Comms Dealer

Daisy Corporate Services has provided City University London with a future-proofed contact centre solution through an upgrade to four virtualised Mitel MX-ONE platforms with dual data centre back-up.

Now almost a year since its implementation, the University is realising benefits in cost, support and reliability.

City University London signed a five-year contract with the Mitel Platinum Partner, Daisy, to upgrade its whole core network. This included four MX-ONE platforms in the University's main data centre and an additional system in a separate data centre for enhanced business continuity - all backed by 24/7 technical support.

With 19,500 students, 2,000 employees across 23 sites and more than 5,000 calls each day, it was vital that the University had a reliable system in place.

Matthew Craughwell, Telecoms Team Leader at City University London, commented: "As a university, a large number of people rely on being able to get in touch with you around the clock. The decision to upgrade to a virtualised solution was an obvious choice. A lot of support is currently being withdrawn on older telephone systems, and we simply can't risk being caught out without that all-important telephone system in place.

"Rather than a complete 'rip and replace', Daisy installed a much more efficient system that would still operate with our 3,000+ handsets. And now we have the benefit of support around the clock, which costs us about the same as the 8am-6pm support we had previously."

John Holt, Managing Director at Daisy Corporate Services, added: "It is important that organisations in the public sector are aware that they could potentially find themselves without that vital system support for their telephony solution.

"Support for older systems is being withdrawn and City University London is a prime example of how institutions can not only ensure that their communications are covered, but they can also make significant savings through the system's reliability and the reduced amount of power that the system requires compared to that of traditional platforms."

Approximately two thirds (65%) of UK office workers are frustrated by poor business broadband speeds, according to new data from Solar Communications that reveals that each worker is losing on average 47 minutes per week - or 34 hours every year - of working time due to broadband downtime.

The research, carried out among 1,000 UK office workers, also reveals the issues caused by slow broadband, with 55% of respondents saying it has prevented them from doing their jobs - a figure that rises to 74% for workers in London. Around half (51%) confirm they often experience slow broadband at work.

The majority of office workers (70%) agree it is important that they can access the internet and applications whenever they want, but 57% confirmed that slow broadband means this is often not possible.

It's not just office workers who are losing out due to slow broadband, as one in ten agreed their company had lost business as result, revealing the wider business implications of inadequate broadband provisions.

John Whitty, CEO of Solar Communications, said: "The UK still has a long way to go when it comes to providing superfast broadband that is fit for purpose for business and slow broadband having a negative impact.

"The data reveals that the average lost working time per employee per week is 43 minutes, so for an organisation employing 50 people that means 3,400 hours of lost productivity every year.

"The government has launched a number of schemes to help SMEs in particular move to faster broadband, but it's vital these are extended to ensure as many businesses as possible can benefit."

The UK government has invested over £1 billion in improving broadband and mobile infrastructure with the aim of providing superfast broadband to 90% of the UK by 2016.

Opus Team has implemented Unify's OpenScape Business at Helena Romanes School, upgrading its entire communication infrastructure.

OpenScape Business, implemented to all end users across the entire 35-acre campus, will transform the way that over 200 staff members work and communicate, while also driving cost savings and efficiencies for the secondary education provider.

The Helena Romanes School and Sixth Form Centre is situated in Great Dunmow, Essex, and caters for 1,300 pupils between the ages of 11-18.

Helena Romanes School believes that a large part of being able to provide great education outcomes lies in the teacher's ability to communicate effectively - not only with students, but also with parents and peers.

The school also recognised a need for a communications solution that would enable it to become more agile and make efficiency and cost savings, given the squeeze on education budgets.

Liz Evans-Barlow, Business Manager at Helena Romanes School, commented: "Selecting Unify's OpenScape Business has enabled the school to reach its goals of communication technology transformation, future proofing and cost savings. The solution is delivering efficiencies, an enhanced more resilient service and is even enabling us to ensure that we are ahead of the curve with compliance."

Matt Boyce, Sales Manager at Opus, added: "It is imperative for schools to be able to provide seamless communications experiences between parents and teachers and also amongst teachers themselves.

"In fact, it is critical to being able to deliver excellent education. At the same time, school budgets are being squeezed so technologies need to be excellent but efficient."

