Comms Dealer

The winners of Jabra's channel awards have been named following the one-day Jabra Velocity 2015 Partner Event, held this year at The Belfry in the West Midlands.

Nigel Dunn, Managing Director, Jabra UK and Ireland, commented "We've had another successful year where Jabra and our partners have worked together to achieve category growth in the UK and Ireland.

"Recognising these successes over the last 12 months is important and highlights the value with place on our channel relationships. We are thrilled to see valued partners Corpteluk and Computacenter winning awards in successive years, reflecting the support and commitment between partner and vendor."

Award Winners
Distributor of the Year UK&I: Nimans (pictured)
Overall Channel Partner of the Year UK&I: Computacenter
Growth Partner of the Year UK&I: Corpteluk
Outstanding Commitment Partner of the Year UK&I: Insight

Swyx used its annual International Partner Conference (Runnymede Hotel, Egham) to unveil product developments to its SwyxWare system including the new Skype for Business connector and plans for integration with wearables.

The company also celebrated the achievements of its channel partners as part of its annual awards.

Welcoming resellers from the UK, Netherlands, Sweden, France and Iceland, Swyx CEO Ralf Ebbinghaus began the day with a round-up of Swyx's latest growth figures, future strategy and the importance of its international partners as part of its on-going expansion.

He commented: "Although Swyx is of course a German company we are also committed to substantially growing our international base. Our vision is to provide our partners with a choice of both on-premise and cloud solutions that are cost-effective to both deploy and support, translating into higher profits and margins for our partners. In the future we plan to be able to offer our cloud-based solution, delivered at scale, for a competitive cost price of 1 cent/month/user."

Key products unveiled at the event included Swyx's Connector for Skype, a new Mac Client, new clients for iphone, Android and Windows 7, easier integration with support of REST API and the company's new DataCentre Advance platform that will reduce infrastructure and operational costs for cloud partners.

Swyx's CTO, Joao Gonzaga, provided an insight into Swyx's future roadmap that included 'sensor-enabled technology' allowing Swyx to be integrated into wearables, stressing that, 'this is not slideware, these are real products that are currently being prototyped to be released within the next two years'.

"The main focus for the direction of our product is that it's all about the user. That's why we with our latest announcements have focused on what is most popular with our partners' customers including the ability to add to full telephony to Skype for Business and new mobile clients for commonly used operating platforms," he said.

"We are also aware that not all customers will want to move to the cloud, so offering the choice of on-premise or hybrid is also essential. The design of our new softphone interface is also a response to feedback from our partners and customers."

Swyx Channel Awards 2015
TOP UK Reseller of the Year 2015: Elite Telecom
TOP UK Performer 2015: Smart Solutions GRP Ltd
TOP Cloud Partner 2015 - Netherlands: Adfocom Automatisering B.V.
TOP Cloud Partner 2015 - Iceland: SVAR taekni ehf.
TOP Cloud Partner 2015 - Sweden: Teleoffice AB
TOP Cloud Partner 2015 - France: Appliwave

ITSPA, the UK's voice for the VoIP and next generation communications industry, has welcomed the European Parliament's approval of the Single Telecoms Regulation.

The Parliament voted in favour of the revised proposals which had been developed through trialogue negotiations between the European institutions during the summer. Proposed amendments to the text were rejected.

Reacting to the news Eli Katz, the Chair of ITSPA said: "It's been a very long road to get to this point and ITSPA is delighted that our long-term campaign around this issue is finally bearing fruit.

"This regulation will provide real certainty to 'over-the-top' providers that their services will not be blocked or impeded by any underlying network operators who dislike the idea of competition to their own services.

"We believe the final text is a good compromise that will ensure the Internet remains open and innovative, while allowing network operators to manage their networks efficiently and develop new services. The amendments proposed would not have created the balanced approach required for adoption by the Parliament. We are pleased that this has not de-railed the whole process.

"ITSPA will continue to maintain dialogue with the European institutions, BEREC, the DCMS and Ofcom to ensure the effective implementation of the regulation. We will also maintain vigilance across the industry to ensure underhand behaviour is exposed and the principles of the Regulation are maintained."

Alternative has launched Alternative Platform as a Service (APaaS) for UC and voice, an enterprise grade, cloud-based telephone system.

APaaS uses Mitel's MiVoice Business and delivers the functionality of an on premise system, but on a per-user, per-month model, removing large up-front and on-going capital expenditure costs.

With APaaS, customers can scale when and as they need, and with access to all the latest features as they are released, it helps drive collaboration and efficiency gains across their businesses, whilst ensuring they only pay for what they use.

APaaS is hosted and managed across two of Alternative's Tier 3 data centres and directly integrates with Alternative's existing connectivity and SIP partners, providing customers with access to voice technology alongside Alternative's established cloud offering.

"The launch of Alternative Platform as a Service for UC and Voice brings together all of the capabilities from across the Alternative group, having completed a number of key acquisitions and successfully integrated them with our existing product set," said Alternative's CEO Mark Quartermaine.

In association with the KM Charity Team, True Telecom has presented an iPad Mini to Aimee Smith, the highest fundraiser at this year's KM Charity Assault Course Challenge.

Aimee individually raised a total of £434 at the charity Assault Course Challenge on Saturday 3rd October at Betteshanger Country Park, with her fundraising efforts spilt between the KM Charity and the Haemophilia society.

Thirty seven teams of six people from across the county braved water jumps, tunnels, balance beams and a rope walk to raise a record breaking £15,000 for charity.

