Comms Dealer

Despite more than three quarters of the UK's SMEs admitting to relying on the internet to operate, half of those managing them are oblivious to the frequency and cost of downtime to their business.

That's according to research by IT and telecoms firm Daisy Group which also found that 47 per cent of business managers[ believe that their business never or rarely falls victim to poor connectivity, while a quarter admit to ignoring the issue altogether.

In reality, companies experience an average of 45 minutes of downtime each week- equating to over £500 per employee, per year, in lost productivity (the equivalent of a whole working week).

When asked, workers said that the average period of downtime lasts for 15 minutes, but some even said they have been without the internet at work for more than an hour at a time.

Graham Harris, product director at Daisy Group, said: "Unfortunately, many businesses often believe that 'one size fits all' when it comes to connectivity and are often lured into a deal based on price alone.

"If your Internet connection is not built with your users and business activities in mind, then it is likely to struggle with the demands made of it, potentially resulting in lost productivity and sales, and leading to poor customer service."

As part of the study, business managers were also asked how often they should be reviewing their connectivity provision. One in eight (13%) said they had no idea, 17 per cent said only when the contract is due for renewal, and one in six (17%) said only when staff start complaining.

The research was conducted to assess awareness amongst key decision-makers for the government-backed scheme, SuperFast Britain, which provides connectivity funding of up to £3,000 to eligible firms and discovered that 42 per cent were completely unaware of the initiative.

The study also looked into how employees fill the time during internet outages and found that two thirds (60 per cent) say they have allowed themselves to be distracted by personal business during instances of downtime, sometimes for more than half an hour.

Nearly half (48%) say they use downtime as an excuse to take an extra coffee break, a quarter spend the time on their smartphone to check Facebook, nine per cent look for a new job, and seven per cent even indulge in a spot of retail therapy. Just 30 per cent said they take the opportunity to swot up on some work-related reading.

Harris added: "Unlike a gas or electricity supply, you cannot simply install a business' internet connection and forget about it. Businesses should be reviewing their connectivity in line with business change and growth to ensure that their staff, and subsequently the business' growth, aren't being hampered by slow internet speeds and an unreliable service."

To help SMEs demystify the jargon surrounding business technology, Daisy has launched a series of short videos called #TechinThree designed to teach people the basics in just three minutes.

Swindon-based Excalibur's CEO James Phipps is to appear on the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme on September 26th to respond to questions from presenter John Humphrys on the new leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn.

Phipps has previously worked with the BBC to offer thoughts on topics such as migration and legislation regarding overtime, and how it could affect businesses.

Karen Thornley, Head of Marketing at Excalibur, commented: "With his always fair and positive insight, James has become an important voice for SMEs, so it is encouraging to see his presence required by such an influential, flagship programme as Today."

Pictured above:  James Phipps (left) and John Humphrys

Node4 has become a Gold Cloud Provider of Veeam Software, a partnership that gives Node4's cloud customers access to a self-service portal from where anyone can quickly restore data from backups.

Mark Wilson, Cloud Architect, Node4, commented: "Our customers were telling us that high-speed recovery of data was placing an increasing burden on their IT teams and the traditional support process was causing delays that modern businesses, which require access to their data 24/7, cannot tolerate.

"As a result of our investment in Veeam our customers can empower their teams to recover files and virtual machines faster, while maintaining control of the backup process itself."

Wilson also noted that the combination of Node4's investment in Veeam Software and NetApp storage allows a significant part of the backup process to utilise storage snapshots, reducing load on production infrastructure and avoiding limitations of a traditional backup window.

With other recent investments Node4 is now able to offer a suite of data availability technologies to its customers, from cloud and on-premise to colocation equipment, through to cloud applications such as Office365.

Laurent Garcia, Senior Hosting & Cloud Manager EMEA, Veeam Software, added: "The integration of Veeam Availability Suite with Node4's cloud services will allow us to address a common target in search of efficient, secure and agile services."

Interoute has expanded its network in the Netherlands, adding 43 route km of fibre optic cables and increasing network capacity by 21% in its Amsterdam city network.

Part of this expansion includes the addition of 22 route km of cable between the Amsterdam Science Park and Amsterdam South-East areas of the city.

The improved connectivity in these areas will support businesses in the region, by enabling more high capacity data to flow and adding diverse resilient routes in this high traffic area.

Over the last three years Interoute has invested in the expansion of its Amsterdam city network to meet increasing demands for higher capacity. The current city network spans 230km of duct routes, and more than 275 route km of fibre optic cables, and is continuing to grow.

Amsterdam is one of the largest European markets for collocation and international capacity.

Martijn Ten Kate, Country Manager, Interoute Netherlands, said: "This expansion is testament to Amsterdam's importance as a global Internet exchange and key location for multinational enterprises. Not only are we expanding capacity, we are also offering diversity on routes in and out of Amsterdam that are imperative in this ever growing city."

Consumer preferences for self-education and self-help, coupled with the prolific way they broadcast thoughts, ideas, compliments and complaints about brands on social media, is forcing a sea change within the contact centre industry, according to analysis from Frost & Sullivan.

Vendors and end users alike are adapting to new interaction channels that provide richer self-service capabilities, said the firm.

"Contact centre systems suppliers in EMEA will need to expand more heavily into adjacent customer support areas such as omni-channel support, big data, and mobility," said Frost & Sullivan Information & Communication Technologies Principal Analyst Nancy Jamison. "Integrating disparate solutions will quicken the move to omni-channel customer care."

In the past few years, the slowly recovering global economy has affected buying decisions and held back investment in new systems and upgrades. The emergence of hosted and cloud services, which allow companies to reduce capital and operational expenditure on contact centre solutions, is further affecting market revenues.

