Comms Dealer

Fidelity Group has signed up 20 new partners following a series of educational events the service provider organised at the world famous Leander Rowing Club near its offices in Henley-on-Thames.

The three concurrent events were specifically focused on IT providers and according to Sean Dixon, former GB rower and sales manager at Fidelity, underlined the thirst for knowledge about comms opportunities from the IT channel.

"We expected to sign up half a dozen new partners but to achieve 20 was amazing," he said. "The feedback was incredibly positive with some directors saying it was the best partner day they had ever been to."

At each event Dixon and the Fidelity team outlined an array of opportunities in comms services based on Fidelity's revenue share business model. The main talking points included VoIP, Applification and M2M.

"A lot of the partners took a real interest in our M2M and applification opportunities," added Dixon.

"Our Smartway2 app was a concept that resonated well with them as they understood the efficiency and effectiveness of having a booking system for boardrooms."

The Fidelity Group has strong connections with the Leander Club with current GB rowers including Emma Spruce and former rowers Dixon and Dan Boddington all working at the company.

Guest speakers at the events included Matt Langridge who was part of the British eight that won a silver medal at Beijing and a bronze at the London Olympics in 2102. 

He described his adventures and the fundamentals of top class rowing that are transferrable to business and said he will hang up his oars after hopefully winning gold at the Rio Olympics.

Fidelity's Emma Spruce also gave guests a tour around the private and exclusive world class facilities Leander offers its elite rowers.

Pictured above are the Fidelity team and director guests in the Leander boathouse.

Arrow Business Communications has expanded into Scotland with the purchase of Aberdeen-based Orca Telecom, its sixth acquisition in five years.

The deal boosts Arrow's turnover to £26m and provides a strong foothold in the Scottish telecoms market. Orca's employees will remain with Arrow.

"We identified Orca as an ideal match for Arrow both in product range and location as we already have a number of customers in Aberdeen", said Chris Russell, MD at Arrow.

Wayne Mackay, Director at Orca Telecom, added: "We share the same suppliers and, more importantly, the same culture of providing a personal service to business customers."

New Daisy Group CEO Neil Muller is well on the way to completing his mammoth personal mission to speak to every employee working within his company in what he describes as 'pub speak' to help him establish a 'belief mechanism' within the rapidly expanding business.

Unveiling his comprehensive 'One Daisy development and growth' plan for the now £600m Group, recently enlarged by the £135m acquisition of Phoenix IT Group and its 2,000-plus employees, Muller said he wanted to share his and Chairman Matt Riley's ambitions with everyone working for Daisy.

"I have spoken face to face to 1,500 people already and I have about 2,500 to go," said Muller. "It's a long process but we're only as good as our people and our teamwork. There's no short-cut because it's extremely valuable.

"To get where we want to be, it's important for us all to feel a real sense of purpose, belonging and belief within the team. Yes we are a £600m business, but we are operating in a £10 billion addressable market so the growth potential is enormous. Fully engaged employees delivering unrivalled customer satisfaction is key to fulfilling our aims."

Muller, who ran Computacenter's UK business for the last four years, said those aims extended to further increasing Daisy's market share in the 10-500 seat SMB market by working in alignment and in support of indirect and channel partners; being a credible and alternative player in the 500-2,000 seat mid-market; and helping to serve the enterprise market with an indirect go-to-market strategy through System Integrators and large IT Infrastructure partners.

"In the mid-market space we want to be a credible alternative for customers looking to buy both unified business communications and IT infrastructure services from a single services provider," added Muller.

"To do this, being big enough to cope and small enough to care will be our mantra. Our key focus in the months ahead is to mature, integrate and deliver on our customer promises. Forty nine companies all brought together into 'One Daisy' will be a hugely valuable partner for our customers and partners."

Kaspersky Lab has named the winners of its first Security Startup Challenge and given awards to two European companies, from Slovakia and Germany.

Each team was awarded a share of $80,000 prize fund and the top winner was granted post-programme support.

The first prize of $50,000 has been rewarded to a Slovakia-based company Excalibur which provides authentication to any legacy system such as PC, Mac or webpage and therefore helps move away from passwords using as a security token.

German company Pipe was ranked second and awarded $20,000. The firm delivers a secure browser-to-browser file transfer services without a file size limit.

