Comms Dealer

Software provider Advanced Computer Software Group has appointed Gordon Wilson as CEO.

Wilson joins with over 20 years general management experience in the software and business support sectors.

Former roles include serving as Managing Director at Kerridge Automotive Systems, ADP Dealer Services and more recently leading Aquilaheywood, a provider of pension and policy administration software and services.

All three software businesses experienced significant growth under his watch.

At Aquilaheywood, he was responsible for leading the management team to achieve 90% growth over a five year period.

In six years Advanced has grown its revenue to more than £200m; and the Group was acquired by private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners for an enterprise value of £750m in March 2015.

Brian Sheth, Co-Founder and President of Vista Equity Partners, said: "Gordon brings a wealth of experience to Advanced's Senior Management Team.

"His strong track record of growing businesses, combined with his strategic and motivational skills will drive forward Advanced's growth and enable the Group to fulfil its ambition of being regarded as a major player both in the UK and internationally."

Wilson added: "My goal is to build on the success of the business, focusing on expansion by investing in people, products, processes and systems and in turn providing innovative, cutting edge technology solutions to our customers."

Founded in 2008, Advanced employs more than 2,000 members of staff and provides healthcare, business and learning management software and services to 20,000 customers.

Maintel's interim results for the six month period to 30th June 2015 show revenues up 20% to £24.8m, with an increase in Group gross margin to 38.3% (H1 2014: 35.7%). Adjusted earnings per share were up 30% to 27.4p; while the proposed final dividend per share increased 38% to 12.8p (H1 2014: 9.3p).

Eddie Buxton, CEO, said: "After another successful period we have never been better placed, with a broader range of services and skills we have the ability to manage highly technical transformation projects for customers.

"Our new sales pipeline continues to grow and being appointed as an approved supplier on the new public sector network services framework agreement offers us the opportunity to tender for business not previously available to us."

Cloud-based UC and contact centre solution provider 8x8 Solutions has been positioned in Gartner's Leaders' quadrant in the annual Magic Quadrant for UCaaS Worldwide for the fourth consecutive year.

"Ensuring 8x8's position as a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader for UCaaS is essential in attracting the best channel partners," said Charles Aylwin, Channel Director at 8x8 Solutions.

"By constantly developing our technology we can make sure our partners are always providing their customers with the best possible products."

Kevin Scott-Cowell, 8x8 Solutions CEO, added: "This is another major milestone for the company as part of our ambitious growth plans.

"8x8 has had yet another fantastic year including innovative feature updates that address the concerns for CIOs, enhancing our scalable platforms, guaranteeing SLAs for optimal call quality and completing deployments for large enterprise accounts in just a few weeks."

Vik Verma, 8x8 Inc. CEO, stated: "We believe 8x8's continued success in the mid-market and enterprise, combined with our increased global footprint and product innovations, helped secure our longstanding top placement in the UCaaS Magic Quadrant."

Interoute is to on-board more scale, skills and new capabilities following its agreement to acquire European managed services provider Easynet. The transaction places an enterprise value of £402m on Easynet. On a pro forma basis, after giving effect to the acquisition, Interoute would have had total revenue of over €700m in the 12 months ended 30th June 2015.

The acquisition will expand Interoute's networked cloud and communications services to national and multinational enterprises across the world.

The deal will enable enterprise, Government and service provider customers of the merged group to access a full suite of the combined companies products and services.

In addition to increased products and services, the acquisition will bring an enhanced and expanded set of skills and capability to serve both companies' existing customers and new prospects across the world.

Interoute provides a range of unified connectivity, computing and communications products and services to multinational and national enterprises, such as UEFA, the European Space Agency, SCA and Saxo Bank, global telecommunications operators and Internet content providers.

The company was recently recognised as a Leader in Gartner's 2015 Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, Europe1 report.

Gareth Williams, Interoute's CEO, commented: "It's the next step in our acquisition strategy and moves us much closer to our goal of being the provider of choice to Europe's digital economy."

Mark Thompson, CEO of Easynet, added: "I believe this acquisition will bring great benefits to both Interoute's and Easynet's customers.

"The combined companies can offer broader and deeper connectivity options, as well as an expanded portfolio of products and services, and the acquisition will further expand our cloud hosting capability in Europe."

ShoreTel's market-makers are gearing up for the vendor's 2015 Accelerate Marketing Knowledge event to be staged at the Kilworth House Hotel, Leicestershire, on 23rd September.

Up to 50 marketers from ShoreTel's top UK channel partners will descend on the midlands venue where CMO Mark Roberts will present a scene-setting keynote.

His global marketing overview will be followed by more strategic insights from Adrian Hipkiss, VP & MD, ShoreTel EMEA in what is a packed day-long agenda.

Other key focus areas include demand generation, maximising social media opportunities, a workshop on how best to align the sales and marketing processes, along with practical examples of how partners have achieved success through ShoreTel's campaigns.

Event Director and MD of channel consultancy firm Bowan Arrow Andy Grant said: "The Accelerate Marketing Knowledge Series of annual events offer key channel partners an opportunity to meet face-to-face with ShoreTel's top level marketing experts, and gain insights into how they can effectively build on their marketing operations to drive more sales."

