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IT infrastructure sales for public and private cloud remained strong and even accelerated in Q1, says IDC in its Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker.

While global vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 25.1% year over year to nearly $6.3 billion in the quarter, it declined in Central and Eastern Europe, which is experiencing political and economic turmoil that impacts overall IT spending.

This global total was the second highest growth in the five quarters in which IDC has tracked year-over-year revenue and the second largest in terms of total spending in nine quarters of tracking.

Cloud IT infrastructure spending climbed to nearly 30% of overall IT infrastructure spending in 1Q15, up from 26.4% a year ago. Revenue from infrastructure sales for private cloud grew 24.4% year over year to $2.4 billion while sales for public cloud grew 25.5% to $3.9 billion.

In comparison, the non-cloud IT infrastructure segment increased by 6.1% in the first quarter, largely driven by increased sales of servers while storage sales declined and sales of Ethernet switches grew just by 1%. All three technology markets showed strong year-over-year growth in both private and public cloud segments, with servers experiencing the highest growth at 28% and 33%, respectively.

"Cloud IT infrastructure growth continues to outpace the growth of the overall IT infrastructure market, driven by the transition of workloads onto cloud-based platforms," said Kuba Stolarski, Research Manager, Server, Virtualisation and Workload Research at IDC.

"Both private and public cloud infrastructures have been growing at a similar pace, suggesting that customers are open to a broad array of hybrid deployment scenarios as they modernise their IT for the 3rd Platform, begin to deploy next-gen software solutions, and embrace modern management processes that enable agile, flexible, and extensible cloud platforms."

Ingram Micro has acquired two European firms working in mobile - UK-based CANAI Group and Portugal-based Clarity Technology. The cost of both acquisitions was not disclosed.

CANAI Group was founded in 2001 and specialises in retail, carrier and web-based trade-in processes, sustainable recovery, reuse and recycling of electronic products, according to the announcement.

Clarity Technology was formed in 2008 and provides mobile-centric services including reverse logistics, repairs and accessory management. Ingram said the acquisitions will help flesh out its global presence and provide new services to partners.

"Both companies bring proven intellectual property, further strengthening and complementing our current capabilities to deliver comprehensive life cycle services," said Shailendra Gupta, Ingram Micro's president of Mobility Services.

"While the two businesses are presently small, we expect to leverage these capabilities initially across our existing infrastructure to benefit our current and future partners and customers."

The Institute for Telecommunications Professionals (ITP) has launched the Chris Seymour Award for Women in Telecoms to recognise the outstanding contribution that women make to the sector.

Applications welcome from women who have a minimum of five years experience in the industry and can demonstrate technical or business leadership skills that excel in one of the following areas: Significant achievements in the sector, long-term excellence, original research on telecoms technology and outstanding leadership.

The judges will be looking for details of objectives, actions taken and measurable outcomes along with an overview of their outstanding role in the industry.

The prizes include a trophy and a cash award along with the chance to be featured in The Journal, the ITP's magazine for the industry.

The ITP awards are presented at the ITP's Annual Dinner on the 29th of October in London. The closing date for entries is Friday 31st July 2015.

ITP CEO Adam Oliver said: "We have set up this award to recognise the key contribution that women make to the Telecoms industry.

"The ITP is focused on helping people develop their professional skills and we want to recognise those who are inspirational to our sector."

The award open to all women in the telecoms industry with five years experience. Membership of the ITP is not required.

Purple WiFi has appointed Roberto Aguirre as Service Provider Director, EMEA, reporting to Eric Law, VP of Worldwide Sales.

Working out of Madrid, Aguirre will be responsible for positioning Purple WiFi in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and will be working with top Service Providers to target enterprise customers across public administration, multinationals and retail vertical markets.

This will include examining their WiFi strategy within a cloud -based solution and managing the addition of social media login, real time reporting, content filtering, marketing tools and location analytics.

Roberto joins Purple WiFi from Cisco Systems where for the past 16 years he has worked in numerous Sales Director roles, predominantly in the Service Provider segment on an international scale.

Aguirre also successfully drove both the Telefonica Channel as well as the cable operator. Prior to this he led the Service Provider Sales Team across the EMEA region.

Law said: "Roberto has a long history of partnering with service providers helping them develop and take to market profitable managed services. His appointment is a reflection of the importance of the Service Provider segment to Purple WiFi as we help them provide new services and new ways of engaging with their current and new customers."

A new SIM-only deal introduced by True Telecom provides 1GB data, unlimited minutes and texts for under £15 per month, a launch that marks the firm's move into the consumer mobile market and is exclusive for existing True Telecom customers. 

True Telecom customers gain exclusive access to 4G tariffs with new 24-month contract deals suitable for customers who might want to keep their existing phone but add a bundle of 4G data, minutes and texts.

The company has built in features in the SIM only tariff including the ability to cap monthly spend to avoid bill shock. 

Stuart Griffiths, CEO, said: "Offering True Telecom customers this 4G data deal is a great way to start our journey towards establishing ourselves as a major player in consumer mobile. These deals are a thank you from us to loyal True Telecom customers."

Over 200 resellers have signed up to Union Street's NGCS Compliance Service designed to help them prepare for new non-geographic call services (NGCS) regulations.

Resellers using the service can outsource much of the time billing related preparation work to Union Street. This includes adding new NGCS dial codes (now service charges), price points and a default consumer tariff to the reseller's aBILLity billing platform, replacing the obsolete ones in compliance with the regulations.

According to Union Street, this will help its reseller clients overcome the challenges associated with the requirement for unbundling call charges for consumers (as opposed to businesses) into separate service and access charges.

This requirement has meant that all resellers, including those that deal exclusively with business customers, will need to update their billing platforms with thousands of new service charges which must map to one of 80 industry agreed price points.

Failure to do so will cause resellers to fall out of step with terminating CPs that use the new service charges further up the supply chain. This in turn could lead to losses in revenue on calls made to non-geographic numbers.

Vincent Disneur, Head of Sales, said: "We are hoping that our clients are comfortable with the NCGS changes. Over the last few months we have sent out several e-casts, press releases, a white paper and an online video to help our clients understand the new rules.

"We have also developed a new version of aBILLity to make it easy to manage the new pricing structures.

"We are encouraged by the fact that so many of our clients have opted for our NGCS Compliance Service as it provides a cost-effective means for them to comply with the new regulations, while outsourcing much of the hard work to our consultancy teams."

3CX WebMeeting v8 - the latest release from 3CX, developer of next generation software-based PBX 3CX Phone System for Windows - is now completely WebRTC based and available in three editions.
 
3CX WebMeeting offers unlimited user licensing, meaning that all company employees can use unlimited video conferencing for one yearly price per company, starting at €475 per year.
 
3CX is one of the first developers to harness WebRTC technology within multi party video conferencing, creating a plugin-free and clientless web conferencing solution for businesses.

3CX Webmeeting v8 adds traditional video conferencing features such as recording, remote control/assistance and screen sharing with the difference that it's all based on WebRTC.

The new and improved Version 8 is launched following the success of the integrated version of 3CX WebMeeting in August 2014 and the on-premise version of 3CX WebMeeting Server in February 2015.
 
Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX said: "3CX's innovative use of WebRTC allows us to deliver plugin-free video conferencing for all. Video conferencing has been plagued by proprietary standards, high pricing and subsequently adoption has been limited. 3CX changes all that."

According to the latest IDC study on tablets in enterprises, a large and increasing share of tablets deployed across UK, French, and German companies are the only devices that employees are equipped with to perform their business activities.

"The majority of tablet users in enterprises currently have at least another device to perform their business activities," said Marta Fiorentini, senior research analyst, IDC EMEA Personal Computing.

"Additional devices are usually desktop or portable PCs, smartphones, workstations, or, depending on the employee's role, specialised handheld or point of sale (POS) devices.

"However, a large share of tablets is already used by employees as their only work tool, either replacing traditional client devices or for functions previously not supported by any computing device.

"As digitalisation transforms business processes and tablets are optimised for business functions from both a hardware and application standpoint, we can only expect an increase in the share of standalone tablets, as confirmed by the purchase intentions of the study respondents."

According to the study, tablets are the only business device for 40% of users. This percentage, however, increases significantly for 2-in-1s or convertibles, as these hybrid products are deployed to replace portable and desktop PCs thanks to the option of being used with a keyboard.

This has been observed across the vast majority of user groups since the keyboard functionality eliminates the need for an additional device dedicated to productivity tasks.

The study also shows that hybrids - in either the detachable or convertible form factor - are usually purchased with larger screen sizes than tablet slates.

Indeed, while just over 10% of all slates have a screen size larger than 11in., the current percentage for hybrids is almost 30% and this is expected to surpass 50% over the next couple of years, reinforcing the assumption that 2-in-1s and convertibles can be a replacement for portable PCs.

In spite of the cannibalisation effect on traditional client device markets, standalone commercial tablets are also creating a huge opportunity for device makers.

"Tablets are already used by waiters instead of pen and paper, by doctors and nurses to replace paper-based files, or by pilots as a substitute for bulky manuals," Fiorentini said.

"These are only a few examples, and this is where the growth opportunity lies. IDC calculated that in 2014 this incremental market accounted for almost 6% of tablets used as standalone in the U.K., France, and Germany. We expect this percentage to increase quickly in these three countries and exceed 20% over the next 24 months."

Wetherby-based tech firm Oriium is focused on a growth push following the sale of a 16% stake in the business and the appointment of Ryan McCarry as Chairman.

Oriium provides data management and infrastructure consultancy including managed and hosted services (Cloud Dynamix).

For the last two years, the channel-only company has been ranked as one of Deloitte UK's top 50 fast-growing technology businesses.
 
McCarry aims to raise Oriium's profile as a channel solutions provider and he will oversee acquisitions and growth strategies that he hopes will generate revenues of £10m-plus within three years.

McCarry previously founded Sleek Networks, the Internet infrastructure provider that was acquired by Adapt in 2013. Following the acquisition, he spent 18 months as part of the Adapt executive team.
 
Oriium was established in 2007 by Chris Kiaie. The company currently employs a team of 35, initially launching with just two founding members of staff, and re-located to larger premises at in Wetherby at the end of last year.
 
McCarry said: "Given the growth of the business and success that Chris has created to date, I believe that Oriium will be the go-to provider to the channel market in the UK."

Kiaie added: "Oriium is at an exciting stage in its development and we are pleased to have Ryan on board as chairman. His experience and roles to date have given him the attributes to help shape high quality businesses that meet and exceed customer expectations."
 
This news follows the recent announcement that Oriium has been appointed as the sole UK and Ireland distributor for Imation Nexsan Technologies, a specialist in enterprise class storage platforms.

Surrey-based Meridian Options Systems Support has been snapped up by Network Communications Group (NCG) in a cash deal.

Meridian provides telephone systems and service support to many household names and government bodies primarily in the south east region.

The Meridian Options brand will continue to operate independently for the time being but becomes part of the operating group as a direct subsidiary of NCG.

Its Surrey office will close and the operations will move to NCG's Nicholas House premises in Enfield. Meridian Options owner Andrew Robinson will retire from the industry.

"All other key staff will come on board to look after the day-to-day running of Meridian customers, working closely with our team to upgrade the supported base and sell new products onto their customers," said Graham Powling, Group MD at NCG.