Comms Dealer

Analogue phones, IP phones and mobile devices are equal in stature and will remain that way for some time to come, despite the march of next generation comms, according to Robin Hayman, SpliceCom's Director of Marketing and Product Management.

"There is a significant number of analogue phones in everyday use, particularly in the public sector," he said.

"Many of these organisations still aren't in the position to migrate their voice systems to IP. This is typically a result of budgetary constraints, meaning that they will depend on  existing phones for a long time yet."

He cited Unify's decision to withdraw system support for 'legacy' devices as the basis for an argument in favour of extending the life of such end points and their cabling.

He added: "By deploying our latest Intelligent Gateway Modules we have many significant customers' in the central, local and quasi-government sectors who have been able to retain their legacy phone cabling, in addition to their existing analogue phones.

"They've also been able to save on the costs associated with adding or replacing LAN switches to support voice prioritisation and Power over Ethernet, both of which are pre-requisites for deploying IP phones on the desktop."

According to Hayman, a 'flexible approach' puts the customer back in control. "It allows them to migrate any aspect of their voice solution, including phones, underlying infrastructure and system location, as and when business needs dictate and budgets are available, to provide true investment protection," he added.

Exertis Ireland has snapped up the Technology Distribution Division of Espion.

Under the deal, the current Espion Technology Distribution Team will become part of Exertis Ireland, including include Jim Lehane, Espion Director and Head of Technology Distribution, who will continue in his role leading the team.

And for Espion's other divisions it will be business as usual with - these ares Espion Information Governance; Espion eDiscovery & Digital Forensics; Espion Cloud Assurance; Espion Managed Security Solutions; Espion Training and Espion R&D.

NCC Group has entered (through one of its subsidiaries)into an acquisition agreement with Dutch cyber security solutions provider Fox-IT Holding for a total consideration of 133.25m euros.

Under the terms of a deal, the Fox-IT brand will be continued as well as the management team will remain in place.

Following the deal Fox-IT will expand its technology solutions on a global scale as NCC Group has a multi-national footprint with around 30 global offices.

NCC, the UK-based provider of escrow, assurance and domain services, will expand into contextual security analysis, advanced threat intelligence and online fraud detection.

"This is an opportunity to acquire a substantial European cyber security business that focuses on security analysis and threat intelligence, at a time that organisations globally are only now beginning to appreciate that they need to be proactive, not reactive, in dealing with cyber security," said Rob Cotton, NCC Group Chief Executive.

"Fox also has a range of complementary professional and managed services and products which we aim to distribute internationally."

Fox, which is based in Delft in the Netherlands, currently hires approximately 250 technical security experts and personnel in high assurance cryptology and forensics capabilities. The company's key area of speciality include products, managed services, threat intelligence, forensics and incident response.

Societe Generale Equipment Finance (SGEF) has stepped up its technology finance activities in the UK having formed an Office Equipment division spearheaded by Simon Rodway (pictured), Head of Office Equipment Channel.

He aims to set up and develop SGEF's position in this market sector with both dealers and manufacturers of office equipment (OE) and telecoms equipment.

Rodway has spent the last 20-plus years working within the financing and leasing industry specifically within the technology OE market place and leading key vendor relationships.

He has previously held senior leadership roles in a number of the major technology leasing companies where his experience has enabled expansion and growth of the business channels.

He will be based at the firm's Richmond UK office.

Rodway said: "My in-depth industry background in technology leasing and the reprographic market will definitely place us in a strong position to grow and expand into the small ticket flow market.

"I look forward to the exciting new challenges ahead and the ability to design a business model that will support the customers and the ever changing technology market.

"Societe General Equipment Finance has the support infrastructure and appetite to develop new ways to fund assets and support products such as software and intangibles where other lessors tend to struggle."

A series of causeways built on the wartime orders of Churchill in the 1940s are playing a vital part in the roll-out of high speed fibre broadband for a number of Orkney Islands' communities. The new fibre optic cable has been installed along the Churchill Barriers, rather than laid underwater.

More than 4,700 households and businesses are now able to access the new fibre broadband network thanks to the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme.

The village of Burray is the first place off the mainland to benefit. The high-speed technology is available now to the north part of the village and, in the coming weeks, coverage will be extended to the village centre.    

The roll-out is expected to reach an additional 500 Orkney homes and businesses by Christmas in communities such as St Mary's and St Margaret's Hope.  Areas already offering services include Kirkwall, Stromness, Finstown and Harray.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) is leading the £146m project in the region. It's funded by the Scottish Government, the UK Government, HIE and private sector partner BT, with engineers from BT's local network business, Openreach, delivering the project on the ground.

Stuart Robertson, HIE's Director of Digital, said:  "Building a fibre optic network across the Highlands and Islands presents its own unique stories. 

"In Orkney, history is playing its part. The Churchill Barriers, built to protect the fleet at Scapa Flow, have allowed us to run the main network cable from Kirkwall to Holm, to Burray and on to St Margaret's Hope. For Westray, we laid around 28km of subsea cabling across the Bay of Tuquoy.

"By the end of next year we will have taken access to fibre optic based broadband in Orkney from zero to at least 76 per cent of premises. Nowhere is forgotten and in addition to this first phase we, and our colleagues in Community Broadband Scotland, are already looking at ways to reach further."

