Comms Dealer

BT has two new contracts with the European Commission to deliver public and private cloud services across 52 major European institutions, agencies and bodies - including the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Defence Agency.

Both framework contracts awarded in December run for up to four years with a combined worth of more than 24 million euros.

Following execution of the framework contracts, BT will implement the contracted private cloud services, and becomes one of five providers that will compete for public cloud projects. These are the third and fourth European Commission framework contracts that have been awarded to BT in 2015, all of them following open calls for tenders.

The services will be hosted from several geographically spread data centres within the European Union, keeping all customer data will remain within the EU. They will be integrated and managed from BT's Compute Management System (CMS) - a single, federated portal which delivers IT services from anywhere in the world.

Corrado Sciolla, President Europe and Global Telecom Markets, BT Global Services, said: "This is a milestone in our journey to be the leading global cloud services integrator, and demonstrates how we minimise the complexity, risks and costs for our customers as they move to the cloud. I'd like to take this opportunity to, once again, thank the EU for putting its trust in BT."

Last August, BT signed another framework contract with the European Commission, with a value of up to 15.2 million euros over seven years.

That contract included voice services across 21 major European institutions, agencies and bodies. This followed a large framework contract signed in March 2015 - with a maximum value of 55.7m euros over five years - for the delivery of dedicated internet access to all major European institutions, agencies and bodies across the 28 member states.

IDC estimates global PC shipments fell 10.6% yr/yr in Q4 to 71.9m, just a slightly smaller drop than Q3's 10.8%. Gartner is once more a little less downbeat, estimating shipments fell 8.3% to 75.7m.

For the whole of 2015, IDC estimates shipments fell 10.4% to 276.2M. The firm notes adding detachable tablets to its count would respectively provide ~6% and ~3% boosts to Q4 and 2015 growth rates. The Q4 figures suggest Windows 10 (available as a free upgrade to Windows 7/8 users) and Intel's Skylake CPU launch provided only a modest sales lift.

IDC: "The PC market continued to face persistent challenges [in 2015] from longer-PC lifecycles and competition from mobile phones and tablets, despite the slowing growth in those markets. However, economic issues like falling commodity prices and weak international currencies, as well as social disruptions in EMEA and Asia/Pacific that disrupted foreign markets were a larger factor for 2015." IDC VP Loren Loverde still thinks PC replacement rates will pick up in 2016.

"Commercial adoption of Windows 10 is expected to accelerate, and consumer buying should also stabilize by the second half of the year. Most PC users have delayed an upgrade, but can only maintain this for so long before facing security and performance issues." Counting detachable tablets, IDC expects 1%-2% 2016 growth. Gartner forecasts a 1% decline.

Lenovo remained the PC market's top player: IDC estimates Lenovo's shipment share rose 140 bps Y/Y in Q4 to 21.4%. Second place HP's share rose 10 bps to 19.9%. Dell's rose 70 bps to 14.1%.Apple and Asus were tied at fourth with 7.9% shares - Apple's share rose 110 bps, and Asus' 90 bps. Apple's revenue share could be closer to 15%. Non-top 5 vendors, hurt by their relative lack of scale, collectively saw their shipment share drop 420 bps to 28.7%.

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VIA has supplied retailer and lifestyle brand Bombay Duck a new voice platform incorporating Microsoft's Skype for Business and additional features including a conferencing facility and an 'automated attendant'.

More than 1,000 stores stock Bombay Duck's products across the world and staff spend much time liaising with different retailers.

Laura Burch, Partner, Bombay Duck, said: "VIA Voice has helped our team to communicate more efficiently and work more productively, especially when dealing with overseas customers."

Alex Tebbs, Director, VIA, added: "Bombay Duck is a vibrant and stylish global brand and we look forward to working alongside the company as it continues to grow."

Daisy Group's Business Continuity division threw a connectivity lifeline to customer SuperBreak Mini Holidays when the River Foss burst its banks over Christmas.

The festive season Yorkshire floods disconnected the York-based holiday firm but
after being notified of the outage just before midnight on 27th December, Daisy's Wakefield Business Continuity Centre was prepared for the arrival of 25 SuperBreak employees at 9am the following day.

SuperBreak Mini Holidays CTO, Tim Wadhams, said: "It was an extreme set of circumstances that led to us having to vacate our office, but the Daisy guys made it a relatively pain-free process."

Following four days at Daisy's Wakefield-based Business Continuity Centre, SuperBreak's staff were able to return to their premises.

