Comms Dealer

The 2016 edition of Nimans' Product Catalogue includes information on 7,000 products across 460 page.

"The Nimans trade catalogue is affectionately known throughout the industry as The Bible and its popularity remains as strong as ever," said Group Sales and Business Development Director, Richard Carter.

"The world of communications continues to evolve and the catalogue encapsulates all the new areas of our business such as WLAN and hosted along with many traditional favourites. It also highlights customer support services such as leasing, training and logistics."

Exponential-e has added a channel cloud pricing function to its Partner Portal.

The platform, known as CloudPort, enables partners to price and order cloud and networking services, and offers live quotation tracking and price protection.

Lee Wade, CEO of Exponential-e, said: "With spending on cloud computing infrastructure expected to grow by 21% year-over-year to $32bn in 2015, CloudPort will empower partners to meet growing customer demand for cloud services.

"Channel partners will be able to seamlessly tap into Exponential-e's cloud solution portfolio to build and order a range of solutions."

Michala Hart, Head of Channel Strategy, added: "CloudPort provides a service creation platform for our partners, providing them with the tools to create, price and order solutions tailored to meet their customer's needs.

"We will work with our partners to incorporate additional functionality into this new automated portal in the coming year."

Distributor Zycko has big expansion plans in EMEA following a significant investment by Rigby Private Equity (RPE), the private equity arm of Rigby Group Investments. David Galton-Fenzi, CEO of Zycko, said: "The backing and support of RPE means we are now in a position to accelerate our ambitious growth plans.

"It's a great opportunity for the company to continue its growth and transformation into a significantly larger organisation focused on providing support to vendors seeking services-oriented, EMEA-wide distribution. I'm looking forward to spearheading our expansion plans."

Zycko is the second acquisition for Rigby Private Equity, which is building an EMEA-wide specialist distribution business.

RPE was formed earlier this year to identify established companies with a strong value proposition and plans for significant growth, to invest in these companies and to support the acceleration of their growth plans.

In July, Rigby Private Equity made a major investment in security value-added distributor Wick Hill.

Paul Eccleston, Head of Rigby Private Equity, commented: "Zycko has a great track record and a reputation for helping vendors successfully bring new technologies to market and grow their business.

"Zycko is already in 12 countries in EMEA, which helps us move forward rapidly with our growth plans. The benefits for Wick Hill, and its partners and customers, include access to the international scope offered by Zycko's established EMEA network

"While the benefits for Zycko include access to Wick Hill's strength in security and the chance to further build on high value and consultancy opportunities for channel customers."

ProVu has signed a new distribution agreement with VTech business phones to supply the new ErisTerminal SIP range which includes entry-level to high-end desk phones and DECT solutions.

ProVu's Managing Director, Darren Garland said: "ProVu believe VTech's exciting new range will become strong competitors in the UK SIP market.

"Despite not being commonly associated with telephony in the UK, VTech are a major global player in the telephone market and have a vast heritage in producing telephony equipment."

Both the phones offer users ultimate flexibility. With an inbuilt DECT module the VSP725A and VSP735A models can be paired with the VSP601A DECT handset and/or the VSP500A headset.

VTech's EMEA Sales Director Charles Williams added: "ProVu's understanding of the technology, allied with the wrap-around services it offers installers and service providers, will add a great deal of value."

To launch the VTech ErisTerminal range ProVu are inviting resellers to sample the models. They currently have a limited number of samples for testing on a 14 day sale or return basis.

New Star Networks (NSN) has been ranked 328th on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA 2015, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in EMEA.

Rankings are based on percentage revenue growth over four years.

NSN CEO Mark Shraga said: "we are delighted to win this award, what an incredible thing to be acknowledged as one of the fastest growing technology companies in such an enormous market as EMEA!"

David Cobb, Deloitte UK an Partner in charge of the Deloitte Fast 500 EMEA programme, added: "As a recipient of the 2015 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Ranking, NSN has demonstrated that it is indeed one of the fastest growing technology companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and we are proud to honour them for this."

A growth rate of 315% over the past four years secured NSN 49th position in the 2015 Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 last month, a listing of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK.

In its half yearly results for the period ended 30th September 2015 cloud company iomart reported revenue growth of 16% to £36.4m (H1 2015: £31.5m) including 10% organic growth in the hosting operation (H1 2015: 8%).

The firm also reported adjusted EBITDA growth of 11% to £15.5m (H1 2015: £14.0m) and adjusted profit before tax growth of 8% to £8.7m (H1 2015: £8.0m).

The period included acquisition of public cloud consultancy SystemsUp in June and the addition of United Hosting after the period end.