Tony Smith, UK&I Channel Sales Director at Unify, added: "Alongside our Professional Partner Opus Team we have been able to deliver a robust and future proof communications infrastructure to Helena Romanes School, one of a number of secondary education institutions that are realising the benefits of this."

The latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report provides insight into the future of 5G networks, including a forecast of 150 million 5G mobile subscriptions by 2021. South Korea, Japan, China, and the US are predicted to lead with the first, and fastest, 5G subscription uptake.

5G will connect new types of devices, enabling new use cases related to the Internet of Things - the transition will open up new industries and verticals to ICT transformation.

The report, a comprehensive update on mobile trends, reveals a significant increase in mobile video consumption, which is driving around six times higher traffic volumes per smartphone in North America and Europe (2015 to 2021). North America data traffic per active smartphone will grow from 3.8 to 22 GB per month by 2021; in Western Europe, the increase is from 2 to 18 GB per month.

With 20 new mobile broadband subscriptions activated every second, global increase in mobile subscriptions is another clear driver for data traffic growth. As of now, there are the same amount of mobile subscriptions as there are people on the planet; in 2016 we will reach the four billion mark for smartphone subscriptions alone.

Rima Qureshi, senior vice president and chief strategy officer, Ericsson, said: "5G is about more than faster mobile services - it will enable new use cases related to the Internet of Things. For example, Ericsson has built a prototype test bed for applying 5G networking functions and data analytics to public transport, which can save resources, reduce congestion, and lower environmental impact. ICT transformation will become even more common across industries as 5G moves from vision to reality in the coming years."

Other highlights from the latest Ericsson Mobility Report include:

• Video dominates data traffic: Global mobile data traffic is forecast to grow ten-fold by 2021, and video is forecast to account for 70% of total mobile traffic in the same year. In many networks today, YouTube accounts for up to 70% of all video traffic, while Netflix's share of video traffic can reach as high as 20% in markets where it is available.

• Mainland China overtakes the US as world's largest LTE market: By the end of 2015, mainland China will have 350 million LTE subscriptions - nearly 35% of the world's total LTE subscriptions. The market is predicted to have 1.2 billion LTE subscriptions by 2021.

• Africa becomes an increasingly connected continent: Five years ago (2010) there were 500 million mobile subscriptions across Africa; by the end of 2015 this number will double to 1 billion. Increased connectivity improves the prospect of financial inclusion for the 70% unbanked through mobile money services starting to take form across Africa.

• ICT powers the low-carbon economy: ICT will enable savings in energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across all other industrial sectors. The total emission reduction could be up to 10 gigatonnes of CO2e, representing about 15% of global GHG emissions in 2030 - more than the current carbon footprint of the US and EU combined.

CityFibre and HighNet are to collaborate on a project to transform Glasgow's digital connectivity and make it Scotland's third Gigabit City. CityFibre is to build an ultra-fast pure fibre network in Glasgow with HighNet, the Scottish ISP providing services to thousands of UK businesses.

The deployment in Glasgow city centre will kick off in early 2016 and support Internet connectivity up to 100 times faster than the UK average.

A dense network build in Glasgow city centre will be the first phase of deployment, and among the first businesses to benefit will be the customers of HighNet's channel partners.

Up to 15,000 businesses across the city will stand to benefit when the city-wide roll-out is completed, based on CityFibre's Well Planned City model. Other projects include Aberdeen, Coventry, Edinburgh, Peterborough and York.

"This design approach accommodates current and future capacity requirements from the business community, public sector, mobile operators and data centre providers," said Greg Mesch, CityFibre CEO (pictured above).

"Ultimately, the network could form a backbone for a future deployment of a gigabit-capable fibre-to-the-home access network.

"HighNet has made this project possible and its strong customer base and partner network will be crucial to its success."

Glasgow is CityFibre's third Gigabit City project in Scotland, and when complete CityFibre will have an established network presence in Scotland's four largest cities, making it the largest wholesale fibre infrastructure provider in the country after BT Openreach, claimed Mesch.

HighNet MD David J Siegel (pictured left) added: "This collaboration marks a step change in HighNet's evolution as a B2B ISP. Access to high quality, high capacity Internet capability can be truly transformational and we are leading the charge in Glasgow."