While contact centre systems providers continue to produce feature-rich premise-based solutions, the spectre of the cloud will not go away. Hence, providers are bound to take an 'if you cannot beat them join them' attitude and answer with cloud-based options of their own, says the research firm.

"Over and above discussing roadmap plans for various trends, buyers should understand how contact centre systems providers are addressing the cloud," added Jamison. "Whether it makes sense for a company to move all or part of their systems to the cloud, it is imperative for end users to understand its bearing on their infrastructure and business in the long run and make the right choice."

A10 Networks has introduced a new partner programme in Europe called Affinity, giving partners access to deal registration which EMEA channel director Chris Gale says will give him deeper insights into the state of its pipeline.

With enterprise sales in the ascendency A10 Networks has a core of around 20 UK specialist partners in network security and product bundling.

With the new programme in place, Gale is looking to do mutual demand creation, recognising that there is a limited number of potential partners with the right customer base and skills to play here, but he is also looking at the US market which is about a year ahead and foresees the expected growth in EMEA.

With the EMEA programme, he expects the European market to have just slightly fewer partners - perhaps 160 compared to the 200 in the US. Service providers can also be both partners and end users, so represent another part of the market.

"In the last six months we have come to recognise the need for a better partner programme and training. Customers expect partners with a certain knowledge and who can solve problems," said Gale.

The new A10 Affinity Partner Programme offers three tiers, Platinum, Gold, and Bronze that specify investments, discounts, and enablement levels.

Kirsten Lee, A10 Networks vice president of worldwide channels: "Our data shows that a significant part of our customer base will buy in excess of eight times their initial purchase. That says a lot about the value we give partners."

A new report from Juniper Research forecasts rapid adoption for 5G from 2025 onwards, with active connections representing a threefold increase from 2024 to reach 240 million by then.

However, this will represent a limited global reach, accounting for approximately 3% of global mobile connections.

Juniper found that the many advantages of 5G such as higher data rates, longer battery life, greater user/device support, and reduced latency will result in an ideal environment for the proliferation of new connected service applications and devices. 5G will be the subject of the most complex set of standardisation activities over the next 5 years before first roll-out of commercial services in 2020.

The new research - 5G Market Strategies: 4G LTE Evolution, Spectrum Analysis & Opportunities 2015-2025 - observed that getting the spectrum issues right will be a critical factor in the success of 5G.

"It is critical to 5G's success that the most feasible and appropriate spectrum bands are assigned, not only to support existing high bandwidth and capacity requirements, but also the wide ranging devices and applications contributing towards the Internet of Everything," said research author Nitin Bhas.

While it has not yet been confirmed which frequency bands are going to be utilised for 5G by operators, the twin issues that need to be surmounted are the timing and cost of the spectrum. These will play pivotal roles in deciding the speed of 5G roll-outs.

Juniper expects Japan and South Korea to be among the first countries to launch commercial 5G services.

A number of operators from this region have chosen their suppliers and set a commercial service dates.

The region will witness a very high rate of growth in connections similar to that of North America.

While none of the US operators have made any public announcements regarding 5G trials or pilots, Juniper feels that given its current 4G leadership, the US will closely follow the Far East and China in deployment and adoption.

Tech Data has appointed its first dedicated business development executive for HP multifunctional devices covering the UK and Ireland markets.

Mike Leary has moved across to this newly-created post having spent the last three years working on cross-vendor business development within the Print and Supplies team.

He previously held the position of Senior Retail Account Manager and has worked at Tech Data for almost a decade in total.

Leary said: "HP's managed print offerings will be one of the key areas I'll be working on, helping resellers to optimise the usage of print devices and consumption of accessories. This is a big opportunity and one we really want to develop."

Tech Data distributes the vendor's full range of laser and inkjet, single and multi-function devices.

Romford-based Cloud Telephones is on the hunt for additional sales staff and new partners to join its channel programme.

The VoIP and connectivity services provider has witnessed a sales spurt this summer and expects the trend to continue at pace.

Cloud Telephones markets hosted voice and connectivity services to UK SMBs and converts leads into confirmed sales before passing them over to local reseller partners to fulfil and manage.

Income on the sale is shared between Cloud Telephones and the reseller, and an increase in new business has forced the firm to recruit more staff to deal with the number of enquiries.

John Carter, Managing Director, said: "The market is being driven by strong uptake of higher speed fibre-based broadband services that make hosted VoIP practical. Businesses are starting to understand that it works and is reliable.

"VoIP is usually the starting point for hosted services. Once they know it works, businesses soon start to ask about online storage and backup, Office 365 and other applications. The resellers who own these subscriptions will own those customers."

Cloud Telephones currently has 80 resellers on the programme across the UK.

Westcon is to market and distribute Pulse Secure's full line of SSL VPN and Mobile Security solutions including the latest centralised management, policy control and governance console, Pulse One. 

Pulse Secure solutions are sold into BYOD and cloud environments and are said to be easy to configure, install and deploy out of the box in as little as 30 minutes. 

Pulse One provides added visibility through a single collective view of compliance including security alerts and appliance health checks.   

"The expansion of Pulse Secure's distributor network reflects growing acceptance of our mobile security solutions and increasing demand for our products incorporating advanced security features," said Doug Erickson, VP Worldwide Partners at Pulse secure. 

Willem de Haan, Senior VP and practice lead of Westcon Security Solutions, EMEA, said: "Our solution provider partners count on Westcon Group to identify, help bring to market and support technologies that solve business issues and position them as business advisors.

"The Pulse Secure portfolio - supported by Westcon Security Solutions - enables our partners to manage and enforce a BYOD security strategy that can distinguish them in the fast-changing IoT landscape."