Comms Dealer

Ingram Micro has entered into an agreement to acquire certain assets from Parallels Holdings, a provider of commercial cloud management platform technologies, connectors, billing systems and professional services. 
 
Under the terms of the transaction, Ingram Micro will acquire the Parallels Odin Service Automation platform along with associated cloud management technologies, intellectual property and the Odin brand.

In addition, approximately 500 Odin employees, many of whom are software engineers with cloud expertise, are expected to join Ingram Micro.

Ingram Micro adopted and began licensing the Odin Service Automation platform in 2013 as the backbone of the company's automated Cloud Marketplace.

Ingram Micro CEO Alain Monié commented: "The time has come for us to expand our capabilities by owning the intellectual property that is helping to drive this technology evolution.

"Together, Ingram and Odin will offer a combination of expertise, knowledge and commercial relationships with cloud OEMs and innovators, which will enable our combined partner portfolio of 285 telcos, 4,000 hosting companies and 200,000+ resellers worldwide to thrive by lifting their customers businesses to the cloud."

NEC reseller Global 4 has installed a hosted telephony platform for two estate agencies, Your Move and Reeds Rains, which includes the telecoms provider's largest hosted voicemail set up.

Tony McCann Head of IT for Your Move and Reeds Rains says: "Global 4 has delivered an advanced telecoms solution three weeks ahead of schedule.

"This will transform how we communicate internally and with customers through streamlining disparate systems into one feature-packed offering."

Provided through NEC UNIVERGE 3C, Global 4's hosted telecoms solution is already connected to more than 2,000 users across the UK in just a few months.

Nigel Barnett, Global 4 MD, said: "For Reeds Rains and Your Move, hosted voicemail means staff will never miss a call or message and can listen to them whenever and wherever they choose, while its clients can have confidence that their messages will get to the right person in good time."

Albion Rovers fans can access free WiFi at the Cliftonhill Stadium following a deployment by WiFi specialist 802 Event WiFi.

The Scottish League One team has become only the third football ground in Scotland - after soccer giants Rangers and Celtic - to bring high density free WiFi to their supporters and away fans.

The club's home at Cliftonhill Stadium, which opened on Christmas Day 1919, has created a connected match day experience with instant access to content-rich media and instant information about other games.

Locally-based 802 Event WiFi has installed a system that brings instant WiFi coverage to the complete stadium, including the main stand, the away fans' area, the boardroom and the directors' suites.

The club, which was formed in 1882 from the merger of Coatbridge sides Albion FC and Rovers FC, is deeply rooted in its Lanarkshire community, and attracts substantial volunteering help from local people for functions such as groundkeeping and refreshments.

802 Event WiFi chief executive Felix Gibson said: "Until now, only the Old Firm have been able to offer their fans this level of instant connection with the club and the wider sporting environment.

"Albion Rovers' far-sighted commitment to their supporters and their willingness to embrace innovation shows the way for other football clubs in Scotland, and indeed the UK, to improve the supporter experience.

"WiFi installation also allows a much greater degree of communication between clubs and their fan bases, creating the opportunity to interact with each other in a way that they never have before."

Patrick Rolink, Community Development Director at Albion Rovers, said: "Installing stadium WiFi has shown Albion Rovers to be an ambitious, progressive and forward thinking club. Fan interest and community engagement is at the heart of our growth and continued development.

"The WiFi is free to all fans and demonstrates our ambition and commitment to them and the community alike, encouraging engagement and interaction directly with the club."

Node4 has been awarded a place on the Government's G-Cloud 7 procurement framework for the supply of Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas).

Node4's listing on the Government's Digital Marketplace follows a tender and enables its ISO 27001-accredited IaaS solutions to be used by organisations across the UK public sector.

According to G-Cloud figures, updated on 27 October 2015, approximately £806 million of G-Cloud sales (ex. VAT) have been reported since the initiative launched in 2012.

Half of the total sales by value were awarded to small-to medium-sized enterprises. Seventy seven per cent of total sales were through central government and 23 per cent through the wider public sector.

Andrew Gilbert, MD, Node4, commented: "Saving money and ensuring the effective delivery of services is critical in the public sector.

"Through our listing on G-Cloud 7, Government organisations can access a pre-approved IaaS partner with a proven capability in providing the IT infrastructure and high levels of connectivity and security they need to run mission-critical services for the public."

Interoute has launched a cloud hosted contact centre add-on for hosted Microsoft Skype for Business and Microsoft Lync.

"Interoute Hosted Contact Centre helps companies enhance their call or contact centre services by leveraging the features of the popular Microsoft enterprise collaboration suite using Interoute's global and private networked cloud," said Mark Lewis, VP for Communications & Connectivity at Interoute.

Interoute's solution offers organisations with remote and office based users secure access to Microsoft certified SIP trunking with global telephony routing and call recording; natively integrated extension to Skype for Business and Lync with per agent pricing; the Lync/Skype for Business presence mechanism to instantly see if a relevant in-house expert is online and available; IM routing for chat support with the ability to mix and move between chat and voice sessions; and standardised call flows to meet typical customer requirements.

"Contact centres have tended to be stuck behind the times when it comes to integrating with the collaborative ways people today communicate within a business," added Lewis.

"Interoute's offering turns this on its head, saving time for IT teams and putting users in control."

In a Q1 2016 trading update (ended 31st October 2015) Softcat has reported revenues for the period up 14% on the prior year to £141m, compared to £124m in Q1 2015, with period-on-period growth evident in both customer numbers and revenue per customer.

Gross profit margin was broadly in line with the 2015 financial year, and business mix across solutions offerings and customer segments remained stable.

Martin Hellawell, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "The company's performance over the first quarter provides a firm foundation on which to begin life as a public company.

