Comms Dealer

Excell Group has partnered with netEvidence to offer and integrate the Highlight SaaS monitoring and reporting service across its cloud and connectivity products.

Chris Attwood, Head of Marketing at Excell, said: "With the rise in cloud computing businesses are buying and running more and more services, inevitably from different providers, which means having to deal with multiple monitoring tools, logins, user interfaces and report formats.

"Our partnership with netEvidence will make everything much easier for our customers who can now measure all the services they buy from Excell as well as from their other providers.

"Highlight delivers simple, clear business-level visibility into how their vital applications, infrastructure and services are performing.

"With this single version of the truth we can spot the exact location of any issues for a quick resolution, and most importantly, identify where issues are likely to occur before anyone suffers a problem."
 
 

ITSPA has introduced its member guidance document on End User Terms and Conditions, designed to provide comms providers with a description of the key legal requirements and issues that they should take into account in their end user terms and conditions when they provide communication services to end users.

The compliance guidance was prepared by Preiskel & Co, the telecoms and tech law firm and associate member of ITSPA.
 
Eli Katz, the Chair of ITSPA, said: "I encourage all members to make use of this valuable material that will help ensure their businesses remain compliant."
 
Danny Preiskel, Senior Partner at Preiskel & Co, added: "The industry has seen various legal cases in recent years which highlight the potential threats providers face. We welcomed the opportunity to work with ITSPA to provide members with a guide to key legal requirements to carefully consider in their end user terms and conditions. We urge ITSPA members to study the guidance and take its recommendations into account."

True Telecom's product strategy has been boosted by the appointment of Darren Burton as Head of Commercial Products.

He brings 25 years experience in the telecoms sector and previous roles include senior management positions at BT Retail and Daisy Connect where he was responsible for product strategy, product structuring and managing the overall development process for new investment offerings and product refinements.

Stuart Griffiths, CEO, said: "Darren has both the technical expertise and experience to help us drive forward our current product delivery strategy. This will prove invaluable when it comes to developing new markets for our products and services and ensuring new products and features are efficiently rolled out to new and existing clients."

Maintel CEO Eddie Buxton took part in London's CEO Sleepout initiative. He was joined by Angus McCaffery, non-executive director, for a night under the stars to raise awareness of the growing homelessness crisis in the capital and raise funds for charity.

The CEO Sleepout takes place in cities across the country and London's event was in partnership with three charities - Depaul UK, the Cardinal Hume Centre and Church Urban Fund.

Held at the Kia Oval cricket ground on 12th October, the CEO Sleepout London saw over 100 senior figures from across the city taking part. To date, the Maintel team has raised £5,470.

Buxton said: "My team and I wanted to give up our beds, and homes, for a night in order to raise awareness for those who don't have one. It was a thought provoking experience and I can sincerely say it has given us all a deeper respect for anyone forced to sleep on the capital's streets. We would like to give a heartfelt thanks to anyone who donated to this great cause."

If anyone wishes to donate to the campaign, the team's Just Giving page is still open and can be found here: https://www.justgiving.com/Eddie-Buxton

ScanSource and Unify have launched a competition for top performing resellers who stand a chance of winning a three day ski trip to France.

Reseller entrants will be given a Unify sales target to achieve between 1st September and 31st January with the winners heading off to the mountains between the 7th and 9th March 2016. The holiday includes flights, accommodation at the Hotel Le Petit Dru in Morzine, food, transfers to and from the resort, equipment hire and lift passes.

Nimans has staged a four-day technical accreditation course at its Manchester headquarters to bring engineers up to speed with Panasonic's NS700 comms system.

The course was designed for engineers with no prior knowledge of the NS700.

Nimans' Head of System Sales, John McKindland, said: "We've run similar courses before and the continued high attendance demonstrates resellers' thirst for knowledge.

"Installation and configuration, new hardware, high density card wiring, programming and IP cell stations all feature as part of the training from Nimans."

Cobweb Solutions has enhanced its participation in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program as a 2-Tier provider.

This extension allows Cobweb to sell services through the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program to resellers. This will expand cloud sales opportunities by enabling partners to provide direct billing, sell combined offers and services, as well as directly provision, manage and support the Microsoft Office 365 suite of products and services.

Cobweb provides an ecosystem that allows partners to deliver the benefits of their own expertise within a toolset that unleashes the power of the Microsoft Cloud.

"UK businesses, particularly SMBs and professional services firms, are showing tremendous interest in cloud technologies such as Office 365 and Windows Azure," said Ash Patel, Director of Business Transformation at Cobweb.

"Joining the Cloud Solution Provider program as an indirect 2 Tier provider allows us to build even stronger relationships with our partners and provide them with integrated cloud solutions for their customers."

Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft, added: "By joining the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program, Cloud Distributors will grow their Cloud ready channel, deepen customer relationships and expand business opportunities in the cloud."

Warwickshire County Council will use Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise solutions to roll out Wi-Fi in a number of its public sector buildings.

In addition to the corporate locations, over 150 schools have signed up to use the wireless network solution.

Many of the smaller schools have deployed Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Instant Access Point technology to deliver Wi-Fi, eliminating the need for them to pay additional controller charges.

To allow schools to make best use of new technology, the council has developed a new, separate and secure Internet-only wireless service called BYOND (Bring Your Own Network Device), enabling staff and pupils to download learning-based applications for their tablets and smartphones.

The service installed by Khipu Networks, a key business partner and winner of the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Global Partner of the Year Award, is currently available across 150 schools, 27 public libraries, 15 fire stations and 28 other sites including social services, corporate buildings and training centres.

The free public Wi-Fi service has also been rolled out to a number of independent community libraries across the county, enabling them to offer internet access as a local community service.

Claire Darling, Data Network Manager, Warwickshire County Council, said:
"The new solution allows us to provide powerful Wi-Fi access for staff to the corporate network as well as providing free public Internet facilities for staff and for the general public."

Steve Davey, Account Manager, ALE UK, added: "The implementations by Warwickshire County Council will dramatically improve public services through better communication and connectivity, allowing anyone, anywhere and at anytime to gain access to the network for their specific needs."

Cramlington-based cloud computing firm SITS Group has scooped its second accolade in the last month.

The company was named the fastest growing medium business of 2015 for companies with annual turnover of between £5m and £15m at the Ward Hadaway Fastest 50 Awards.

This annual event rewards the privately owned organisations in the north west region that have shown the strongest annualised sales growth over recent years.

SITS Group was also named in The Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100.

Phil Cambers, Commercial Director, said: "Thanks to the dedication from our staff and clients we have increased our turnover year on year and look forward to growing the company further in 2016.

"The Fastest 50 award win and being shortlisted in the Tech Track 100 is testament to the hard work and loyalty from our staff and clients. We would like to thank our staff, customers and everyone involved with making SITS the success it is today."

VoIP Distributor ProVu is to become the star of its own film following its nomination for the SME of the Year Award in the Huddersfield Examiner Business Awards.

Filming was carried out by Manchester-based Flix Facilities at ProVu's offices in Huddersfield on 9th October and the final cut will be shown at the awards event taking place at Huddersfield's John Smith's Stadium on 12th November.

The shortlist announcement was revealed in the same week as the Comms National Awards in which ProVu is shortlisted for the Best Convergence Distributor award.

ProVu's MD Darren Garland (pictured) said: "The ProVu team enjoyed being part of the filming process. It was a fun morning for us all.

"It is a real honour to be shortlisted for both of these awards as it recognises our hard work in our specialist field as well as within our community."