Comms Dealer

Logicalis UK has appointed Ben Gale as UK Managing Director, reporting to Arnaud Spirlet, Head of Logicalis Europe.

Gale brings nearly two decades of experience in leading successful sales and growth plans in the technology industry.

He joins from Tensator Group where he was Chief Executive Officer.

Before that, he worked as Vice President of The Logic Group, having previously been Vice President of NCR Corporation where he defined the company's sales and growth strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Gale has also worked as National Sales Director for Reed Business Group and at Xerox where he was General Manager for the EMEA region.

CEO of Logicalis Group, Mark Rogers, commented: "Ben brings the industry knowledge and leadership skills required to navigate a changing UK market, where software, analytics and cloud are becoming ever more important to customers, and where Logicalis UK needs to have a strong market position."

Pulsant has appointed Chris Roberts as Channel Director, moving from from global solutions and service provider MTI.

He will oversee the growth and development of its partner programme.

Roberts brings more than 15 years sales experience to the role, with a range of expertise in selling both directly to the corporate marketplace, and collaboratively through the partner channel.

Prior to that, Roberts worked for iomart and Datapipe where he was tasked with building, promoting and delivering indirect programmes for the channel community, and his achievements included several key wins across multiple vertical segments.

At iomart Roberts helped deliver several million pounds of new annualised revenue for the company as well as assisting the iomart team to gain accreditation as an approved Dell managed services provider.

Excalibur has scored the winning goal to clinch a deal to provide Nottingham Forest FC with managed mobile phone services, supplying 60 lines to the Championship club.

Excalibur will manage mobiles for the club's players, management and staff.

Nottingham Forest FC's Head of IT Steve Dickman said: "We very much wanted to work with a provider who would take full responsibility and give us just one throat to choke. It is a big, time-saving benefit to us in the hectic and fast-changing world of football to work with a company where a consistent point of contact will respond very quickly and effectively to our needs.

"More than ever our players and management need enhanced levels of security for their phones, which Excalibur understood and sorted immediately. It was time to move away from gimmicks such as buy-backs and go for top quality instead."

James Phipps, Excalibur's CEO, added: "We are already a key supplier to two Premier League football clubs, as well as managing mobile, fixed-line and IT services to several leading names in cricket and ice hockey."

Barracuda has added CMS Distribution to its distribution line-up in the UK and Ireland

CMS Distribution is tasked with recruiting new reseller partners in the storage and security industries.

Originally founded in 1988, CMS Distribution works with over 3,000 resellers, employs over 215 staff, and has five offices spanning across the UK and Ireland.

Justin Griffiths, Group Director Software Solutions at CMS Distribution said: "Barracuda is a natural fit to our existing portfolio. Security is a space that CMS Distribution has not focused on previously, but it is an area that we will continue to invest in as we move forward towards our development goal.

"We believe this is an exciting time to position this technology to our customers, as the market is moving forward and embraces mobility, cloud and enhanced infrastructure."

Business analytics software and services specialist SAS has announced plans to expand its centre in Dublin, adding 150 jobs over the next three years.

New roles include multi-lingual business development and sales specialists, customer engagement specialists as well as data scientists and software engineers.

The new centre, which will be initially located at University College Dublin's industry partnership centre, will see an addition of Inside Sales and Customer Contact Centre to support sales of its data analytics software into markets across EMEA.

SAS expects to increase its overall workforce six-fold. Additionally, the move has gained the support of the Department of Jobs through IDA Ireland, a non-commercial, semi-state body promoting Foreign Direct Investment into Ireland.

The company also plans to approach mid-market organisations which have no history of using data and no in-house expertise. According to SAS, the new centre will benefit those companies by making its Analytics more accessible to them, across a wide range of territories and industry sectors.

Carl Farrell, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer, SAS, said: "As a global company with offices all over the world we wanted to expand in a city as vibrant as Dublin which has such a thriving technology ecosystem.

"We are now experiencing a 'democratisation of analytics' where more and more organisations - including small and medium sized enterprises - are investing in analytical software and services that don't require a significant up-front investment.

"Our new centre will provide the extra capacity needed to support customers as they embark on this data analytics journey."

Contact centre specialist Sabio has extended its Network Services portfolio with the addition of a range of data connectivity offerings.

Intended to simplify the deployment of end-to-end customer contact technology solutions, including the provision of the company's Sabio OnDemand hosted SaaS contact centre solution, Sabio Network Services' data connectivity services cover SIP Trunking support, Internet Access, VPLS and MPLS Wide Area Networks, as well as data centre services with the colocation and hosting of customer equipment.

