Comms Dealer

Hello Telecom has achieved full technical accreditation for connecting its SIP trunk services to Panasonic PABX phone systems.

Hello's SIP trunk provides users of traditional PABX systems with the benefits of Next Generation Networks technologies, as additional capacity and features are added to their existing system.

SIP trunk channels are a cost effective alternative to traditional ISDN lines. Companies that wish to keep their existing ISDN lines are also able to add additional SIP channels for inbound and outbound calling.

SIP trunks introduce many additional features such as flexible numbering options. Whereas ISDN lines have only the phone numbers allocated by Openreach.

Hello SIP trunks can host any UK area code that the customer might require. Network-level call recording is included as standard with recordings securely stored in the cloud for easy retrieval.

Panasonic has awarded Hello Telecom with a SIP IOT Certificate, having successfully completed Inter-Operability testing of SIP Trunk services with the Panasonic KX-NS Series systems for voice and fax solutions, in accordance with the specification of Panasonic System Networks IOT Japan.

Hello Telecom achieved accreditation from NEC Systems in 2014.

Steve Jansky, CEO, stated: "Being awarded the Panasonic SIP IOT Certificate has come at a great time for Hello, since there are so many Panasonic dealers around the UK looking for SIP trunks."

Liquid Voice has partnered with Eyrco to offer enterprise customers across Ireland a portfolio of call recording and analytics solutions and services.

The partnership extends an exclusivity agreement to Eyrco to offer the Liquid Voice portfolio of call recording and monitoring solutions including analytics tools.

"Eyrco has one of the largest and best qualified voice engineering teams in Ireland and as part of our agreement we will be working closely to deliver call recording solutions that meet the most stringent service level agreements, regulatory compliance and best practice for our joint customers," said Chris Berry, Sales & Marketing Director of Liquid Voice.

Although a new brand name, Eyrco has been providing call recording, technical solutions and services to the Irish Market for over 17 years.

"Eyrco now has a dedicated focus on telephony across voice, call recording and analytics and a strategy that will allow us to become much closer to our core suppliers to deliver the highest quality and best value solutions to our existing and growing customer base,"

"Demand for call recording is growing especially as new regulatory requirements come into force but what Liquid Voice offers on top of compliance is the ability to utilise call analytics," added Mark Evans, Managing Director for Eyrco.

Northampton-based Node4 played host to more than 30 local businesses and IT industry partners for its inaugural ‘Enable your business' event, held at the company's purpose built Data Centre on the outskirts of the town centre.

The event saw experts from global IT companies, including Cisco, VirginMedia, NetApp, Veeam, NEC and Fortinet talk to Midlands-based businesses about the technologies, services and solutions that will enable them to compete at the next level.

Attendees were also given the opportunity to quiz the experts on how to shape their IT strategies and overcome current challenges, such as moving to the cloud and ensuring data protection, particularly in light of recent high profile cyber attacks, followed by a tour of the Data Centre facility.

Node4's data centre houses over 700 racks across four large data halls and is undergoing perpetual expansion and upgrades to ensure the latest technology can be utilised by customers, said the firm.

The company is set to invest significantly in the site over the coming months, increasing the footprint of its data centre and colocation facility within its current designated site.

Rik Williams, Head of Data Centre Operations, Node4, commented: "Our Northampton site is a core part of our business and we're keen to continue our investment and presence in the region."

Cisco has introduced advanced software solutions and developer tools for cloud-scale networking that will enable service providers and web companies to enhance the performance of cloud applications and reduce the cost of managing and operating the networks that support them.

Innovations to the Cisco IOS XR network operating system will deliver these benefits by enabling traditional and web service providers to converge their data centres and wide area network (WAN) architectures, by making networks more programmable, and by enabling tighter integration with popular IT configuration and management tools.
 
Developed in collaboration with some of the world's leading web companies, and based on their operational best practices, Cisco IOS XR innovations will make faster and simple cloud-scale networking available to all service providers, said the firm.

Cisco is also announcing the availability of three additions to the industry-leading Cisco Network Convergence System (NCS) Series routing portfolio.
 
According to the Cisco Global Cloud Index (2014-2019), released last month, total global data centre traffic is projected to triple by the end of 2019 (from 3.4 to 10.4 Zettabytes), and 83 percent of total data centre traffic will come from the cloud by 2019 (up from 61 percent in 2014). The proliferation of more business devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, as well as more scalable services and applications with additional storage needs, will create new network and compute requirements, specifically a convergence of the data centre and WAN.  
 
Cisco is introducing new capabilities to the Cisco IOS XR software, enabling service providers to run their networks at half the total cost of ownership (over five years) compared to the present mode of operation, and these solutions will essentially double network efficiency and performance.

Additionally, customers can leverage their investments in IOS XR and seamlessly transition to cloud-scale with their current or new hardware platforms.
 
"Service providers are looking to leverage the operational best practices established in massively scalable computing environments and marry them with their own networking reach to compete and innovate faster," said Kelly Ahuja, senior vice president of Cisco's service provider segment."
 
