Comms Dealer

GCI MD John Whitty has moved to Solar Communications as CEO and will leverage his 30 years industry experience to develop the company's portfolio and technical expertise and drive transformational growth. Whitty led GCI during its transformation from a traditional comms provider to become a provider of cloud, hosted voice and connectivity managed services.

At Solar Communications Whitty is charged with replicating GCI's transformation by driving operational effectiveness and developing the company's market proposition.

He said: "The Solar board has provided a clear mandate of obtaining growth and service excellence. Given its significant, existing client base and dedication to service, Solar now has an excellent opportunity to become the service provider of choice for all client communications and ICT requirements."

Mark Colquhoun, founder and majority shareholder of Solar Communications, will be a director on the board and focus on the strategic growth through acquisitions, sourcing new business opportunities and key partnerships.

Colquhoun said: "John has a proven ability to drive transformational growth, with the kind of operational leadership experience that we need to realise Solar's ambitious plans."

Ben Marnham, Chairman of Solar Communications, added: "John's experience of growing businesses through organic and inorganic means, combined with his technical heritage, further strengthens our ability to execute on our strategic plan of building an exceptional managed services provider."

John Whitty began his career as an engineer in the British Army and has held various senior technical posts since then, including CTO at Pipex during an acquisitive and organic growth period prior to its disposal to TalkTalk and private equity acquirers. Whitty has an MSc in Data Communications.

Enterprise data security company Vormetric has appointed Chris Smith as EMEA Director of Channels.

Joining from Fortinet, and reporting directly to the company's vice president and general manager EMEA, Louise Bulman, he will have responsibility for overseeing all of Vormetric's EMEA channel activities.

Smith will be in charge of developing and driving Vormetric's existing channel programme in the region, with a focus on new partner recruitment and establishing solid go to market plans with existing and new partners across the UK and Europe.

"The relationships we share with our channel partners are of the utmost importance and vital to the continued success of our business," said Bulman. "As an all-channel company, the distributors and resellers we work with are the ones we rely on to bring our products to market and, crucially, close business deals every single day."

Smith previously served as head of Channel UK and Ireland at Kaspersky Lab and, before that, director channels Northern Europe at McAfee Security.

"Whether tokenisation, application encryption, cloud encryption gateway or third party key management and Teradata encryption solutions, Vormetric tackles today's most pressing data security challenges head-on," said Smith.

Former MD of audio conferencing company Worldwide Group Paul Bailey is in a stable condition in hospital following a crash during a charity motor show in Hal Farrug, Malta, which also left 26 spectators injured.

Bailey's £750,000 Porsche Spyder span out of control and ploughed through the safety barrier into the crowd. 

Bailey, 55, and his wife Selena each owned 45% of the private shares in Worldwide Group Holdings and sold the business to Daisy in 2012 for £28m.

Lynchwood-based Worldwide Group was founded in 2001 and reported revenues of £36.4m and EBITDA of £4m in 2011, before its acquisition.

Bailey also made the headlines when he became the first person to own the 'Holy Trinity of hypercars' - the McLaren P1, LaFerrari and Porsche 918.

Mitel has bolstered its sales operations in EMEA with the appointment of two new sales executives.

The appointments come as Mitel expands its cloud and integrated real-time communications offering across Western Europe.

Wolfram Fischer joins the vendor as Senior Vice President for EMEA, moving from Aruba Networks EMEA.

In a previous role he managed EMEA and APAC for Siemens Enterprise Communications; and worked at HP heading up the Professional Services Unit in EMEA, managing the Enterprise Hardware and Service Business in Germany and was worldwide head of sales for the HP Services Unit.

Mitel has also appointed Christian Fron as Vice President of Sales for the DACH region having previously been Managing Director of DeTeWe. Fron's role will supplement the existing sales leads in EMEA.

These appointments coincide with the simplication of Mitel's Western Europe sales structure.

