Comms Dealer

G3 Comms has become the only UK Avaya Connect Partner to hold both Platinum accreditation and Partner in Customer Excellence recognition simultaneously.

Tony Parish, Chairman of G3 Comms, said: "This recognition sets us apart. We've raised the bar and set a target for other partners to attain in the future. That can only be good for the customer."

G3's relationship with Avaya in the UK goes back a long way. The firm was the first Avaya Unified Comms Reseller and the first to deploy Avaya's Definity and Aura Contact Centre systems.

"It's this depth of knowledge and experience that gives us an advantage in dealing with the latest Avaya technology today," added Parish.

Softcat has been ranked 23rd in The Sunday Times' 11th annual Grant Thornton Top Track ranking of the UK's mid-market growth private companies with the biggest sales - a jump of 29 places from its ranking in 2014.

The league table ranks companies according to their growth, with businesses needing to achieve either sales or profit growth of at least 10% to enter.

Colin Brown, Softcat's MD, has previously tied the company's growth to its employee engagement, and maintains that this is still the case.

He said: "We're delighted to have climbed Top Track's ranks this year, and it's an honour to stand alongside many well known names.

"It's mostly down to the hard work of our incredibly motivated staff, whose efforts resulted in strong growth in 2014, so a huge thank you to them.

"We invest a lot of time and money in our staff, hiring the best people, designing the best training for them and rewarding them financially and with opportunities to progress their careers.

"We have maintained 98-99% employee satisfaction ratings even as we have doubled in size, which in turn helps us deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction."

The Sunday Times Grant Thornton Top Track 250 is the sister publication of The Sunday Times Top Track 100, which identifies Britain's 100 private companies with the biggest sales. It ranks the next 250 biggest companies by sales, provided either sales or profits have increased by at least 10% year-on-year.

The 250 companies grew combined sales by 17% to £69bn, operating profits by 38% to £4bn, and staff by 8% to 347,000.

SCC, the technology brand of Rigby Group, has added hosted voice and UCaaS to its managed services portfolio following Rigby Group's investment in SIPCOM. The move follows SCC's acquisitions of SSE Telecoms' Hampshire data centre and Fluidata earlier this year.

Key to Rigby Group's investment is the potential to deliver a local service to international customers, underpinned by its growing near-shore service centre operation in Romania.

SIPCOM offers the ability to build private hybrid clouds with full feature capability that can be delivered over three continents, supported by a hosted voice service covering 65 countries.

SCC's data centre and cloud services hit £26m last year following a succession of key customer wins including Kier Group, Samworth Brothers, Grafton Group, Macdonald Hotels, United Utilities, Department for Work and Pensions, and WHSmith.

James Rigby, SCC's Chief Executive, said: "Adding Fluidata's network and SIPCOM's hosted voice and UCaaS capabilities to our data centre services delivers a cloud delivered managed services proposition to our customers and the markets we operate in."

SCC's total rack capacity now stands at over 1,800 and 14Mv of power, with the business closing FY15 on 67% occupancy and annual rack growth of 145%.

The company also has interests in hotels, aviation, airports, property development and finance.

SIPCOM, supported by Rigby Group, has extended its market with SCC and is looking to build its plan to 200,000 cloud based users by the end of 2018.

SIPCOM Chief Executive Daniel Allen added: "The investment from Rigby Group positions SIPCOM firmly in the mid-market space. It's a great match for everyone."

Chronos Technology has appointed Tony Flavin as head of Strategic Research, reporting to CTO Calum Dalmeny.

Flavin, who has many years of technical and engineering experience gained during over 40 years service with BT, was responsible for BT's transmission platform, latterly focusing on synchronisation which covered frequency and time of day across its entire networks.

He will provide technical direction for current research activity at Chronos. This will relate to ongoing projects, covering future needs including precise timing and awareness of and mitigation against GPS vulnerability across multiple market segments.

Charles Curry, Managing Director at Chronos, said: "Tony's wealth of experience in the timing industry and experience of international standards will enhance our ability to develop innovative solutions for emerging markets looking for precise time and phase solutions."

Centrify, a specialist in securing enterprise identities against cyber-attack, now has a two-tier channel strategy in EMEA. Two new distributors, Exertis VAD in the UK and Azlan in France, will help to strengthen Centrify's presence in those regions and support its resellers there.

Commenting on the new strategy, Matt Pearson, EMEA channel director, Centrify, said: "More organisations are turning to Centrify to solve their identity, security and productivity issues, but it's crucial that we continue to provide the very highest quality of service and support to the very partners powering that growth.

"Integrating Exertis VAD and Azlan will provide us with the additional firepower to support the momentum we are seeing for identity solutions as the technology moves into the mainstream."

Exertis VAD Solutions will provide Centrify with the additional marketing, sales and technical support needed for the Office 365 and Apple reseller markets in the United Kingdom.

Grahame Smee, managing director, Exertis VAD Solutions, added: "Until now, we've been working with a limited number of Centrify products with great success. Formalising the partnership in this way is a natural progression of our relationship with Centrify and will provide us with extended access into the company's product portfolio which in turn will enhance our offering further."

Azlan will support Centrify's enterprise growth in France.

Survey results suggest that more than 15 million UK adults rank being stuck on hold with a telephone operator their top annoyance of 2015.

The findings correlate with fresh data showing that almost one in three UK customer care managers believe their biggest weakness is reliance on old customer service techniques, including traditional call centres.