Daisy's MD for Business Continuity Mike Osborne added: "This is just one example of how important it is for businesses to plan for the unexpected.

"The few days after Christmas can be a busy time for the travel and hospitality industry. Without a business continuity plan in place SuperBreak would have suffered, both in bookings and reputation."

Three more of Daisy's York-based customers were placed on standby due to the threat of flooding to their offices.

Daisy Group has 18 work area recovery centres in the UK.

The secondhand smartphone market will be worth $17bn worldwide this year, 2.5 trillion photos will be shared or stored online globally, and a quarter of smartphone users in developed markets will no longer make a traditional phone call in a given week.

These are the predictions highlighted by punters at Deloitte's TMT practice in their 2016 telecoms trend analysis document.

They say consumers will sell outright or trade-in approximately 120 million used smartphones around the world in 2016.

Deloitte also estimates that 2.5 trillion photos will be shared or stored online globally in 2016, 15% up on last year. 

2016 will also see the emergence of Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) and Voice over LTE (VoLTE).

By the end of the year, about 100 carriers worldwide will be offering at least one packet-based voice service, believes Deloitte, double the amount year-on-year, and six times higher than at the beginning of 2015.

According to Deloitte, the number of Gigabit per second (Gbit/s) Internet connections will rise to 10 million, a tenfold increase on 2015.
Of these, about 70% will be residential connections, but they represent a small proportion of the 250 million customers on networks capable of Gbit/s connections that will exist by the end of this year.

Ed Marsden, Partner and Telecommunications lead at Deloitte, said: "Evolving usage patterns and increasing demand for greater bandwidth may accelerate the supply of Gigabit Internet.

"Video streaming in 4K resolution will be a key driver for improved data connectivity speeds in the coming years.

"Looking further ahead, we estimate that there will be approximately 600 million Gigabit tariff subscribers by 2020."

Cloud UC market penetration is set to triple in the large enterprise segment, grow 7-fold in the mid-market and almost quintuple in the small business segment by 2020, according to a sample of delegates who attended BroadSoft's 2015 Connections conference.

They expressed views on the adoption of cloud and mobile UC solutions, the competitive landscape and how far OTT team messaging and collaboration applications are disrupting established business productivity tools such as email.

The survey deduces that UCaaS and hosted PBX market penetration for new lines shipped could increase nearly six times to 41% over the next five years, with the shift from premise to cloud UC underway in all market segments.

UC will become increasingly mobile, according to 39% of respondents who believe that 42% of UC interactions for businesses of all sizes will occur via mobile devices by 2020, while 33% of small businesses will opt for mobile-only UCaaS/hosted PBX solutions, making desk phones redundant in such circumstances.

OTT integrated messaging and collaboration applications will disrupt the business email market, reckons 83% of survey respondents, with just 16% expecting email to remain the primary business messaging tool.

"BroadSoft believes that these new OTT solutions, when deeply integrated with UC and business applications, will offer service providers a differentiated value proposition, and access to a large and growing market opportunity with attractive margins," said BroadSoft CMO Taher Behbehani.

"Enterprise UCaaS is proving disruptive and this opportunity is not lost on service providers and industry leaders as 92% of survey respondents rate UCaaS/Hosted PBX as their preferred technology solution strategy, while only 8% are leading sales efforts with premise-based PBX."

BroadSoft has over 700 customers in 75-plus countries. According to Frost and Sullivan, in 2015 BroadSoft accounted for 41% UCaaS global market share.

NewVoiceMedia has been recognised as a top technology company to work for by the European Breakout List.

Compiled by Scott Sage, a venture capital investor focused on European tech start-ups, alongside other leading VCs including Chrys Chrysanthou (Notion Capital), Rob Kniaz (Hoxton Ventures) and Martin Mignot (Index Ventures), the list was designed to help job-seekers who want to work alongside some of the smartest and most technical people in Europe, choose a company that exposes them to the best opportunities.

NewVoiceMedia was selected for its high growth and status. The company, which now serves customers spanning 128 countries, grew its international new business by 528 percent in FY'2015.

Sage commented: "Given the growth in the number of interesting start-ups founded in Europe that have rocket ship like traction, it can be difficult for people to know which ones they should be targeting. 

"To make this list, there had to be something exceptional about the team, product, its traction and the market - and in many cases they would need to have several of these factors to make the list.

"For anybody in Europe seeking to learn in three years what the average employee learns in 10, this list will help you start your journey of landing a great position."

Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, said: "This recognition is testament to our strong culture and the commitment and passion our employees bring to the business."

BT Broadband and BT Wi-Fi use increased substantially over the festive season and almost doubled year on year on Christmas Day, as people unwrapped and started using the new smartphones and tablets they received as presents.

BT Broadband use during December 2015 was up considerably on the same period last year, with Christmas Day smashing festive records for internet use - almost double that of the last year (a 95 per cent increase).

There was a surge in broadband demand just before lunchtime on Christmas Day - a 130 per cent jump in online usage compared to the same time last year.

The spike in Internet use around midday was driven by software downloads and video streaming to new smartphones and tablets as people unwrapped their presents and connected them to BT's network.

The festive season also saw a dramatic rise in Netflix use, a 43 per cent increase in five weeks, peaking on the evening of Sunday January 3, the night before most people were due back at work after the New Year break.

Time spent online on BT Wi-Fi over the festive period 2015 was up 35 per cent on the same period in 2014, increasing by more than 725 million minutes and more than 700 million extra megabytes (MBs) were consumed - a 50 per cent rise over 2014.

Pete Oliver, MD BT Consumer, said: "The Christmas period was a record-breaking time for BT Broadband and BT Wi-Fi usage, as people connected their new devices to the internet.

"Getting online has obviously become an essential part of the celebrations during the festive season, whether it's shopping online for presents, actually connecting those devices given as presents, or video-calling friends and family to wish them a happy Christmas or New Year."

ANS has swooped on acquisition target Eison, snapping up the £7.5m Manchester-based IT service provider with a recurring revenue base of circa £5.3m. The acquisition creates a £60m business with over 250 employees.

Eison, which was established in 2006, designs, implements and supports network, data centre and mobility solutions for organisations worldwide, and was ranked 75th in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 in 2014.

Scott Fletcher MBE, Chairman and founder of ANS, said: "This acquisition will underpin our hybrid cloud and data centre strategy, allowing us to embrace the opportunities for intelligent WANs and Software Defined Networking.

"As user mobility and adoption of public and private cloud platforms increases, it's ever more important to understand the journey that data takes from the cloud all the way to the end user device.

"This acquisition gives us the additional expertise to ensure that our networking solutions are innovative and robust."

Paul Shannon Chief Operating Officer, added: "The operational synergies and opportunities for cross selling into both customer bases are exciting. This partnership will allow us to continue to reinvent ourselves in order to bring business value IT to our customers."

Founders and Directors at Eison, Jamie Coan and Richard Peck, will remain with the organisation.

ISP Satellite Internet is supporting the Access Broadband Cymru scheme as a registered supplier. The scheme provides grants to help improve broadband speeds in Wales.

The Welsh Government has announced revisions to its Access Broadband Cymru (ABC) voucher scheme, meaning that all homes and businesses across Wales that are currently unable to receive a superfast connection are eligible to apply for support.

Estimates suggest that more than 100,000 premises will now meet the new qualification criteria.

The scheme is open to individuals, businesses, third sector organisations and communities suffering from slow broadband connections.

Satellite Internet MD Mike Locke said: "Even in today's access-dependent age, numerous properties across Wales and the rest of the UK still don't have reliable, high-speed Internet, leaving both residents and workers unable to access vital online services.

"Satellite Internet is fully backing the ABC scheme, illustrating the viability of satellite Internet connectivity for the final 5% of properties within the entire UK."

To be eligible for the voucher scheme, a premises must currently receive broadband speeds of less than 24 Megabits per second.

The subsidy will help pay for the set-up costs of an improved service, provided that it at least doubles the current connectivity levels at the premises. The level of subsidy support available varies from £400 to £800, depending on the service selected by the qualifying property and those eligible may choose from a range of technologies, dependent upon availability at their location.

Locke added: "The beauty of a satellite-based Internet solution is that it can be provisioned at any location where there is a clear line of sight to the southern sky. This allows it to offer a fast and robust connection to reach those areas where it is simply unfeasible to deploy any other Internet delivery technology."

Satellite Internet also supports local ISPs and specialist service resellers in Wales who, if registered as suppliers to the ABC scheme, can then themselves make Satellite Internet provided services available to eligible properties under the scheme parameters.

Satellite Internet partners with SES Techcom Services to deliver high-speed satellite broadband services across the UK and Ireland.