The Kapersky Lab's Security Startup Challenge (SSC) is a global programme run by the company together with Mangrove Capital Partners and the ABRT Venture Fund.

It includes a three month mentor driven scheme for 23 startup projects in cybersecurity and related areas such as fintech, healthcare, mobile, the Internet of Things and the cloud where the founders are provided with business, cybersecurity and cross-industry knowledge.

Under this programme, the startups participate and explore the recent trends, learn to create an action plan and develop their projects, how to attract the customers, improve products, collect market feedback data, analyse the competition and plan financing for their projects.

Additionally, they have an opportunity to work remotely and report on a regular weekly basis to the cybersecurity experts and startup mentors as well as their progress is being tracked by the experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. There are also two bootcamps co-hosted at PwC in Luxembourg where the respective teams can share their experience and ideas with the peers.

"As the number and sophistication of cyber threats are evolving significantly from year to year, we decided to encourage young entrepreneurs from all over the world to build their own cybersecurity solutions or develop security features in their projects," said Eugene Kaspersky, chairman and CEO of Kaspersky Lab.

8x8 has expanded its presence in Asia Pacific and signed a new reseller agreement with ASX listed CSG, a business technology and communications solutions specialist.

As part of the agreement, CSG will serve as an 8x8 channel partner for Asia Pacific and resell the company's entire portfolio of enterprise cloud communications solutions to the Australian and New Zealand markets - including its Virtual Office and Virtual Contact Centre solutions.

CSG takes an integrated 'cloud-first' approach to help its customers maximise productivity and reduce costs.

As part of its 8x8 go-to-market strategy, CSG will launch a new service to onboard employees with a turnkey offering that bundles 8x8 cloud communications solutions with telephony hardware, a laptop, online file storage and back-up in a complete end user package supported by the company's national service team.

"Our partnership with CSG allows 8x8 to further extend its footprint and better serve our valued customers in Asia Pacific as part of our ongoing Global Reach strategy," said Vik Verma, 8x8 CEO.

"The growing demand for enterprise cloud communications in key international markets such as Australia and New Zealand has become critical for our customers. CSG has a valued reputation and broad footprint across Australia and New Zealand, enabling us to offer an enterprise cloud communications solution to a broader customer segment in one of the fastest growing technology hubs for enterprise communications."

According to figures published by IDC, the Western European tablet market stabilised in Q2 2015 with total shipments contracting annually down by 1.2% and reaching 7.5 million units.

This small decline, which was the softest since the downturn started at the beginning of 2014, resulted from the combined effect of persistent weak demand for consumer tablets and increasing interest in 2-in-1s and as commercial tablets.

Furthermore, the drop in tablet shipments stabilized at 4.4% while growth for 2-in-1s persisted at +71%.

The overall volume of 2-in-1s remains relatively small, but demand continues to prove buoyant and Q2 saw the share of these devices jump to 7.3% of the total market.

"The interest in 2-in-1s that we observed in previous quarters is clearly materialising into corporate deployments and consumer purchases, especially among professionals and students," said Daniel Goncalves, research analyst, IDC EMEA Personal Computing.

"Growth in the area, however, was also driven by increased supply of models that arrived on the market as vendors improved or extended their portfolio and new entrants stepped into the market," said Marta Fiorentini, senior research analyst, IDC EMEA Personal Computing.

"The most notable new 2-in-1 model is probably the Microsoft Surface 3, a smaller and more affordable version of Surface Pro 3, but other new 2-in-1s were introduced by well-established international players as well as several local or sub-regional vendors.

"The latter not only contributed to broaden the 2-in-1 offering but, thanks to the strength of their brand at a local level and the usually lower price points of their products, also helped boost the volume of the market for detachable devices, where their share jumped sequentially from below 1% to over 4%.

"Local and sub-regional vendors continued to play a key role in the tablet market, as their shipments contributed to some stabilisation of the market."

The tablet vendor landscape remained clearly dominated by Apple and Samsung in Europe but the resurgence of the local champions participated in an evolving picture.

Traditional smartphone vendors such as Huawei and Alcatel have also been steadily making progress, especially through the telco channel, by leveraging healthy demand for connected devices.