"The introduction of our data connectivity services complements Sabio's broader customer contact technology portfolio, and is all about reducing deployment complexity and ongoing operating overhead for our customers," commented Ben Le Feuvre, Head of Sabio's Network Services operation.

"Traditionally, organisations have had to engage a range of different suppliers for their specialist customer contact technology, connectivity and ongoing support requirements.

"At Sabio we're committed to streamlining the solutions and service supply chain for our customers, and our data connectivity offering will extend that by helping us assume even greater responsibility for the whole telephony estate with our single point of support model."

Cars worth no more than £500 are set to descend on Gamma's Newbury HQ for the start of this year's Gamma Ball Rally (16-18th September). The 33 cars will be heading off to Bruges for their first stop before making their way to Amsterdam for two nights.

The teams will be tasked with various fun and challenging activities to compete for points along their journey.

The final evening will be celebrated with a black tie gala dinner and 'money can't buy' Auction of Promises.

Gamma MD John Haw said: "While the Gamma Ball Rally aims to offer a memorable experience for those participating, the main goal is to raise money for charity. This year we're supporting Action Through Enterprise and SpecialEffects. 

"With almost £53,000 already raised, we've secured some brilliant auction lots from our generous sponsors that we hope will raise lots of money for these two well-deserving causes. The money raised from the rally truly does make a difference."

All money raised from Gamma Ball Rally, including team entry fees, auction bids and donations, go direct to Gamma's nominated charities.

Chris Goodman, Sales Director at Focus Group, added: "This is the fourth time we've participated in the Gamma Ball Rally and we're excited to be involved in such a great charity event.

"First and foremost, it's about raising money for two fantastic causes and we're proud to be part of it.

"It's also a brilliant opportunity to spend an enjoyable few days together and with the other teams. We're looking forward to meeting everyone at the starting line and seeing all of the weird and wonderful outfits!"

Nimans has launched a new package of support services designed to drive Sennheiser headset sales, including free training, accreditation assistance and on-site product demonstrations.

Official Sennheiser resellers also gain access to marketing services, price support, trial samples and account input direct from the manufacturer.

"Sennheiser and Nimans help resellers stand out from the crowd in an increasingly competitive headset arena," claimed Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales at Nimans.

"Sennheiser has a rich heritage of audio performance, synonymous with many of the world's top musicians. This same ethos has been harnessed in an evolving feature-rich headset portfolio that can help resellers differentiate themselves and gain a competitive market advantage."

Payment service provider NetPay has linked up with NFRN Commercial (the voice of independent retailers representing over 16,000 news and convenience retailers across the UK and Ireland) to lower the cost of taking card payments for NFRN members.

NetPay offers customers online processing, payment terminal and merchant services. The firm's MD, Carl Churchill, said: "We chose NFRN Commercial because of its commitment to getting a better deal for independents. It works hard to help retailers develop their sales and profits to achieve their potential.

"NetPay too are committed to this, saving the average retail newsagent 59% on their merchant services rates. NetPay customers not only benefit from these savings but also insights into their customers through our reporting and analytics tool Revolution.

"Many UK retailers, particularly those in the c-store sector are still not benefiting from the EU's changes to Visa Debit transactions charges, either because they are not aware of the changes or their incumbent provider has chosen not to pass the potential savings on to their customer."

These changes are particularly beneficial to the c-store sector and NFRN members, pointed out Churchill.

"With the charging moving from a pence per instance to a percentage, the times where card charges heavily erode your margin on low value transactions are a thing of the past," he added. "More cost-effective transaction charges mean a bigger promotion of card use and a reduction in the charges and risk associated with banking cash. Many retailers forget that it costs their business money to bank cash and cheques. The average costs for banking £100 in cash is 60p with the main high street banks."

NFRN CEO Paul Baxter added: "The relationship with NetPay gives retailers increased choice and access to the benefit of the recent changes to the Visa Debit interchange charges. This change is something the NFRN has supported and provided evidence on as part of the European's Unions review process into these costs and their impact on our members."

Inventory as a service specialist Agilitas has celebrated 25 years in business with the last 12 months pointing to more significant growth to come.

The company manages IT spare parts inventories and provides technical services to customers across 32 countries and 9,000 locations throughout Europe. These services include technical training, support, product repair and specialist engineering resource.

February this year saw a change in ownership which helped the business increase turnover by over 30%. Staff numbers have grown over 50% from 53 to 80 people.

To mark its 25th birthday Agilitas relaunched its website and appointed a new Marketing Director, Richard Eglon.

"25 years is a great achievement for any business and demonstrates our longevity and ability to adapt to changing technology and the environment around us," said Shaun Lynn, CEO of Agilitas.

"We're delighted to have Richard on board. His appointment is a key part of our strategy going forwards and will help support our continued growth and defining our company proposition."