Comms Dealer

Daisy Group has been awarded a place on the Government's Digital Marketplace G-Cloud 7 framework.

Daisy secured presence on all four lots within G-Cloud 7 - Infrastructure of a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Specialist Cloud Services. All 15 cloud services that Daisy submitted for consideration were successfully included ready for the launch of G-Cloud 7 in December 2015.

Andy Riley, Head of Public Sector at Daisy Group, said: "Daisy's successful application for the latest version of G-Cloud further enhances our commitment to the public sector.

"This is another route for our customers to procure their services in a compliant and cost-effective way which is good for Daisy, good for our customers and good for Government."

The G-Cloud 7 is the latest version of the Government's procurement framework, which sees the change from CloudStore to the Digital Marketplace.

This catalogue of certified suppliers allows organisations in the public sector to find the right supplier for their cloud-based IT services without the lengthy traditional tender process.

The news comes just three months after Daisy announced its place on all 10 lots of the UK Government's Network Services framework agreement (RM1045).

Sennheiser has scooped the top prize for Excellent Product Design for its Speakerphone SP 10 ML/ SP 20 ML at the German Design Award 2016.

The portable Speakerphone convinced the international jury with its elegant design as well as its sound and voice quality.

From 3,400 entries, more than half of them in the area of Product Design, the compact portable speakerphones were chosen by the international jury of design experts for their 'form and function at a high level'.

Lars Riis Rasmussen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, EMEA, at Sennheiser Communications, said: "The award is a great acknowledgement of our efforts and an encouragement for us to keep pushing boundaries."

Further to its announcement on 13th November 2015, Softcat's entire ordinary share capital of 196,776,260 ordinary shares has been admitted to the premium listing segment of the Official List of the UK Listing Authority, and to the London Stock Exchange's main market for listed securities under the ticker SCT.

Softcat has increased its revenue ten-fold over the past ten years, delivering 40 quarters uninterrupted organic revenue growth since 2005.

Its revenue increased from £89.1m for the year ended 31st July 2007 to £596.1m for the year ended 31st July 2015, up from £504.8m the previous year.

The company's leaders believe that the IPO will enhance Softcat's profile and brand recognition with customers, vendor partners and distributors and provide a strategic growth platform.

Pictured: left to right: Martin Hellawell, CEO; Softcat's longest serving employee, Shelley Ferrigno, Head of Human Resources and Recruitment; and Graham Charlton, CFO.

Virtual1 CTO James Hickman has been elected as Chairman of the London (Central) Branch of the British Computer Society (BCS), the body representing the IT profession to other professional bodies, the government, industry and academics.
 
Hickman has been a member of the BCS since 1995 and, in 2013, volunteered to join the branch committee as a way of using his extensive industry experience to be helpful.

As well as helping to arrange guest speakers and contributing to the monthly running of the branch, he hosted several events and gave talks on Internet governance and Net Neutrality.
 
His new role, as Chairman, means that he runs the committee that organises the Doctoral Consortium, Student prizes and talks that the Branch provides every year for the 8,763 members from a diverse range of organisations both commercial and academic.

The BCS provides a great opportunity to hear from experts in their field either in industry or in academic research. The talks are free to members and non-members and are not a sales pitch. Instead they are a sharing of ideas and provide a good background for the networking session that follows.
  
Hickman said: "I'm proud and honoured to be elected as Chairman and aim to continue providing an excellent calibre of speakers to give free talks and to grow the membership through our ambassador programme with London Universities."

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."