Comms Dealer

Organisations will deliver twice as many applications remotely compared with 2015, claims Gartner.

"Organisations will centralise a number of applications over the next three years to enable platform- independent computing," said Nathan Hill, research director at Gartner.

"As platform-specific Windows applications dip below a certain threshold and become a "manageable minority" - that is 20 to 30 percent of the application portfolio - organisations will find it increasingly financially and operationally attractive to ring-fence all of them using device-independent delivery options."

This is a continuation of using centralised delivery architectures to deliver legacy applications, but it also signals a watershed where the remaining business-critical and platform-dependent applications (that cannot be replaced) must be shifted to allow user-centric computing to evolve at the faster pace that users and software vendors are demanding.

By 2018, reckons Gartner, touchscreens will be shipped on one third of all notebooks.

As the incremental price for touch decreases, it will become more normalised as a default feature for notebooks.

Pricing is expected to get much more competitive in the second half of 2016 as manufacturing processes continue to improve and Windows 10 migration planning starts to accelerate.

By 2018, 30% of enterprises will spend more on display screens than on PCs.

According to Gartner, in the digital workplace users will demand more screen real estate for their workspaces and this will bring forth both higher resolution screens and more of them, leading to scenarios where more money is spent on display screens than on the PC itself.

"All of these trends portend a new employee workspace that is more mobile, more capable of working more naturally with humans, and, overall, more productive and secure," said Ken Dulaney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

"Endpoint support staff must rethink the workspace and work with suppliers to rearchitect and re-cost standards.

"From an IT perspective, Windows 10 and the move of applications to the back end will dramatically change how those applications are delivered to employees.

"Updates will be more frequent, more incremental and less obvious to the end user. Software vendors and internal IT have much to do to adapt to this new model and to move away from the image management model for PCs of today."

Windows 10 is poised to become the most widely installed version of Windows ever, following on the path of Windows XP and Windows 7 before it, according to Gartner.

Gartner predicts that 50% of enterprises will have started Windows 10 deployments by January 2017.

"In the consumer market, a free upgrade coupled with broad legacy device support and automatic over-the-air upgrades ensures that there will be tens of millions of users familiar with the operating system (OS) before the end of 2015," said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner.

"For enterprises, we expect that implementation will be significantly more rapid than that seen with Windows 7 six years ago."

Several factors are driving migration, specifically awareness of the end of support for Windows 7 in January 2020, strong compatibility with Windows 7 applications and devices, and a pent-up demand for tablet and 2-in-1 device rollouts.

The net result is that many enterprises are planning to begin pilots for Windows 10 in the first half of 2016, and to broaden their deployments in the latter part of the year.

Gartner expects that at least half of enterprises will have started some production deployments by the beginning of 2017, with an eye to completing their migrations in 2019.

KCOM Group's unaudited interim results for the half year ended 30th September 2015 show revenues up on the prior year, rising 3% at £177.9m.

Also ahead is EBITDA, up 3% to £37.2m over the period, and the firm's interim dividend is up 10%. The Group attributes a 3% decline in Group profit before tax and exceptional items to higher depreciation and amortisation consistent with increased investment.

Bill Halbert, Chief Executive said: "The Group has delivered an improved performance across all target segments.

"The results are clear evidence of the potential of our strategy and of the level of opportunity we have in our chosen markets.

"Our focus on generating targeted organic revenue growth, coupled with further steps to simplify the operating structure of the business, places us in a strong position to create a single, unified and simplified business by the end of this financial year.

"Consistent with our prior commitment of a minimum of 10% year on year growth, the Board confirms its intention to pay an interim dividend of 1.97 pence per share."

NetPay Solutions Group is celebrating a brace of award wins this week having bagged the Business of the Year Award at the Growing Business Awards on November 26th, just one day after MD Carl Churchill won a bronze award in the Great British Entrepreneur of the Year for Small Business.

Churchill said: "We are so proud and excited to have won these fantastic awards as they recognise the hard work and dedication of our team who continue to push the boundaries, raising expectations in the market and develop services that deliver tangible benefits to our customers and partners".

Nicole Jay, co-founder and Director of NetPay, added: "When we started NetPay our intention was to make a real difference to organisations, to give them more than just a method of taking payment. We deliver vital performance insight beyond the commodity payment capability for thousands of customers across multiple countries, allowing them to plan and grow their business.

"We will continue to focus on developing exciting new services and insights that will help businesses grow".

Former Gamma sales chief John Haw is aiming to ignite a new profit stream for ICT resellers having joined Fidelity Energy as Managing Director.

Haw has joined founders Simon Payne, Alan Shraga and Paul Havell as a joint shareholder of the energy wholesale business which has netted £1.5m profit since its inception in February.

Speaking exclusively to Comms Dealer Haw said he intends to take the business in a completely channel focussed direction and help ICT resellers maximise on the record low energy prices.

"The beauty of the opportunity Simon and his team have put together is its simplicity," he said.

"All that is required is for channel partners to obtain a copy of the customer's energy bill, sign a Letter of Agreement enabling them to act on their behalf and then propose the new contract.

"It's a refreshing change and I have learnt a huge amount about the market in the last few weeks.

"The price of wholesale gas and oil is the lowest it's been for 12 years. Incredibly 50% of business customers will be out of contract in the next year, having been on older high priced energy contracts.

"This presents a massive opportunity for the channel who are trusted by their customers, to sell them energy and save them money."

