Comms Dealer

Abzorb has reached a call ticket milestone having completed its one millionth request for service and support.

Generally referred to as tickets or tasks, the types of queries handled by Abzorb includes requests for action such as tariff changes, equipment orders, account reviews, trouble shooting and barring or unbarring of calls.

On average, the Customer Care team handles 200 queries a day and 3,300 tasks are completed month.

"In a highly competitive industry, the service to our customers is vital to attract new and retain business," said Steven Hargreaves, Head of Operations at Abzorb.

'We set stringent Service Level Agreements because our customers expect the very best. Every task is given an expected Service Level giving customers a clear timescale for the resolution of any problem.

"Our teams work tirelessly to ensure we meet and exceed our customers' expectations. We are also continually reviewing processes and investing in key areas of the business including personnel and infrastructures which enable us to deliver exceptional service and promote growth."

Abzorb provides UC services direct to B2B as well as through its network of over 300 reseller partners.

Mitel has appointed Jane Brett as Head of Contact Centre Sales in EMEA. She brings over 18 years experience in contact centres working with Fortune 500/FTSE 250 companies worldwide.

The appointment follows a retooling of Mitel's contact centre portfolio designed to meet growing demand for mobile, cloud and multimedia capabilities.

Brett commented: "Businesses should not be prevented from achieving their customer loyalty aspirations by being shackled with legacy systems or the high cost to serve. Complacency should not be tolerated and Mitel continues to deliver against contemporary contact centre demands."

Graham Bevington, Chief Sales Officer, Mitel, added: "Jane brings to Mitel a wealth of experience and knowledge specifically around enhancing the customer journey. The contact centre market for Mitel continues to be an important growth area. With the appointment of Jane and the ongoing enhancements to the MiContact Center portfolio, Mitel is well positioned for growth in the EMEA contact centre market."

NuoDB, a specialist in scale-out SQL database technology for global operations, has opened its EMEA development centre in Dublin, Ireland and also has a new office in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

This software development centre will also provide support services to its existing customer-base and be the hub for other NuoDB employees in the Netherlands, Italy, Bulgaria and Belarus. The centre will be led by EMEA Engineering Director Martin Gallwey. Prior to joining NuoDB, Gallwey led back-end development at Corvil.

The five-year old NuoDB is expanding rapidly to keep pace with the growing demand for its database management system, it says. With the explosion of global applications and real-time mobile transaction needs, more and more companies are adopting NuoDB's database to run their businesses and solve data residency challenges.

Over the next three years, NuoDB plans to recruit several dozen engineers and tech support professionals in Europe, including 50 in Dublin and 20 in Belfast. Earlier this year, NuoDB opened its EMEA headquarters near London as part of its international expansion strategy.

SCC's move towards managed services is reflected in its financial results for year ending March 2015, reporting a 22% hike in services revenue to £159m, accounting for 24% of the IT firm's total income.

The combined UK operations saw revenues of £662m, down 13.3%. Gross profit rose 15% and the margin rate increased 3.7% in the year to 15.5%.

James Rigby, Chief Executive, said: "The numbers reflect improvements in the quality of our traditional reselling operation.

"We will always be in that business, but we're moving to managed services and have spent £50m on data centres.

"Our absolute preference is to cover all our overheads on services. Any product we sell is icing on the cake.

"We still lack a voice business. We have the desktop, data centre and the network, the last gap we need to plug is voice, unified comms and VoIP. We will acquire in that area."

Virtual1 resellers can build their own cloud services following the launch of a wholesale cloud offering, called 1Cloud, based on a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

"1Cloud makes it possible for Partners to purchase the capacity and services they require without large upfront capital costs and the usual purchase commitments," said Tom O'Hagan, CEO.

"The pay-as-you-go business model helps businesses respond quickly and flexibly to accommodate changing business demands, improve the customer experience, expenses management and profitability."

Integrated into the Virtual1 network, 1Cloud provides a fully automated platform giving partners the ability to build secure, resilient and scalable solutions that can resolve previous data security and privacy issues, explained O'Hagan.

"We understand our partners are facing increasing pressure from customers to provide the ability to design, price and manage cloud environments for their end users," he added.

"Virtual1 continues to manage the infrastructure while the partners take charge of the end user relationship, helping them drive more successful business outcomes."

Pragma's top resellers for the Ericsson-LG iPECS UC product range enjoyed an incentive trip to Lisbon in recognition of their 'outstanding growth and achievement'.

Among the deserving 18 resellers was Matt Croxford, MD at Citytalk Communications, who enthused: "Due to rapid growth we were fortunate enough to excel on the target. We kept our focus firmly on the prize throughout the incentive and didn't take our eye off the ball.

"The likeminded business peers on the trip made it a special environment."

Six Degrees Group (6DG) has strengthened its presence in the financial services sector following the acquisition of Capital Support Group (CSG), the cloud, software and security managed services provider. CSG delivered £14m revenue, up 35% on the previous year, and £2.5m of EBITDA.

The firm is one of the largest providers of cloud and IT services to the alternative investment market sector in Europe, with 130 employees supporting 170 customers.

Key supplier accreditations include applications expertise with Microsoft, VMware and Citrix.

CSG has built a hosting platform with full-suite Microsoft applications, a community cloud and private clouds as well as offering professional services for business continuity, security and consulting projects.

Alastair Mills (pictured), CEO of 6DG, stated: "Capital Support significantly enhances our capability in the financial services market.

"The addition of CSG will also help Six Degrees achieve our goal of delivering software and security managed services that operate further up the value stack.

"With our existing strong presence in the City we are now a true financial services powerhouse with CSG's hedge fund and private equity client base."

ITSPA has welcomed the agreement reached on net neutrality as part of the European Union's Single Telecoms Package.

After almost two years of discussions at both UK and EU level, yesterday's agreement marks the resolution of a long running debate on how the Internet and its services should be regulated.

As a trade association which represents both network operators and 'over-the-top' providers, ITSPA is pleased with the European Union's agreement which will help to secure an open internet and ensure effective competition in internet-based services.

ITSPA had previously expressed concerns that the European Parliament was leaning towards an extreme net-neutrality position that would have prevented effective management of the Internet.

As part of the agreed text, the blocking of mobile VoIP services - an issue on which ITSPA has long campaigned - has been prohibited in a move of great importance to the Internet telephony industry, particularly as it becomes increasingly mobile.

Eli Katz, the Chair of ITSPA, said: "It's great that the EU is going to block the blockers. We've campaigned for years for action to stop Internet services like VoIP being blocked by a few fixed and mobile operators who can't stand any competition to their own services.

"These regulations are a sensible compromise. They will keep the Internet open but they will also allow network operators to manage the network efficiently and develop new services for the future.

"This is great news for the VoIP industry and everyone who uses the internet. The Latvian Presidency of the EU has worked hard on this and is to be congratulated."

Unify has expanded its route to market following a distribution agreement with ScanSource Communications, it's first distributor signing since the annulment of its relationship with Westcon and the instatement of Nimans as sole UK distie in October 2013.

The partnership will focus on the UK from the outset, and kicked off with a partner event staged at Mercedes-Benz World in Surrey on May 15th. The deal also presents Unify with an opportunity for future expansion into Europe where ScanSource operates extensively.

Under the agreement, the full range of Unify's UCC technologies will form part of the ScanSource Communications portfolio.

The move complements Unify's existing modus operandi in the UK with Nimans as distributor, giving partners more choice.

"Nimans is a well respected, experienced and professional distribution partner that is used to operating in a competitive market," said Tony Smith, the vendor's UK&I Channel Sales Director.

"Unify's decision to partner with ScanSource Communications will not affect the strong and professional relationship we have built up with Nimans.
 
"The decision to expand our routes to market in the UK is based on market conditions, our evolving strategic aims and the opportunity for our organisations to enter into this partnership. The time was just right for both parties ,and most importantly the reseller community."

According to Smith Unify will continue to invest in partnerships where it makes 'commercial sense' to do so, but he has no further plans to expand the vendor's distribution relationships at this time. 

"In the UK, our focus over the next year is to pursue a disruptive channel recruitment drive focused on quality rather than quantity," added Smith.

"We are specifically looking to recruit high calibre partners not just from the traditional voice space, but also IT and software partners that can drive our virtualised solutions and our new SaaS solution, Circuit."

Smith has witnessed strong demand for software-led communication and collaboration technology offerings driven through the channel.

"We believe it's the right time to invest in partnerships, such as the one with ScanSource Communications, where both sides will benefit from enhanced competition in the market," he added.

"The timing also ties in with our drive towards a more channel centric model and the expansion of our partner community. Both parties believe that this is a strong relationship that will deliver great mutual growth benefits in the future."

The need to address the changing face of the market today is a strategic driver that Unify has not ignored, noted Smith. SaaS is becoming prolific and Unify's portfolio is positioned to allow partners to leverage this and ultimately make more long-term, profitable recurring revenues, he emphasised.

"We have to ensure that we are addressing the UK partner community sufficiently to support this opportunity," commented Smith. "There is no exclusive focus for joint opportunities. Unify and ScanSource Communications' joint expertise enables us to support partners and customers in small, medium and enterprise categories across all verticals."

Unify will also benefit from ScanSource Communications' focus as being distributor that provides a full suite of value added services in support of these solutions, including trained technical and pre-sales support, financial assistance in expanding resellers' purchasing power, in-depth training and education and channel marketing solutions.

ScanSource Communications has a proven track record in helping partners scale across multiple countries, driving efficiency and expertise into relationships that will deliver additional value to our partners. "ScanSource Communications' ability to drive SaaS and cloud-based recurring revenues aligns with Unify's portfolio," added Smith.

"Working together we believe that Unify will greatly benefit from ScanSource Communications' access to the broader pan-European market.

"As the relationship develops, and as market conditions prove suitable, we will expand into other European territories. Any territory we expand into will fall under the same distribution agreement as we are focusing on in the UK at present."

"The agreement enables us to engage with new partners, boosts our European presence and in time will ensure a significant increase in market share."

This is a viewpoint shared by Phil Boyd, VP of Merchandising at ScanSource Communications Europe, who reaffirmed: "Unify's portfolio of products and services, coupled with ScanSource's knowledge, value added services and support, will enable resellers to effectively meet the needs of their end users."  

Unify aims to drive business for partners through its software portfolio which has already seen growth of 25-plus per cent. "The profile of what we and our partners sell today will be the biggest change we will see over the next two years," added Smith.
 
"We have have also invested heavily in generating leads for our partners. This has been one of our core strategic objectives and we will continue to invest in this area to ensure our channel grows and profits from their partnership with Unify.

"Additionally, we have invested in expanding the UK channel team to ensure we, in conjunction with our distributors, offer high levels of support to our partners.

"Working closely with ScanSource and our channel partners, Unify is helping to address the business world's long-time challenge of how to enable greater flexibility, new ways of working and increased collaboration.

"This is an incredibly exciting time for us all. The evolving market presents opportunities but also risks to those that do not move with the changing times," observed Smith." We are well placed with our partners, our distributors and our portfolio to ensure we maximise on this opportunity."

BT wants to close down its traditional telephone network and has called on Ofcom to loosen the regulations that would allow it to be more competitive with US rivals, according to a report in The Telegraph.

The report states that BT wants to migrate all domestic and business customers to Internet-based voice calls within 10 years, but current Ofcom rules are prohibitive.

Mark Shurmer, BT's group director of regulatory affairs, said the regulations were 'obsolete'.