Dominic Comins of the KM Charity Team said: "I am delighted that our intrepid teams had such a fantastic day out and raised £15,000 - beating last year's charity total by more than £1,000!"

Stuart Griffiths, CEO of True Telecom, added: " Congratulations to Aimee for raising a great deal of money for two fantastic causes - we hope she enjoys the iPad. We are always delighted to work with the KM Charity Team and support the local community in Kent."

Node4 has launched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) defence, providing customers with a combination of volumetric and application layer security within the same service, for maximum protection against DDoS.

Forming a core part of Node4's N4Protect security service, the multi-layer N4Protect DDoS service offers dual protection, ensuring malicious application layer exploits cannot be hidden or overlooked because of an over-riding DDoS flood attack. Proactive monitoring gives 24/7/365 protection, and sees customers receive immediate reports of any threats the DDoS solution has intercepted or resolved.

Node4 has invested significantly in bringing the new N4Protect DDoS technology to its MPLS core network infrastructure, eliminating the need for customers to incur large capex. Instead, Node4 customers can integrate exceptional levels of DDoS protection alongside Node4's Cloud and Colocation services for a monthly charge.

Andrew Gilbert, CEO at Node4, said: "By the time your business has been hit by a DDoS attack it's typically too late to act, as recent high profile attacks have shown. Many companies believe they are adequately protected with approaches such as firewalls, disaster recovery plans and server duplication, but these offer no protection against DDoS attacks, which use legitimate and valid requests to subvert network security.

"With the launch of N4Protect DDoS we have made a significant investment in helping our customers to achieve the high levels of protection they need, within a flexible, highly resilient network infrastructure."

VoIP Distributors ProVu has added the Polycom range of SIP phones and Konftel conferencing phones to its automated provisioning services.

In a step to broaden the firm's provisioning capabilities ProVu's technical team have developed ProSys, a hosted provisioning platform to support both Polycom and Konftel.

ProVu has been providing resellers with a fully automated provisioning service for Snom, Yealink, Gigaset, Cisco and Panasonic for many years. Now, ProVu's provisioning service provides resellers with the ability to ship Polycom and Konftel phones direct to their customer's site and obtain their settings. Phones provisioned by ProVu just need to be connected and they will work out of the box.

ProVu's Managing Director, Darren Garland commented: "Adding the Polycom and Konftel provisioning to ProSys is a natural step forward for ProVu. It allows us to further support our ever increasing number of service providers and resellers with the wrap around services they expect from us."

Solar Communications has relocated its Salford-based office to new premises in Manchester with a state-of-the-art demonstration suite and service desk training room, which provides the space and accessibility for the service desk to test equipment and train employees. The office is also a hot-desking site for the northern sales team.

New CEO John Whitty said: "We have had a base in Salford for a number of years and it's proved to be an important location for our UK business. The new office will be a hub for the service and sales team and will be a focus for expanding our team, creating job opportunities in the local area."

Arrow has joined forces with CompTIA to launch The Cloud Enablement Programme via a webinar.

The Cloud Enablement Programme has been designed to help businesses transition to new cloud service models and maximise the potential of selling cloud services.

The programme offers a portfolio of enablement resources, consultancy, marketing, training and knowledge transfer. It aims to empower Arrow's channel customers to grow a profitable and sustainable cloud services business by eliminating both cost and complexity from development and delivery.

In addition to a webinar, CompTIA is offering free training in partnership with Arrow as part of the Cloud Enablement Programme. "We're excited to see the Cloud Enablement Programme complement our IT Channel Cloud content and other education offerings, as well as our Cloud+ certification," says Leanne Johnson, Engagement Manager for CompTIA. "Together, we offer a set of services to the industry so that companies of all sizes can implement cloud solutions with confidence."

David Fearne, Technical Director at Arrow ECS, added: "As cloud computing creates unique opportunities to generate more value from and for customers, it is important that businesses learn how to deliver cloud-related products and services. The Cloud Enablement Programme is basically designed to take all the stress away."

Exertis has signed an exclusive agreement with new smartphone manufacturer, Wileyfox, for the distribution of its devices in the UK.

Wileyfox is differentiating its first portfolio of devices in partnership with the operating system, Cyanogen, which is an enhanced version of Android, built on top of Google's releases of that platform.

Wileyfox is the first mobile manufacturer to offer the new commercial variant of Cyanogen 12.1 within Europe. The operating system is fully supported and embedded on Wileyfox devices.

Simon Woodman, Mobile Sales Director at Exertis, said: "Exertis is always focused on bringing the cutting edge of technology to its customers, and this new mobile operating system puts us on the bleeding edge. We expect the user base of Cyanogen and therefore Wileyfox's device sales to grow exponentially, and we are helping our resellers to get these exciting products out to end users," Woodman concluded.

Cyanogen was first named in 2009 and since then has been continuously worked on by developers around the world under the open source project 'CyanogenMod', which has been openly supported by many of the major phone manufacturers globally.

Today millions of Android mobile device users around the world are running downloads of CyanogenMod on their handsets, taking advantage of the customisation, privacy and security features that the operating system offers. However, Cyanogen has not hit the mainstream due to warrantee implications as it has not been a commercially supported operating system.

Amazon is selling Wileyfox's first two devices through Exertis and is shipping a significant number of units per day; Amazon is set to exceed unit shipment expectations this quarter, said Woodman.

Nick Muir, CEO at Wileyfox, commented: "Wileyfox is delighted to be the first brand to bring the latest Cyanogen OS, adding customisation, privacy and security features to Android 5.1."