Angus MacSween, CEO, said: "This has been another good trading period for the Group, driven by both organic and acquisitive growth.

"The cloud market landscape that we occupy continues to evolve and with that, the long-term recurring revenue opportunities.

"We are well established as a major player in providing the flexible cloud solutions that businesses require, whether that be the private cloud, public or hybrid cloud spheres, and we are investing in expanding our teams to help our customers navigate and deploy a wider choice of solutions."

A fund raising event held by New Star Networks (NSN) and charity customer Avante Care & Support marked a milestone double for both organisations - NSN's fifth anniversary and the charity's 25th year in operation.

Avante Care & Support enhances care in older age by providing personalised home support and residential services.

NSN CEO Mark Shraga said: "We are always happy to support charities where we have shared concerns, and Avante care & Support focuses on an area of human concern that is personal to my own family.

"We were delighted to be asked to support its coming Christmas raffle fundraiser and look forward to seeing some healthy donations at the event."

NSN also marked its fifth anniversary by celebrating 49th place in the 2015 Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in the UK.

Gary Bunney has been appointed CEO of MDS, a provider of real-time charging, billing and customer management solutions.

He brings almost 20 years experience in sales, operations and development, and is credited with turning small real-time revenue management businesses into £100m turnover organisations.

Bunney has also worked with large operators including BT, Vodafone Group and Telefónica O2.

"With its fully-managed cloud-based real-time charging, billing and customer management solution, MDS is helping its customers meet the changing requirements of today's digital enterprise," he said.

"I'm excited by the great opportunity we have to expand on the excellent work MDS has already done in helping its customers win in an increasingly competitive market."

MDS' customers include BT, TalkTalk Business, eir, ACN and Telefónica O2.

KYOCERA Document Solutions UK has been awarded a place on the Government's Digital Marketplace G-Cloud 7 framework.

KYOCERA secured presence on two lots within G-Cloud 7 - Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Specialist Cloud Services - for its Cloud Print Service (CPS). After launching earlier this year, CPS will now be included on G-Cloud 7 from December 2015.
 
Eddie Ginja, Cloud Evangelist, KYOCERA Document Solutions UK, said: "Our successful application to join the G-Cloud framework is an endorsement of our secure approach to cloud printing.

"This is another route for our customers to procure managed print services in a cost effective way. We're pleased to be playing a major role in supporting the UK Government's drive to transform public sector IT and delivery of modern, efficient and effective services."

Gigaset pro and ProVu have completed an integration project that adds the complete Gigaset pro range of desktop and DECT phones to ProVu's Zero Touch Provisioning system.

This will enable the SIP hosted telephony provider to reduce the cost and complexity of rapidly deploying Gigaset devices while ensuring devices are feature compatible with improving levels of end-customer service.

ProVu, a value added distributor of Gigaset pro products for several years, has developed its own independent hosted provisioning platform that works across all the main SIP hosted telephony platforms.

The platform allows SIP telephony service provider partners to select and ship phones directly from ProVu to end customer premises that have already been programmed with configuration settings and user credentials to allow rapid service activation.

The platform is already used by 50 VoIP services and has already supplied over 400,000 devices from multiple vendors to tens of thousands of end customers and offers next day delivery with all phones direct to customers as new and un-opened boxes with white label options.

"The service has proved very popular and our work with Gigaset pro to include its portfolio within provision systems is a great addition and reflects strong demand from our SIP telephony partners and their end customers," said Darren Garland, manging director for ProVu.

ProVu has certified the Gigaset pro portfolio for SIP operation with its partners and also offer optional remote device management services including device firmware updates and configuration changes through either a self-service portal or via a highly automated bulk process for larger installation.

"Gigaset pro has been supportive in this process and recognise that provisioning services like ours are helping service providers to meet the demands of the rapidly growing cloud-based telephony market - especially for smaller customers that don't necessarily have onsite technical capabilities and just want to plug in a device and get up and running straight away," added Garland.

He estimates that some of its SIP telephony service provider customers have reduced the cost of device provisioning by 80% and the time between end-customers placing an order and receiving a phone has dropped from as much as 5 days to next-day delivery by using ProVu's services.

Garland also points to the benefits of its application programming interface (API) which allows its SIP telephony service provider customers to directly connect their own web based ordering system into the ProVu provisioning platform to further streamline customer activation.

"We are pleased to have the Gigaset pro portfolio within the ProVu Zero Touch Provisioning service and look forward to working closely with them to ensure that future models are included and additional features offered by Gigaset pro devices are compatible with its extended management services," says Matthew Marchant, Head of Sales, UK and Ireland for Gigaset pro.