Haw believes SME business customers spend circa £600 a month on telecoms and £2,000 on energy. "We are offering generous revenue share to partners so the potential to earn high margin deals from existing customer relationships is huge,\" he commented.

IT managed services provider Imerja has been snapped up by Intercity Technology for an undisclosed sum. The deal builds on Intercity's acquisition of cloud communications, network services and hosting company Gage Networks earlier this year.

Headquartered in Bolton, Imerja also has offices in Hertfordshire and Leicestershire.
 
All Imerja staff, including the senior management team, will be retained post-completion.
 
Imerja adds depth to Intercity's service offering, and has been providing a range of IT services to the public sector and enterprise clients since it was established in 2004.  

The business holds a number of accreditations and gives Intercity access to public sector frameworks including all four lots of the Government Digital Marketplace G-Cloud.  

Imerja also provides a range of hosted and cloud services from its two UK tier3 data centres, is accredited to ISO 14001, ISO9001, ISO27001 and is an approved Commercial N3 Aggregator, operating around the clock supporting its customers infrastructure from its UK Network Operations Centre.

Andrew Jackson, CEO of Intercity (pictured), said: "Imerja brings a deep expertise in IT managed services and security which allows us to offer our customers complete technology solutions across IT and telecoms. There is a strong cultural fit between our businesses."

Ian Jackson, MD of Imerja, added: "Being part of Intercity Technology will provide us with range of mobility and communications solutions to sit alongside our existing IT services."

Jonathan Boyers, Head of Corporate Finance for KPMG in the north and lead advisor on the deal, commented:  "Imerja's track record in providing secure IT solutions to enterprise and public sector organisations meant that it was a natural fit for Intercity Technology.  

"The combined capability created by this acquisition, coupled with the addition of the experienced Imerja management team, will add significant strength to Intercity Technology's existing portfolio of communications and IT services."

Frontier Voice and Data has merged with Netco (UK) to form a parent company called Frontier Data Telecom. The combined business will generate £5m-plus turnover and employs 40 staff at its offices in Woodford Green, Essex.

Prior to the deal both firms operated in their own specialist areas but having joined forces the new company has expanded its portfolio to provide customers with a wider range of products and services, including mobile telephony and enhanced connectivity.

Frontier Voice and Data MD Peter Southgate (pictured) said: "This merger brings together two of the region's primary telecommunications specialists and is aimed at providing new services to existing and prospective customers.

"By coming together to form Frontier Data Telecom our two companies are able to provide a new level of expertise, allowing us to meet the requirements of a wider range of customers."

BroadGroup has underlined a high level of activity in the market for data centre M&A.

The firm continues to be contacted by new investors interested in the asset class. These include real estate investors and pension funds, keen to diversify and attracted by returns, tenant quality and low churn.

It also includes private equity who have previously ignored the sector, or hedge funds or VCs keen to exploit growth in cloud.  These conclusions form part of a new paper by BroadGroup Consulting to be included in the next edition of Colocation Market Quarterly the European tracking service provided by the company. 

The company believes that trade buyers, keen to scale up their operations, broaden and diversify their offerings, and potentially preparing for IPO are also evident, with other investment coming in from Asia. On the seller side, BroadGroup sees options emerging from big telcos and managed services providers to smaller and more regional plays, to existing investors in the space.

"A big challenge is that often the seller has the 'wrong' kind of asset," comments Steve Wallage, managing director at BroadGroup Consulting.

"They could be too small - private equity often finds the assets are below their minimum threshold. Old and low quality facilities is often an issue afflicting telco assets. Data Centres could be in unattractive locations. Another factor could be an unappealing business model or the complexity of ownership structure."

However, the group believes that the single biggest hold-up is valuation.

"Sellers point to the growth in data centre demand from IoT, Big Data, cloud and the challenges in securing new data centre sites, such as power, telecoms and planning/zoning," added Wallage.

"Pricing of recent deals, such as the Equinix acquisition of TeleCity at a 27% premium to its stock price may be cited."

But overall the group believes that buyers are wary of multiples beyond 15x EBITDA.

They also point out the weaknesses in many data centre assets, the threats and challenges in the industry, whether from technology, cloud, commoditisation or the size and scale of competitors.

The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) has welcomed the inquiry being held by the UK Government's Culture, Media and Sport Committee into cyber security.

The Committee, chaired by Conservative MP, Jesse Norman, has launched the inquiry following the recent online data breach at TalkTalk and its scope covers the protection of personal data online.

Julian Heathcote-Hobbins, General Counsel, FAST, stated: "We welcome this inquiry and have taken the opportunity to respond by written submission. Considering the widespread use of cloud computing, it is imperative that trust and confidence is maintained to protect personal data online.

"Business and consumers of software must realise risks in illicit copies, be pro-active and take responsibility in buying software and services from legitimate and trusted sources in order to work towards being safe. In other words, being sure of provenance."

C4L has appointed Brian Ellarby as Operations Director. His previous experience includes notable stints at Blue Chip, Fitness First and Carnival.

Ellarby has already restructured the operations side of C4L and kicked off a recruitment campaign to bolster the technical teams with service, provisioning and platforms engineers.

He's also on the look out for a change and risk analyst and head of engineering and delivery experts.

Ellarby will be focusing on migrations of all C4L accounts to coreTX.

Simon Mewett, CEO of C4L, said: "Appointing Brian as Operations Director was a considered and strategical move for C4L. We are moving into customer retention, operational efficiency and technical completions and required an experienced infrastructure specialist with a commitment to process to guide this through efficiently."