So here we go with the traditional review of the year that was, and consider what clues it offers for the year ahead, writes Clive Jefferys, Managing Director of telco recruiter JMA Network.

It was a strange year in telecoms recruitment as placements and revenues produced an exact reverse of the traditional hiring calendar.

Normally we expect peak flow between February and June of each year, but here at JMA and across the recruitment industry sales performance ambled along with no particularly outstanding months.

At the time, a lot of wise heads in HR and Recruitment (myself included) took this as a sign of growth petering out.

There was plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this, what with falling joblessness and an all-time peak in the employed workforce in the UK. There were a lot of tyre-kickers out there too, clients and candidates that looked, but didn't buy.

Then it all changed in July with double activity in interviews and cash, repeated in August, September, October and November.

A key factor had changed - the salaries secured for new hires went up significantly. It became apparent that many of our clients got sick of losing out to counter-offers.

So they upped the ante in advance and counter-offered the counter-offer, before the counter-offer even came about.

They demonstrated how much they really wanted the lucky candidate by taking into account the going rate for a job, not the salary a person was already on.

Here's the proof - our fastest growing clients this year have enjoyed short lead times to filled jobs because they offered the highest salaries.

This applies to billings, support, engineering as well as those pushy sales people.

Conversely, we still have January and February vacancies live on our books, with companies that have been less flexible with the cash.

So there's an important message in this about recruitment and growth plans for 2016. It's not rocket science, and I am not the one pulling the levers. As ever, it's all about you!

GENBAND has signed a global reseller agreement with SAP under which SAP will resell GENBAND's PaaS Kandy.

With GENBAND's embedded communications capabilities, SAP Real-Time Communicator will allow enterprises of all sizes to improve workflow and communications processes by helping to enable sales, service and business professionals to chat, videoconference and collaborate in real time with their customers and co-workers.

SAP Real-Time Communicator will allow enterprises to offer personalised engagement, and enable simpler collaboration capabilities for sales, service and business professionals using embedded communications within their business applications for presence, instant messaging, and voice and video chat/conference.

SAP Real-Time Communicator is integrated natively into SAP Cloud for Customer, and can be integrated with the SAP hybris Commerce solution.

Paul Pluschkell, executive vice president of Strategy and Cloud Services for GENBAND, said: "SAP Real-Time Communicator allows SAP to enhance its customer engagement model and continue to deliver solutions that empower its customers to work smarter and more efficiently."

Nayaki Nayyar, senior vice president of Cloud for Customer Engagement, SAP, added: "By embedding digital communications in SAP Cloud for Customer, we are able to offer our customers improvements in productivity to help make the experience richer, more contextual and highly efficient for managing vital relationships."

SSE Enterprise Telecoms has kicked off phase two of Project Edge, adding a further 33 BT exchanges to its existing 13,700km, 232 Point of Presence (PoP) UK-wide fibre network.

The deployment adds another 50,000 city centre business postcodes to the 200,000 introduced by phase one of Project Edge.

This latest initiative follows the success of the original network expansion announced in November 2013 that saw 54 new Exchange PoPs - many of which were in London - added to the SSE Enterprise Telecoms network.

With the additional PoPs and by interconnecting with other fibre network service providers in the UK, as part of Edge Plus, SSE Enterprise Telecoms initiated full UK-wide coverage.

SSE Enterprise Telecoms experienced a 250 percent increase in orders of its Ethernet services in the last 12 months, largely due to its investment in Project Edge and the Edge Plus services.

"Our most recent network expansion initiatives have focused on adding 31 commercial data centres in London and Manchester that can deliver 1Gb and 10Gb waves in a week," said Colin Sempill, managing director of SSE Enterprise Telecoms. 

"Edge 2 will see us invest once again in national Ethernet services to meet the clear demand for high quality Ethernet connectivity across the nation."

SIP profiles that match vendor PBX and SBC configurations are now top priority for a growing number of ICT buyers in the market for a SIP solution.

Comms providers with the capability to give customers what they want stand to win, those that don't are certain to foot the blame for any post-implementation issues.

While SIP is in the ascendancy interoperability remains an important challenge, according to a study by The SIP School. Encouragingly, the research states that 40 per cent of the organisations polled are leveraging SIP trunks in their business already. Another 18 per cent are researching or testing SIP trunking with two per cent poised to buy.

"SIP trunk adoption is one of the fastest moving trends in telecommunications for good reasons," said Graham Francis, CEO of The SIP School. "It offers benefits ranging from low cost calling, centralisation of lines into a business, fast disaster recovery (or failover) and much more.

"However, as the survey illustrates, PBX vendors, service providers and enterprise customers are finding that SIP is not always an easy service to implement and sometimes not easy to support if things go wrong, with an apparent change in emphasis this year on who owns the problem."

In previous surveys respondents spread the blame for deployment issues roughly equally between PBX vendors, service providers and SBC vendors. This year the balance has shifted to over 36 per cent of respondents placing responsibility at the door of the service provider.

"The IP PBX is possibly seen as a more continuous and less disruptive technology compared to the SIP trunk and therefore any problems are likely to be laid at the door of the provider," added Francis.

The survey's questioning of how problems are dealt with revealed various levels of success across the channel, with PBX and SBC manufacturers significantly outscoring service providers, hosted VoIP providers and resellers on their ability to fix. "Considering that respondents believe service providers now own the problem this indicates a clear development need," added Francis.

What can organisations do to ensure they get the most out of their SIP trunking solution? Interoperability testing is an important step in verifying that a SIP trunk solution will work with an organisation's comms infrastructure, while offering insights into ways of getting the most value.

"An independently verified configuration guide made available through a recognised interop programme offers assured support, a reduction in deployment issues and rapid resolution should they occur," said Francis.

Executives often view testing as an end of project task, something to check-off and show it actually works. But testing is central to the proposition and does more than just prove or verify that a solution can work. Testing delivers valuable insights in the form of independently verified 'profiles' that improve deployment success, explained Paul Cunningham of interoperability testing house tekVizion.

"An increasing number of PBX/SBC manufacturers as well as SIP trunking provider are independently taking this route," he stated. "Many responses to the survey point to problems for which there is technically no excuse. Things like codecs, audio paths and registration procedures are not rocket science.

"The causes of deployments not working are ultimately down to a lack of proper testing and documentation, thinly stretched technical resources, the sheer number of options and variations even within a single vendors' product offerings, plus the rate at which vendors introduce new features."

The proliferation of new features is not likely to slow down any time soon, nor can organisations rely on thinly stretched technical resources, so providers can, and should, be testing their solutions regularly to ensure a successful deployment that delivers maximum value, emphasised Cunningham.

"An increasing number of organisations are independently verifying SIP trunking and other elements through third party testing," he added. "Leading SIP trunking suppliers are coming to us to perform interoperability testing and we provide detailed documentation for various PBX/SBC configurations. In many cases this is on top of the basic testing they may perform in-house. They recognise the value of having their SIP trunk configurations independently and extensively verified."

Understanding these issues helps companies to focus their efforts on improving the 'failing' elements, and also ensures that they understand what to do when things go wrong so they can fix problems quickly.

"It's not ideal having a service that's feature packed if you can't rely on it to work as expected," commented Francis. "The issues identified in the survey can and should be solved by appropriately skilled and certified staff performing proper interoperability testing that is independently verified.

"Without this, providers are activating trunks and hoping the 'good luck' quoted in one survey response will make it work. Enterprise customers and service providers alike need to rely on more than luck if the benefits of SIP and related applications such as UC are to be realised."

Onyx Group is to provide Newcastle United FC with a fully managed solution including a resilient network containing no single point of failure.

The club will be able to guarantee maximum availability and uninterrupted connectivity for media professionals and staff on match days.

Neil Stephenson, CEO of Onyx Group, said: "We have a long-term relationship with Newcastle United stretching back many years and we are delighted to renew the services of such a prestigious client.

"The longevity of our relationship speaks volumes of the exceptional work being carried out by our team and we are looking forward to working together for many years to come."

Daniel Bailey, Head of IT at Newcastle United, said: "As the club continues to grow on and off the field it is vital that we have an IT strategy in place that enables us to maintain the excellent levels of service that we expect at the club."