Commissioned independently by Lithium Technologies, a survey of 2,000 UK consumers revealed that the top three factors that drive customer call centre annoyance are communication barriers caused by language differences (56%), having to go through several options and security checks before talking to a real person (48%), and the call centre representative sounding like they're following a script and not offering personalised advice (37%).

From an industry perspective, communication providers (34.20%) and utility companies (33.20%) frustrated consumers most, followed by financial services institutions (23%).

The consumer findings come amidst evidence from UK businesses that customer service expectations are continuing to increase. A survey of 250 UK customer care managers, conducted on behalf of Lithium Technologies, showed that four in five (82.40%) believe customers have become more demanding over the past three years. And more than half of them (56%) suggested that digital will evolve to become a primary customer care channel, minimising response times and better serving consumers.

The customer care survey highlighted that while managers believe digital strategies are critical for meeting rising customer expectations, they are under-resourced to take the necessary steps to adapt.

The survey found that almost a third (31.20%) of customer care managers believe their biggest weakness is reliance on old customer service techniques, while more than a quarter (27.20%) said their main weakness is underinvesting in a consistent 360-degree customer service experience across all channels.

When asked about the future, more than half (56.00%) of customer care managers said that customer service will evolve to focus more on using online channels to minimise response time to queries, while almost a third (29.20%) said customer service will be an entirely online process within five years.

Lack of financial resources is restraining digital transformation within many customer service departments. More than six in 10 (62%) customer care managers admitted that having the necessary budget is the main issue their company faces in adapting to digital customer service.

"This data highlights the ineffectiveness of traditional call centres in meeting rising customer expectations, as well as the growing need for UK businesses to explore new ways to engage customers, particularly in the digital sphere," said Katy Keim, Chief Marketing Officer of Lithium Technologies.

"Today's customer expects a premium level of customer service, and businesses that don't evolve beyond the traditional call centre risk being left behind."

Volta Data Centres has formed a partnership with the London Internet Exchange (LINX), one of the world's largest network peering exchanges.

As part of the agreement, Volta will become a Virtual Point-of-Presence (vPoP) for LINX, enabling LINX members to connect directly to a core LINX PoP.
 
With over 650 members LINX is one of the largest Internet exchange points worldwide, handling over 3Tbps of traffic daily across its public exchange alone. Traffic over its private inter-connect facilities more than doubles that figure.
 
By becoming a LINX member, organisations benefit from access to direct routes from a large number of international peering partners. This improves resilience and reduces latency, thus improving their overall network performance.
 
Volta has enlisted the help of Ai Networks to provide the connectivity to enable LINX connections within their data centre.

Jennifer Holmes, Head of Sales at LINX said: "With more network operators trying to interconnect with each other in London than ever before, our vPoP and ConneXions partners provide an important service for networks wishing to participate remotely.

"We're delighted Ai Networks and Volta have joined us as LINX partners and look forward to working together to help improve the Internet for all."
 
Jonathan Arnold, Managing Director of Volta Data Centres, added: "We are excited to be only the 4th UK data centre to become a LINX vPoP. This announcement strengthens our credentials as a viable data centre option away from the traditional Docklands area."
 

Colt's cloud UC service is now available across Europe. Applications can be accessed from mobile or desktop device, supporting the growing demand for mobile working and BYOD in the workplace, said the firm.

Colt's Cloud UC offering is a suite of managed cloud-based communication and collaboration services.

Richard Oosterom, EVP Voice Services at Colt, said: "For CIOs, a major barrier to UC adoption has been the lack of understanding of the business benefits, making it hard to argue the case for replacing expensive PBX and telephony equipment.

"The difficulty of then integrating collaboration tools with existing systems, and employing a team with the wide-ranging skills to maintain the services, has delayed the uptake of UC further.

"Colt's integrated voice and data network services removes those barriers and means that businesses can benefit from the digital transformation potential of UC, while still reducing both capex and opex costs."

A new UC system launched by Panasonic works with the KX-NS series and is compatible with multiple-devices including smartphone, tablet, PC and Mac.

Called UC Pro, the vendor says the system is its 'most versatile, user-friendly' yet, and can be integrated into existing infrastructures and features a capacity of more than 2,500 extensions, voice and video call, instant messaging text and audio chat.

Schedules and presence can also be managed, while the system integrates with Microsoft Outlook and most other CRM systems.

Aimed at the medium-to-large-sized business market, the system also promises time-saving and remote-worker friendly functionality, as well as cost saving and a reduced Total Cost of Ownership.

Panasonic Marketing Manager for Communication Solutions, Carlos Osuna, said: "We know that for businesses today time is becoming increasingly scarce, while the need to stay productive on the move is rising steadily.

"That's why we've designed UC Pro to work seamlessly with the KX-NS series, offering a complete communications solution."

Sennheiser is celebrating its 70th anniversary as its Contact Centre and Office (CC&O) segment continues to demonstrate sustained growth since its launch in 2003.

A broad portfolio of products lays the foundation for the reformulation of Sennheiser CC&O. In 2014 and 2015 it launched the SP 10 and SP 20 speakerphones and now D10 series of DECT wireless headsets, refreshing its range of endpoint solutions.

Sennheiser CC&O also made significant investment in its sales operations over the past year with a focus on five key geographic markets - the United States, UK, Germany, France and Benelux (Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg).

It has established formal strategic relationships with a number of Unified Communications partners including Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Mitel, Alcatel-Lucent, Polycom, and Avaya, and continues to develop global alliances to create both local and international sales opportunities.

As the organisation celebrates its 70th anniversary, it remains family owned and operated, headed by a third generation of the Sennheiser family. The current CEOs, Daniel Sennheiser and Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, are the grandchildren of the company's founder, Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser.