new operational focus complementary to its existing Scottish operational base in Glasgow.

Pinnacle also stated its results for the year to 30th September 2015, signalling progress on its acquisition strategy, the reduction of operational costs and its efforts to address legacy issues during a period of transition.
 
The company's annual figures show revenues of £7.9m for the 12 month period, with recurring revenues remaining high at 85%.
 
While revenues were down as a result of poorer trading on traditional telecommunications services and IT security, progress has been made by the business in growing its IT services and cloud services, and improving its sales of professional services.
 
While overall losses were £1.3m, they marked an improvement on the £1.8m loss reported in 2014. Operational costs were also reduced, but legacy issues continue to act as a drag on the business and contributed to an EBITDA loss for the year as a whole. A positive cash balance at year end of £641k was realised.
 
Pinnacle's Board believes that there are still a number of operational challenges but the opportunity to create a scalable and dominant IT-as-a-service provider exists due to the highly fragmented market.

In March 2015, Pinnacle welcomed a strategic investment made by AIM quoted merchant bank MXC. It was also appointed M&A advisor to the company.

MXC is now taking a significant stake of 25% in the business, alongside major investment in Pinnacle from other institutions.
 
The business is now under the stewardship of new Executive Chairman Gavin Lyons who was appointed on the 7th December 2015 and is a partner at MXC Capital, the technology merchant bank. He was previously the CEO of Accumuli.
 
Pinnacle also announced the appointment of Ian Winn, formerly COO at Accumuli, as Chief Operating Officer & Finance Director.

This reunites him with Gavin Lyons, once again putting together the successful team that led a buy-and-build journey through to the exit selling of Accumuli to the NCC Group in 2015 for £55m.

Pinnacle Chief Executive Officer Nicholas Scallan, is departing at the beginning of April after two years, and will not seek re-election at the next AGM.
 
Former Chairman James Dodd said: "The year ending 30th September 2015 was one of transition for Pinnacle Technology.

"Operationally we continued to expend considerable effort in reducing costs and resolving legacy issues. Strategically we announced both an investment from MXC and their appointment as M&A advisors.

"With the acquisitions of Ancar B and The Weston Group now announced the business is in a much better position to push on and take advantage of the market opportunity that exists, namely providing IT-as-a-Service to SMEs."
 

Annodata's annual financial results for the year ending 30th June 2015 show that it is closing in on its target of £100m by the end of 2016, said the firm.

The company's revenues for the 2014/15 fiscal year stand at £68.9m, up from £57.4m a year ago. Profits rose by 20% to £6.3m.

The MSP acquired IT infrastructure provider Keltec in November 2014 and wide-format print specialist STS in January 2015, strengthening and extending its service portfolio to include cloud hosting and ICT capabilities and creating significant opportunities to cross-sell between the companies' respective customer bases.

Now both fully integrated, the acquisitions have allowed Annodata to focus on growing its client base and deepening its engagement with existing customers by offering new services.

Joe Kelly, Annodata's Group Finance Director, commented: "This has been a particularly good year for Annodata and, now that Keltec has been fully integrated into the business we are in a strong position to replicate that success in the year ahead.

"We operate in an incredibly competitive industry, but I believe that our commitment to our customers, our range of services and our network of strategic partners help to stand us apart from our competitors.

"Annodata continues to maintain a strong balance sheet with no bank debt, which gives us the room for manoeuvre we need to remain agile and independent in the face of fast-changing market conditions."

Annodata implemented a number of changes to its senior management team over the past year - Group Sales Director, Rod Tonna-Barthet was appointed to the role of CEO, while the company also appointed a new Finance Director, Group Sales Director and Commercial Director.

With a strengthened management team, the company has been able to focus on consolidating its position in the market, driving growth and breaking ground in new markets.

Martin St Quinton, Annodata's Non-Executive Chairman, stated: "The past financial year has been one of the most significant in Annodata's 28 year history, marked by solid growth, acquisitions that have expanded Annodata's portfolio of services, a spate of large new business wins, and a number of strategically important appointments to strengthen our senior management team - all things that have helped to contribute to our continued success.

"Businesses across the board are trying to streamline the number of suppliers they work with down to a trusted few, and our customers increasingly look to us to take on ever greater portions of their IT estates.

"It's here where we see the greatest growth potential for Annodata. This year our focus will very much be on growing the cloud, managed services and ICT parts of the business and I have every confidence that we will maintain our healthy growth rates."

ISPA has welcomed the the Advertising Standards Authority's (ASA) research into how consumers engage with broadband adverts, but says that more detailed research is needed to corroborate the survey findings.

"Price is only one factor when a consumer chooses a service and the engagement with an advert is only one part of a purchasing decision," said Nicholas Lansman, Secretary General of ISPA. "We urge the ASA to consider the whole customer experience when consulting on changes to its advertising guidelines.
 
"The UK has a highly competitive broadband market and informed and empowered consumers are an important part of this. This is supported by Ofcom's own figures that show the UK benefits from some of the most competitive broadband pricing.

"Beyond adverts, ISPs provide clear information if consumers engage more closely with them, for example by going to their website, visiting a shop, working with comparison and consumer websites or by calling the providers. This has not been reflected in the survey which is based on a small sample size with some of the reviewed adverts only being shown to 8 participants.
 
"We look forward to working together with our members and the ASA on how to empower and inform consumers, and it is worth emphasising that the adverts that were used in the survey fully comply with current guidelines."

Chess' annual financial results indicate how far the company has evolved with acquisitions and product portfolio expansion driving a 33% increase in turnover to £74m and an EBITDA increase of 13% to over £14m. The business has also taken its headcount to 450-plus people.

David Pollock, Chief Executive, said: "2015 saw us continue to reduce our reliance on fixed line call revenues with a real focus on growth in cloud and ICT product sales.

"We have invested in business systems and infrastructure and made some significant appointments to strengthen the senior management team across the Group.

"We are excited by our future plans having recently secured a £50m bank facility to support our acquisition strategy in 2016."

Key acquisitions include Avenir Mobile (UK) in June 2014, adding more than 78,000 mobile connections and 200 resellers. Other acquisitions of note include Parachute IT and Compwise ICT businesses, strengthening Chess' ICT offering.

2015 also saw Chess collect a number of awards and accreditations.