Witney-based hosting company Storm Internet has unveiled its new portal designed to give customers more control to manage all of their products and services via a single interface.

This 'first phase' launch offers improved navigation and layout, more centralisation of hosting services, and StormCloud Private customers now have increased control with the ability to create, modify, resize and delete their VMs and move them between their parent (hypervisor) servers.

Both private and public cloud customers  have more tools including the ability to enable load balancing between their VMs, back-up and restore VMs, manage settings and power management of VMs, connect via KVM over IP and monitor resource usage (CPU, bandwidth etc).

Customers can also create Custom Escalation Procedures directly via the portal; and have the ability to schedule PCI Compliance and vulnerability scans on their sites and servers and reports can be generated on demand.

Salim Benadel, CEO and founder of Storm Internet, said: "The aim of the new portal is to empower our customers, giving them more control over their hosted services and a range of additional tools at their fingertips.

"The ability for our customers to be able to set Custom Escalation Procedures via the portal is something we're proud of and emphasises what Storm is all about."

Gateshead-based IT firm Advantex has won new contracts to install superfast broadband services in several managed offices across Tyneside as part of a Government funded scheme.

The work, worth £150,000, will see fast growing Advantex Network Solutions undertaking IT infrastructure installations to enable secure Wi-Fi connection at Broadacre House on Market Street and Westgate Road's prestigious The Beacon business centre.

Other sites include the Mea Trust, a five-storey city centre building providing accommodation to charities at affordable rents and at accommodation across the North East owned and operated by The Office Company.

The move will provide faster and secure broadband services to dozens of businesses and organisations occupying the managed offices and is being carried out under the Broadband Connection Vouchers scheme.

This initiative has seen the Government set aside £150 million to enable businesses to apply for up to £3,000 to pay for super-fast broadband connection and associated hardware such as wireless and internet security.

Under the scheme, landlords are also eligible to apply for up to £3,000 worth of funding per tenant.

This is the latest success for Advantex, which as a registered supplier of the vouchers is in the vanguard of delivering the Go Digital scheme to businesses across the North East.

Advantex Director Stephen O'Connell said tenants at the sites stand to benefit well into the future from better access to services using their own super-fast secure networks.

"We are supporting businesses at these sites, paving the way to free funding to help them unlock their potential and underpin growth and expansion plans through the provision of safe and secure, super-fast Internet.

"Furthermore, these contracts are an example of how we are able to support customers benefit from the funding - from the initial application to the final installation and on-going support - with expertise and advice.

"More companies need to register and take advantage of an initiative that can help them to improve competitiveness and boost growth. After all, which business wouldn't want the opportunity to tap into a no-obligation funding package?"

Global FinTech company Currency Cloud says UK enterprises are ahead of the US when it comes to embracing digital payments.

A survey found that over 70% of UK businesses process international payments electronically, while nearly half (47%) of US businesses still pay via paper check for international payments.

As a result, 37% of US businesses cite slow transaction times as a key pain point in processing international payments.

Mike Laven, CEO, Currency Cloud, warns that US businesses will need to adapt to remain competitive in the global On Demand economy.

Nearly half of US businesses are unaware of cheaper and more efficient international payment methods, he says.

"We are experiencing a tech-enabled revolution which is spawning the On Demand economy.

"Consumers already benefit with near real-time services such as Uber, GrubHub and Etsy.

"In this context, it is imperative businesses implement solutions that allow them to remain agile in order to compete.

"It's surprising to see that while consumers are adopting payment technologies such as Venmo and Xoom, the vast majority of US businesses still rely on paper checks for international payments."

The data centre business is moving to relative newcomers among vendors, says researcher Dell'Oro Group.

Digging deeper into the Enterprise Firewall market (now at about $1bn quarterly-run rate and growing a little over 10% per year), it has separated those products optimised for data centre deployment versus those optimised at the edge of the campus as the dynamics of these two locations require very different features.

It says it noticed 'quite a bit of change in the data centre firewall market as the up-start vendors (Fortinet, Palo Alto) grab some of the business in the data centre'. \

Cisco dominates the market and represents about 40% of market sales. Fortinet was aggressive in 2Q15 and Huawei is also showing traction, it says.

Security analyst Casey Quillin said that Fortinet's strength came from a broad base of large Enterprise customers, not just one or two.

The quarterly strength was characterised by the number of customers issuing contracts greater than $1.0m more than doubling compared to the year ago period, although most customers are based in the USA.

Gamma has conferred Platinum Partner status on Rainbow Global Network Services giving the Sevenoaks-based comms resellers access to additional support, training and funding.

Rainbow MD Dave Corgat commented: "Delivering swift support responses and the smoothest possible transition to new services has always been top of our customer care agenda. This will be boosted even further thanks to our Platinum Partnership giving us a direct line to Gamma's escalations team, as well as access to regular training.

"One of our core values as a business is to innovate and embrace upcoming technologies at the earliest opportunity.

"This allows us to bring the latest cutting edge products and services to our clients that could prove highly beneficial in the evolution of their businesses.

"Working with Gamma at this newly accelerated level will greatly help to back this goal."

Zach Woods, BDM at Gamma, added: "Rainbow Global is a long-standing partner of Gamma's and I am delighted that it is now one of our key strategic platinum partners."