Comms Dealer

Supplier of billing and provisioning solutions, Union Street Technologies, has refreshed its brand identity, updating its company logo, corporate imagery and website among other significant changes.

The company has also introduced a new strapline, 'Powering Your Potential', which it says encapsulates its commitment to providing innovative solutions, backed by support and consultancy services designed to maximise efficiency and profitability for its clients.

The refresh follows an eventful period of growth and change for Union Street. Over the past few year the company has developed its solutions beyond just billing to increasingly act as a central point for back office integration, and as a profit centre for resellers.

The company has also seen a steady rise in its customer base which now numbers in excess of 450 companies from across the telecoms channel including resellers, network aggregators and carriers.

Head of Sales and Marketing Vincent Disneur said: "Redesigning our branding was necessary to better represent the sophistication of our solutions, our market position and the many changes in service delivery there have been at Union Street.

"We now have over 80 staff supporting clients and developing our products compared to only 52 at the start of 2013. This enables us to provide more training, account management and field-based consultancy services, and helps clients to leverage the maximum value from our solutions.

"This is why we have chosen to refresh our brand under our new strap line, 'Powering your potential'. We believe this sums up our key mission, to be a valued partner that's working with you to fully realise the potential of your business."

Dell is to acquire data storage firm EMC for £44bn in what is reported to be the biggest deal of its kind between two tech companies. The combination of Dell and EMC is expected to create the world's largest privately controlled integrated technology company.

"The combination of Dell and EMC creates an enterprise solutions powerhouse bringing our customers innovation across their entire technology environment," said Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell.

"Our new company will be well-positioned for growth in the most strategic areas of next generation IT including digital transformation, software-defined data centre, converged infrastructure, hybrid cloud, mobile and security.

"Our investments in R&D and innovation along with our privately controlled structure will give us scale, strength and flexibility, deepening our relationships with customers of all sizes.

"I am incredibly excited to partner with the EMC, VMware, Pivotal, VCE, RSA and Virtustream teams and am personally committed to the success of our new company, our customers and partners."

Joe Tucci, Chairman and CEO of EMC, added: "The waves of change we now see in our industry are unprecedented and, to navigate this change, we must create a new company for a new era. I truly believe that the combination of EMC and Dell will prove to be a winning combination for our customers, employees, partners and shareholders."

VMware, which was acquired by EMC in 2004 and operated as subsidiary, will remain a publicly-traded company and the transaction is expected to accelerate VMware's growth across all of its businesses through synergies with Dell's solutions and go-to-market channels.

Commsworld is set to exceed its 2015 £10m revenue target by 28%, with growth driven by the firm's expanding services portfolio based on the build-out of its Scottish centric network.

Commsworld CEO Ricky Nicol said: "2015 has been the biggest year in our history. We're now competing at a far higher level than ever before and we know for a fact the Scottish operations of Vodafone and BT are taking notice."

Earlier this month Commsworld announced a £12m contract with CGI to be a key provider in the City of Edinburgh Council's new ICT contract that will see it help to deliver a 400 site Wide Area Network (WAN) delivering faster and more reliable connectivity for schools, libraries and other council buildings.

The deal was made possible through its strategic partnership with network infrastructure provider CityFibre.

In May this year the two firms launched the Edinburgh CORE project, which will see a pure fibre network installed in Edinburgh allowing business to access Internet speeds estimated at 100 times faster than the UK average.

The Edinburgh project - the largest Gigabit City project in the UK - will future-proof the capital's economy providing the foundations for a further digital boom and is expected to attract inward investment that could see GDP boosted by a 1%.

Commsworld was also selected as a preferred partner for CityFibre's 'Gigabit City' project in Aberdeen, helping drive business in the North East.

Nicol added: "Our partnership with CityFibre and the opportunity to deliver on the hugely exciting Edinburgh Gigabit City project by propelling my own home city to the forefront of the digital revolution is a source of immense pride.

"However, the most satisfying part of our success is being able to offer more people a strong career that will allow them to share in our success. We've risen steadily to 50 full-time staff in recent years and we expect to get that up to around 60 by the end of the year.

"With all these talented individuals on board it is a very exciting time to be part of the Commsworld team taking on the likes of Virgin and BT, and that excitement shows no sign of winding down any time soon."

Ericsson-LG distributor Pragma will unveil the new iPECS Cloud platform at this year's Comms Vision event at Gleneagles (4-6th November).

The platform combines the functionality of the iPECS on-premise IP-PBX with the flexibility and benefits of cloud technology.

"Pragma resellers are excited about being able to offer a single feature set with full resiliency options regardless of whether it is delivered via the public cloud, private cloud, on-premise or as a hybrid solution," said Pragma MD Tim Brooks.

Pragma's channel proposition includes four engagement models: Dealer, wholesale reseller, Virtual Service Provider (VSP) or full service provider.

The VSP proposition enables resellers to connect their own SIP Trunks into a dedicated instance within the platform.

Brooks added: "We have been blown away by the response to our platform pre-launch and have huge interest in all four of our engagement models."

Andre Mellet, Technical Director, 5G Communications, added: "The combination of the feature set, an integrated approach to on-premise and cloud, as well as a business model that ensures a great profit opportunity means that we cannot wait to get our hands on the iPECS Cloud."

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."