Besides connectivity, the commercial market remains a silver lining for tablets, with shipments increasing by more than 50% compared to the same quarter of a year ago.

Although progress in the commercial adoption of tablets varies significantly across countries, demand appears to be solid for both tablets and 2-in-1s, given that the two form factors meet different business needs.

In particular, slate tablets tend to be preferred for specific vertical functions, at times requiring some degree of customisation, while detachable devices are more popular among larger companies and in the education sector.

Compared to portable PCs, however, 2-in-1s still have a marginal presence across businesses in Western Europe and it is clear that more work needs to be done in terms of both performance and applications to increase their penetration in the commercial space.

Contact centre specialist Aspect Software has bolstered its channel team with the appointment of Majella Wilkins as Northern Europe Channel Sales Director and Kate Tustin is Northern Europe Channel Sales Manager.

Based in Aspect's European headquarters near Heathrow, UK, Wilkins and Tustin will shape the company's channel strategy in the region, focusing on recruiting specialist cloud partners to deliver both mobile self-service and Aspect's cloud-based customer engagement solution, Zipwire.

Both appointments join Aspect from contact centre technology provider Avaya, where they spent almost five years driving channel growth and developing key partners in Europe.

Wilkins said: "The cloud represents a significant opportunity for resellers, namely because of the changing expectations of end users.

"If we go back to the consumer, we know that they are driving the way they interact with companies, or the contact centre.

"The most effective way that companies can support a mobile self-service strategy, or deliver exceptional omni-channel customer experiences, is to move to a cloud-based model.

"But we know that making the move to selling cloud-based solutions can be challenging, impacting everything from cash flow to payroll and commission schemes. It's therefore critical that vendors like us can offer resellers the support they need to make the transition. This will be at the heart of our work at Aspect."

Swyx has reported 40% sales growth in its 2015 half-year results. This strong performance prompted an increase in headcount and follows the expansion of national and international cloud partnerships.

The company has added 15 new full-time employees in the period and also sharpened its focus on youth development, awarding two scholarships for Computer Science to students of the Technical University Dortmund. 

Swyx also linked-up with 20 international partners who within the past six months have selected SwyxWare Compact for DataCenter to offer their own Swyx-based cloud services to customers.

Swyx Solutions CEO Dr Ralf Ebbinghaus said: "Just like 2014 we have set the right tone in the first half of the current year, consistently continuing and developing our strategy.

"The expansion of our team is vital to our growth plans and we will determinedly pursue our goal to expand our cloud business together with our service provider partners and channel partners in the form of new cooperations and business models."

Chess' Partner Services division has collected the O2 Direct Partner Network Digital Excellence Award in recognition of its focus on customer experience, churn, value and digital product adaptation.

O2 Business head of partners Jason Phillips said: "These awards represent a significant shift in the way we work, as we become more intentional in our focus on customer support and digital knowledge and expertise. We are rewarding partners who have successfully made that shift with us."

John Pett, Sales Director at Chess Partner Services, added: "We are proud 02 have rewarded our great work in digital excellence because we've really supported our partners in embracing new technology and are one of only a few partners to perform at such a consistently high level.

"Our partners benefit in numerous ways from our continued strong partnership with O2. We have just signed a new agreement with new commercials and have acquired even more extra funding as a result of this award, further enhancing our vision of being a truly 'great place to be a partner."

Systems integrator and managed services provider Maintel has been appointed as an approved supplier by the Crown Commercial Service for its new Network Services framework agreement (RM1045).

Maintel has been granted supplier status in eight of the agreement's 10 lots.

Maintel Bid Manager Kay Sugg said: "We are thrilled to have our services approved onto the framework, with success within all the categories which we bid for.

"Being recognised as an official supplier will position us as one the key partners for public sector contracts going forward. We are excited to have the opportunity to further build on our existing relationship with the UK public sector."

Eddie Buxton, CEO of Maintel Group, added: "This announcement tops what has been a period of sustained growth and success for Maintel. Becoming an official network services supplier under the new agreement will help to drive forward our development to further strengthen our performance in the public sector arena in which Maintel has a long track-record of success."

Covering network and telecommunications services, the Network Services framework (RM1045) launched in July and will be available for use later this month. The agreement aims to offer more opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises to provide services for the government and other public sector bodies.