Graham Bevington, Mitel's Chief Sales Officer, said: "We see the business communications market in EMEA as being on the verge of a technology revolution, as enterprises and carriers start to adopt new cloud-based and mobile services to drive their business.

"With over 25 years of experience, Wolfram Fischer and Christian Fron were selected based on their knowledge and expertise in the industry. They are the right choice to shape Mitel's transformation to real-time cloud and mobile solution providers."

Fischer said: "Mitel is primed to embrace the next evolution of real-time communications."

Fron added: "Moving to a DACH regional structure simplifies and leverages Mitel's best practice across the German speaking markets, ensuring our partners and customers have immediate access to the right specialists regardless of geography, and a more effective support network around developments in future technology trends."

Swyx telephony functions are now available for Skype for Business, meaning that all SwyxWare users who rely on Skype for Business (formerly Microsoft Lync) or Office 365 for messaging and collaboration can now take advantage of Swyx's enterprise telephony functions using Swyx Connector for Skype.

As an important part of the Swyx Client product family, the Swyx Connector for Skype offers access to a range of voice telephony features via Swyx and/or SIP phones using a common UC interface.

In addition, Skype licenses for basic and professional users can be replaced in favour of Swyx's more competitive pricing model.

The direct dialling out of Skype for Business, the synchronisation of presence information with SwyxWare and the access to the Skype Directory, are some of the key features included in the new client.

Also available in the Connector for Skype is choice of hot-keys, call handling (select, call transfer, hold, routing / forwarding, CLIR, call-waiting setting) and retrieval of voice mail.

"With the Swyx Connector for Skype, we have created the framework for a consistent user experience of Skype and Swyx applications for ongoing improvement of business processes, said Kai Froese, Director of Product Management at Swyx.

"The easy installation with Swyx for collaboration and telephony and also the support for additional functions such as fax or DECT, especially for the German market, all make the Swyx Connector for Skype attractive in an enterprise environment."

In addition to the Swyx Connector for Skype for Business, the latest SwyxWare release also contains other new enhancements including support for Windows 10 and support for additional third-party applications.

Reading-based Ultima Business Solutions has appointed Scott Dodds as CEO. He replaces former CEO and founder Max McNeill who becomes Chairman, taking on a more strategic role focused on acquisitions, recruitment and overseeing the move to a new HQ.

The shuffle signals the firm's impressive growth ambitions. McNeill stated: "We have taken the business from zero to £100m in just 25 years, and this has been achieved by purely organic growth without outside funding. We aim to hit £150m turnover in two years, breaking through the £200m barrier within five years.

"Ultima has recently made a number of significant investments to create a platform to take us to the next level, and we are positive that Scott will aid, and further strengthen, our future business success."

Dodds left Microsoft earlier this year to take on the role of VMWare's EMEA VP of Channels and Alliances, is set to take the helm at the business from 20 October.

Dodds added: "The relentless focus on delivering customer value through technology supported innovation and services has enabled Ultima to grow into a strong and trusted partner for customers and vendors alike.

"I am looking forward to playing a part in supporting this incredible Ultima team to continue to grow with its customers through the application of innovative technology and services."

Ultima celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and the company is set to launch a new website in the coming weeks, and has recently opened a new city office, five times bigger than its previous premises. The company has 350 employees and has also acquired a business park in Reading which will act as its HQ from 1st April 2016.

McNeill added: "With so much going on and the advent of the cloud, we are perfectly positioned for a significant surge in growth. Scott, with his immense skills, experience and knowledge of the market, is the perfect person to guide us to greater heights."

Avaya has expanded its executive team with the appointment of Morag Lucey as Chief Marketing Officer, with a remit to lead global marketing, including marketing communications and branding. She will report directly to President and CEO Kevin Kennedy.

"Morag is a smart, innovative business partner whose career spans more than 30 years in marketing, channels and general management within the technology and telecommunications space," said Kennedy. "Her proven history of increasing brand impact is exactly what Avaya needs to accelerate our position within the business communications software and services market category."