"The team has worked incredibly hard against the backdrop of the completion of our IPO and I would like to thank them for continuing to focus on the business despite this significant additional undertaking.

"I would like to welcome our new investors to Softcat, and thank the shareholders who have supported the company and its growth to this point."

Softcat admitted its ordinary shares to the Official List of the FCA and to trading on the main market of the London Stock Exchange on 18th November 2015.

According to a new report by Frost & Sullivan the European MPLS/IP VPN market earned revenues of more than $7.02bn in 2014 and estimates this to reach $14.63bn in 2020 at a compound annual growth rate of 13%.

"MPLS has higher flexibility and scalability than other networking technologies," said Frost & Sullivan Digital Transformation Research Analyst Shuba Ramkumar.

"With MPLS, it is easier for customers to add new sites to their existing networks thereby enabling any-to-any connectivity.

"Additionally, as MPLS/Internet protocol virtual private network (IP VPN) services are fully managed by the service provider, enterprises do not have to deal with the challenges of routing and managing complex networks.

"With customers migrating to MPLS VPNs, focus is increasing on tools that monitor network and application performance.

"These tools are critical for successful MPLS/IP VPN implementation as customers seek greater transparency over the applications they wish to run on the network."

Although MPLS/IP VPN has proved a winning combination, the economic advantage offered by standalone IP VPN, along with the opportunity it provides to enable additional security, is expected to emerge as a competitive threat to MPLS VPN, noted Ramkumar.

"In locations where Ethernet is available, it is emerging as a viable option for enterprises' any-to-any connectivity needs," added Ramkumar.

"Nevertheless, the ability of MPLS/IP VPNs to function using any kind of access technology, unlike virtual private local area network (LAN) services (VPLS) that require Ethernet in all locations, has been crucial in reducing the effect of VPLS on MPLS revenues. MPLS and VPLS will continue to co-exist in enterprise wide area network (WAN)."

Meanwhile, enterprises have been accelerating the migration of mission-critical applications to the cloud, and this is intensifying the demand for MPLS/IP VPN connections.

Service providers are capitalising on the growing need for secure cloud connectivity by building secure MPLS-based network connections into internal or third-party data centres.

"Secure access to cloud services is central to ensuring reliable cloud environments," added Ramkumar. "Being a managed private network, MPLS/IP VPN is the preferred mode of cloud connectivity for enterprises."

Outsourcery has been formally accepted onto the seventh round of G-Cloud, the procurement framework established to simplify the public sector's move to cloud services and ensure best value from suppliers.

Outsourcery has added new services across the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Specialist Cloud Services (SCS) lots on the framework.

These new services bring additional capability and will enable public sector bodies to take advantage of hybrid cloud models and access the full suite of Outsourcery's cloud-based Unified Communications and infrastructure services.

These include Skype for Business, Microsoft Office 365, end-to-end cloud migration services and Outsourcery's highly-resilient, enterprise-grade IaaS solution to help organisations to quickly test and deploy their applications.

Piers Linney, co-CEO of Outsourcery, commented: "The public sector is making good headway in its move to cloud services, helped, in no small part, by procurement frameworks like G-Cloud.

"At the last count, the framework had amassed more than £800 million in sales since it was established in April 2012, which is a significant achievement. In opening up the Digital Marketplace to SME cloud providers, G-Cloud has gone a long way to driving competition and innovation in public sector IT procurement, delivering better value for taxpayers' money and improved services.

"There is, however, work yet to be done to support the public sector's move to cloud. As budget restrictions continue to bite, cloud offers a viable solution to help public sector organisations streamline their IT and only pay for what they need."

Maintel has been appointed as a supplier on the Government's Digital Marketplace G-Cloud 7 framework, securing a place on the Software-as-a-Service lot for Maintel Cloud.

Maintel Cloud, powered by Mitel, is a flexible and scalable cloud-based communications service enabling organisatIons to achieve successful business transformation.

Maintel Cloud offers a number of communications features including unified communications (IP telephony, instant messaging, presence and desktop video), mobility, teleworking, collaboration (audio, video and web conferencing) and contact centre functionality.

Eddie Buxton, CEO of Maintel Group said: "Earlier this year Maintel was selected as a supplier in the Government's Network Services framework and our inclusion in the G-Cloud 7 framework is another endorsement of our dedication to delivering business transformation in the public sector.

"Being recognised as a supplier for cloud services will give us the opportunity to extend our existing relationship with the public sector. We are delighted to be playing an important role in the drive to transform public sector IT."

Zynstra has rolled out a new range of cloud managed server appliance products that the firm says can bring TCO savings of up to 60%.

Organisations with single or multiple sites can access hyper converged server technology delivered as-a-service and managed from the cloud.

Zynstra's technology has been designed for the IT Service Provider, enabling them to deploy, maintain and manage any number of customer's on-site servers centrally from the cloud, coupled with an economic model that delivers the recurring revenue that customers and service providers are looking for.

"As an established fully managed cloud provider, we recognised that a full cloud Hosted solution was not always the best fit for some of our customers," said Jim Weston, Director of Infrastructure Services at Castle Computer Services, a UK based IT Service Provider.

"We felt there was a gap in our portfolio between locally hosted on-premise and fully hosted solutions.

"Zynstra provides a hybrid solution that not only completes our portfolio but provides the ideal solution for many of our valued customers."

Zynstra's four new cloud managed server appliances run on HPE's Proliant Gen9 hardware and deliver modular and integrated storage, compute, and network capabilities.

"Our partners frequently need to manage servers, on one or many sites, that can't be moved to large centrally hosted data centers for reasons of security, performance, cost, or control," said Nick East, CEO and founder, Zynstra.

"We make it possible for them to offer a secure and reliable as-a-service solution to their customers, with recurring revenue, cloud integration, and cloud management."