Robert Thorburn, BT programme manager, said: "It's brilliant to be using a unique engineering feat from the 40s to deliver the latest 21st century technology to some of Scotland's most remote communities.

"Churchill ordered the barriers to be built to keep the Germans out after a U-boat sneaked into Scapa Flow and sank the Royal Oak. Now we're using them to let the whole, wide world in at high-speed.

"In terms of the overall programme, more than half of the current, planned work in Orkney is complete. With the main fibre spine almost all in place, work continues to build the local green cabinets which bring services to homes and businesses."

Avnet has collected the 2015 EMEA Distributor of the Year Award from RSA, The Security Division of EMC.

The award was presented in early November to Avnet at the RSA EMEA Partner Council in Abu Dhabi, UAE. It recognises Avnet for its commitment to RSA and its proven ability to help add value to RSA's security products to transform them into business solutions for end-users.

Dieter Lott, vice president business development at Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA, said: "As our Security and Networking Division enters its second year, this award is testament to the great work that the Avnet TS EMEA and RSA teams are doing together, and demonstrates our commitment to security."

Roberto Llop, Director EMEA Channels at RSA, added: "Avnet enjoyed impressive business development in its first year as an EMEA distribution partner for RSA.

"We look forward to leveraging even more the quality of Avnet's security teams and distribution partner networks for the delivery of our advanced security solutions."

Avnet has been working with RSA since 2011 in the US. In Europe, the solutions are offered in the UK, Benelux, France, Italy and Spain.

Conquest Hospital in East Sussex is working with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and Khipu Networks to provide a network infrastructure that offers enough capacity to support the next generation of medical equipment and services.

In order to support over 6,000 staff across the two hospitals and rising demand from essential but data intensive healthcare operations, including telemetry such as CT scanners and radiology image reporting, the core network speed has been significantly been improved with a tenfold increase in bandwidth - 1Gbit/s to 10Gbit/s.

The new network will handle and electronically deliver up to two million patient healthcare records.

There are plans to repeat the project at Eastbourne District General Hospital in 2016, which is the second of two major district hospitals operated by the East Sussex Healthcare Trust, with proposals for a further extension to community hospitals.

Andy Bissenden, Associate Director of IT, East Sussex Healthcare Trust, said: "The core network is one of the most vital aspects of our IT modernisation programme, and we have ensured first-class Quality of Service by introducing consistent reliability and redundancy. I am particularly impressed with the power-saving features of our new switches, which will assist in cutting operational expenditure and the hospital's carbon footprint."

Chris Butler, Customer Account Manager, Khipu Networks, added: "Our delivery of a modern network tailored to the requirements of a healthcare environment with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise technology demonstrates the flexibility and versatility of the products we installed.

"The close working partnership we fostered with the team at Conquest Hospital was vital to delivering a solution that fulfils their needs - a reference trip to Royal Brompton Hospital allowed the team to see the benefits of a similar Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise solution in action."

Jola has launched three new Premium Broadsoft hosted telephony bundles, including the latest Polycom VVX handsets and a Premium Broadsoft licence with key features as standard.

"The trial we have been running to remove the upfront cost of handsets has been so successful that we have decided to extend the approach to all of our most popular Polycom models," said Andrew Dickinson, Managing Director, Jola.

"We also have a range of bolt-ons including unmetered UK landline and mobile calls, call recording and CRM integration so resellers can customise and differentiate their market offerings.

"Resellers benefit from a Premium Broadsoft seat which includes many features as standard such as disaster recovery, hot desking and shared call appearance.

"Although we provide connectivity options we do not insist resellers have to buy their internet connections from us."

Former Logicalis MD Tom Kelly has joined Luton-based IT firm ONI as a Non-Executive member of the board.

He boasts 30 years industry experience and has held senior management positions in a variety of organisations, including a ten year stint as MD for Logicalis between 2003 and 2013 where he oversaw the business' transformation into one of the UK's largest Cisco and IBM managed services partners.

Kelly is also Chair of the ICT Sector Panel for the Welsh Government and advisor to several other Public Sectors.

ONI CEO Mark Collins said: "Tom is a widely recognised leader within the channel and adds invaluable strength and experience to our board.

"We are excited about him joining our leadership team, especially as we can already see how Tom can help accelerate our ambitious plans to grow and gain market share.

"As the technology market evolves and people transition to the cloud, IT is increasingly seen as a vital, strategic component of any organisation.

"This is ONI's area of expertise. We work closely with our customers to ensure they are able to capitalise on their existing investment in on-premise solutions and leverage the myriad advantages of Cloud technologies when it makes most sense."

Kelly added: "ONI has established its credentials as a provider of physical and virtual cloud infrastructure, enabling it to make a significant investment in its Luton-based data centre facilities.

"These new facilities have laid the foundation to grow sales in managed services and solutions to both existing and new customers.

"However, the investment has not just been in the platform, it's also been in the people.

"ONI is better placed than ever to offer genuine value and quality services to its clients."

A growth rate of 315% over the past four years has secured New Star Networks (NSN) 49th position in the 2015 Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50, a listing of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK.

Rankings are based on percentage revenue growth over the last four years.

NSN CEO Mark Shraga attributed the firm's impressive growth to opportunities in cloud telephony and strong business relationships.

"We owe our success to the continued good will and loyalty of our customers and channel partners," said Channel Director Ryan Kersey.