Lucey has a proven record of executing successful marketing strategy and programs that drive growth, improve and transform global brands, build for operational scale and create initiatives to quickly and efficiently support business momentum.

She comes to Avaya from her position as CEO of VirtualCMO, a marketing consulting firm focused on generating short term profitability and long term stability.

Prior to her CEO role, Lucey held top marketing positions at BAE Systems, serving as CMO, and at Convergys, serving as Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Product Management.

Lucey said: "Contextual communication between companies and customers, or within the organisation itself, drives engagement, and engagement drives employee and customer satisfaction. I'm excited to be part of the team and look forward to driving Avaya's brand into new and existing markets."

Lucey has prior Avaya experience, having spent five years with the company as Vice President of EMEA Marketing and Vice President of Global Marketing and Channel Management for small and midmarket business solutions.

Hats off to avsnet for collecting Cisco's Rising Star Commercial Partner of the Year award at the networking firm's UK Partner Awards held on 1st October.

Graham Fry, Managing Director at avsnet, said: "avsnet is delighted that Cisco UK has so publicly recognised the value of avsnet's contribution to Cisco's ongoing success. I am particularly proud that Cisco has highlighted our 'exceptional work and quality of execution' and I'd like to thank the whole team at avsnet for their hard work and commitment, enabling us to achieve this.

"More and more businesses are looking for a trusted provider to meet all their collaboration needs and this award, along with our recent Cisco Master Collaboration certification, demonstrates that avsnet is positioned to provide complete ownership of any collaboration platform and the network it resides on."

Gamma has bolstered its customer service levels with uninterrupted IT data centre operations using Zerto.

Gamma implemented the BC/DR software to protect its critical Microsoft applications (SQL Server, Windows App Servers, Web Servers, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync) while reducing power consumption and rack space.

Gamma required failover capabilities that can quickly restore critical applications within minutes of an outage. Zerto was chosen for its rapid recovery capability, ND ITS hardware agnostic approach allows seamless protection of virtualised applications with resiliency offered by rapid failover between two separate Gamma data centre sites that utilise SAN technology from different manufacturers.

Gamma is now evaluating a wider rollout of Zerto to protect additional critical parts of the business including VoIP, mobile and data services.

So called ‘moments that matter' are key to the career trajectory of senior IT leaders in UK, France and Germany, rather than day-to-day activities.

More than three-quarters of respondents (77%) believe their career success is defined by key moments that generate recognition and deliver success for the wider organisation.

Such 'moments' were identifies as new infrastructure changes; external events such as data outages and tech crisis; and responding to emerging customer requirements.

This is consistent across companies from different verticals and sizes, with 75% of IT leaders at SMEs agreeing with this statement.

The link between ‘moments that matter' and personal success is stronger for IT leaders that perceive themselves as ‘exceeding expectations' in their role (91%).

These ‘moments that matter' are also clearly identified when exploring their working relationships with suppliers. The majority of IT leaders (85%) agreed that technology issues are sometimes inevitable and that a partner proves its value when things go wrong (81% for SMEs). They understand the impact of service interruption and act accordingly.

The research shows that more than half (62%) of IT leaders believe their teams are more focused on strategic projects than keeping things running (60% for SMEs). However, an analysis of the moments that matter mentioned by respondents showed a conflict between their aspirations and the reality of their daily roles.

James Kershaw, Sales Director at Colt, said: "The results show how important it is to work with the right team - both in terms of your internal team and trusted suppliers and partners.

"It presents an opportunity for channel partners and resellers to build a closer relationship with their customers.

"What's interesting is that a similar proportion of IT leaders within enterprises and SMEs believe supplier trust is the most important element in ensuring successful outcomes, demonstrating the value of trusted partners.

"We are confident our channel partners will play a pivotal role in helping customers evolve the IT function into a strategic role - keeping their core services running in the background while they focus on what matters most to their businesses."