Laurent Lachal, senior analyst, infrastructure solutions - software group, Ovum, added: "The network is cloud computing's final frontier, at technology, people and process levels. It needs to be built for scale and ruthlessly automated, to deliver the right service on demand, and to rely on tools and technologies that enable network specialists to effectively interact with the rest of the IT team as well as business users. Cisco's software-centric approach enables businesses to capture the digitization opportunity and conquer this final frontier."

A content rich agenda was the defining factor of ScanSource's FuturePath 2015 conference staged at The Belfry Hotel and Resort in Birmingham.

Vice President of Sales for ScanSource POS and Barcode in Europe, Richard Gregoire, stated: "Our role is to become trusted advisors to support customers in this fast-paced, ever-changing industry."

Main sponsors Honeywell and Zebra offered insights onto their view of industry trends and their implications.

"The industry is changing and customers expect more than product specifications," said Adrian Lawson, Honeywell's Channel Sales Manager for the UK and Ireland.

"We are working to provide end-to-end solutions for connecting workers and facilities, differentiating with wireless, voice, mobility and data analytics."

Zebra's Luca Gelosi, EMEA Director of Strategy and Business Development, added: "The transition that we are seeing is a challenge, but it also embeds a tremendous opportunity for growth. The market for traditional devices will remain strong, but we do expect significant changes in the investment habits.

"On top of that, we have identified terrific opportunities in expansion areas like services, WLAN, RFID, locationing and our Internet of Things platform (Zatar).

"The ability to serve this demand, together with innovation in the broader portfolio, is key to assure long-term growth to the whole industry."

Akixi has exceeded 1,600 deployed sites globally and marked the milestone with the launch of Charting and Polycom VVX integration.

Akixi 1000 and 2000 reporting can now be integrated with Polycom VVX handsets which can display the Akixi Desktop Wallboard and other reports on the handset's display.

Both ACD and DND statistics can be displayed on the VVX phones on 2000 reporting.

Customisable charts and real-time capabilities are available across all report styles, providing consistent comparable statistics via multiple types of charts (including pie, doughnut, line, area, radar, column and bar charts). Charts are also available in 2D, 3D and stacked format.

Bart Delgado, MD, said: "We are consistently growing across Europe, the USA, Mexico and South Africa due to our 200-plus real-time call statistics, dials, graphs and wallboards.

"Polycom VVX Integration has been positively received by our customers as this now gives them an additional option of where they can conveniently monitor and manage their calls."

NTA has opened a new training facility in its Romford offices and aims to hold two training courses per month with the capacity for up to 10 technicians.

The course content will include how to set up extensions and numbering for a customer's system and then programming the full feature set required on-site via the Hosted Telephony Portal.

Paul White, MD, commented: "Training requests have grown significantly over the last six months. It seems resellers want to take control of our hosted proposition and white label it as their own, so we want to pass our full knowledge onto partners enabling them to be self-sufficient when delivering an end-to-end solution for their customers."

New technical training courses will also be added in early 2016 on the new Wallboard and Dialler applications.

Datto, a provider of data backup, recovery and business continuity solutions, has raised $75 million in a Series B investment round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), a provider of capital to growth-stage private and public companies in the technology industry.

The Series B brings total investments in Datto to just over $100 million.

Datto founder and CEO Austin McChord said: "TCV brings a wealth of experience and expertise to help us continue to grow, innovate and expand globally.

"As a profitable company, Datto isn't raising capital to fund operations, but to enter new markets and build new products and technology."

The financing comes as Datto is achieving record year-over-year revenue growth, expanding into EMEA and APAC, and launching additional solutions for its partner network and customer base.

Datto manages more than 160 petabytes of data and more than one million backups a week for its customers.

Its Total Data Protection Platform protects customers' business data no matter where it lives - on premises, in virtual or physical servers, or in cloud-based SaaS applications.

Ted Coons, general partner at TCV and new Datto board member, added: "Cloud-based data protection holds great promise in ensuring information is always accessible and recoverable as more organisations conduct business in the cloud, and Datto has a tremendous opportunity to grow internationally in meeting this need."

The offer of a free flu jab was hard to resist for 60 Nimans staff who 'got the needle' from a qualified nurse.

"The vaccine is a preventive measure which lasts for one year and it was gratifying to see so many staff take up the opportunity," said Executive Director Phil Gee.

The scheme forms part of the company's Investors In People policy.

Huawei and Telefónica have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together on 5G.

The two companies will undertake joint evaluation and research into the requirements of a 5G network environment investigating the 5G network architecture needed to deliver 'superlative' data connection speeds with low latency.

Joint activities will include key air interface technology, performance evaluation and prototype verification.

Enrique Blanco, Telefonica Group CTO, said: "5G will have massive impact on the telecommunication industry and in society as a whole. Telefónica doesn´t want the 5G networks start-up to be a specific single event, but rather a process which we want to begin right now."

David Wang, President of Huawei Wireless Product Line, said: "Huawei is investing a tremendous research effort into the 5G key enabling technology. Our collaboration with Telefónica is at the very heart of this commitment to help build better connected societies, businesses and economies, and ensuring 5G success is essential in achieving this."

Pictured: Enrique Blanco (left) and David Wang sign the strategic Memorandum of Understanding.