Comms Dealer

Developer of cloud-based resource scheduling solutions Smartway2 has embarked on a reseller recruitment drive for its meeting room management SaaS solution.

According to company founders Martin Hiles and Nigel Reading the Smartway2 solution can be installed and working within minutes.

The pair previously established BusinessSolve, the successful Workspace Manager scheduling solution.

"Smartway2 has been designed to respond to the latest developments in cloud computing and mobile device technology, enabling today's always-connected professionals to easily book onsite resources wherever they are, whenever it is convenient for them," said Hiles.

As well as booking resources through on-premise touch-screen panels and mobile devices, Smartway2 is fully integrated with Microsoft Apps for Office as well as Google applications, including maps and language translation functionality.

A phased roll-out will initially target the SME market, but Smartway2's scalable architecture will also be available for multinational and enterprise sized organisations.

Hiles and Reading boast many years of experience in bringing resource scheduling software solutions to the corporate marketplace.

"Smartway2 is cost-effective and offers a flexible and scalable licensing model," explained Reading.

"Available via a SaaS subscription model, it reduces real estate costs, energy consumption and carbon footprints, and offers resellers valuable recurring revenue opportunities."

A rising tide of mobile workers plays into the hands of Smartway2 resellers, claimed Reading.

"When mobile workers need to meet with their partners or customers, it is essential the right collaboration resources are available on the day, without fuss," he added.

"Therefore, there's even greater demand now from companies for resource scheduling solutions.

"With Smartway2, we have created a solution based around how people work and the tools and applications they use daily, adding extra value and increased functionality to the conventional resource scheduling process."

The Smartway2 Room Panel incorporates a user friendly interface that provides an immediate indication of availability, along with information on current and forthcoming bookings.

It also details the facilities available within each room, enabling the user to choose the most appropriate one.

"The panel offers a range of check-in options including user password authentication, NFC Tags or QR code scans, Bluetooth and facial recognition," noted Hiles.

"This check-in process ensures a booked room either gets used or is released for others to book."

The mobile app allows users to search and book meeting rooms and desks and is compatible with tablets and smartphones based on Android, iOS and Windows mobile operating systems.

The Smartway2 Professional Service team offers a range of services from system design, defining operational procedures and workflows, installation and upgrades, screen and database configuration, data migration, custom application development, custom interfaces, report writing and user interface customisation.

www.smartway2.com

Manchester's Comedy Store was a fitting venue for Chess' annual summer conference themed 'HappiChess fuels success', a policy based on CEO David Pollock's award winning Happiness training designed to raise positivity, wellbeing and encourage people to make a contribution to business decision making.

The overarching message was for Chess People to utilise positive personal philosophies to drive great customer service and personal career achievements.

Pollock said: "2015 has been an outstanding year for us so far. We've been re-listed as a Sunday Times Best Company to work for and were ranked third best in the whole UK, an achievement I rank as my proudest to date.

"The success we've achieved over the last few years has been down to our people and their commitment to our business, tirelessly going above and beyond for our customers.

"I strongly believe that to deliver great service and to grow a business to be proud of you need a happy workforce, which is why I'm so passionate about the philosophy that happiness fuels success."

Graham Mackay has been appointed as Director of HP Helion for the UK and Ireland, responsible for growing cloud business for HP and delivering the increased services for customers in the UK and Ireland.

Mackay has international experience working previously with the group's global accounts and service provider customers. He also worked at Amazon Web Services and Verizon Trademark where he led their cloud business units, the company says.

"HP has a tremendous opportunity to grow its cloud business and deliver value to customers. With our Helion portfolio, HP is in a strong position to help customers move to private and hybrid cloud solutions that corresponds to their enterprise IT requirements," said Mackay.

Keysight Technologies, through its Keysight Netherlands BV indirect subsidiary, is to acquire the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of Anite, a UK-based supplier of test and measurement solutions to the international wireless market.

At 126 pence per share, the acquisition values Anite (on a fully diluted basis) at approximately £388m. This cash acquisition has been unanimously recommended by the board of directors of Anite.

Anite, based in Fleet, is a global supplier of software-centric solutions that enable the efficient design and validation of chipsets, mobile devices and network equipment. Its customers include major manufacturers of mobile devices, chipsets and network equipment, mobile network operators, regulatory authorities, and independent test houses. With offices in 14 countries, Anite has more than 500 employees throughout the world.

"As a leading supplier of software solutions for wireless research and development, Anite is aligned with Keysight's strategy to grow in wireless and increase our software offerings," said Ron Nersesian, Keysight president and CEO.

"The combination of Keysight and Anite enables us to offer a broad portfolio of solutions throughout the wireless research and development cycle.

"This will help us to expand our portfolio into the software layer for design and validation, and expand Keysight's position as a supplier for wireless design and validation tools," added Nersesian.

The transaction is subject to a number of conditions as set forth in the announcement released today in accordance with Rule 2.7 of the UK Takeover Code, including regulatory approvals and the approval of Anite's shareholders. Subject to the satisfaction of the conditions, the transaction is expected to close by the end of October 2015.

telent Technology Services has been awarded a three year contract by Network Rail (High Speed) to maintain the station management systems for three international stations along the High Speed 1 rail route.

These include St Pancras International, Stratford International and Ebbsfleet International station, along with two engineering depots.

telent will maintain the station communications assets including customer information, help point and public address systems, access and security, local area and wide area networks, CCTV and station management systems on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, a 109 kilometre high speed line linking London with the Channel Tunnel.

The company will also provide a 24 hour presence at St Pancras International with a dedicated team of engineers available to ensure the maintenance and reliability of systems.

"telent's strong engineering bias and rail industry credentials in both systems development and maintenance were important factors in our selection process," said Kevan Collins, Property Works Manager at Network Rail (High Speed).

"HS1 infrastructure is highly prestigious and we cannot afford any slip in standards. Our partnership with telent allows us to achieve our customer service and reliability targets."

Reg Cook, Director of Asset Management at telent Rail, added: "With over 45 million passengers passing through annually, St Pancras is a busy, iconic London station and a major gateway to Europe. We are looking forward to playing our part in ensuring continuity for travellers.

"This contract is about applying technology to help reduce failure rates and increase asset reliability in the stations along the route.

"In addition our remote monitoring capability will enable proactive maintenance in order to ensure reliability and quality of service."

European cities are leveraging their data sources in order to address high priority objectives - to reduce traffic congestion, improve energy efficiency, engage citizens, and present government as accessible and accountable.

However, the approach today is typically project-based, and more integration across organisational silos will be needed to achieve their longer-term goals such as economic growth and development of an indigenous tech sector, according to Frost & Sullivan.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, 'Real-Time Cities Survey', finds that municipalities aim to do much more than simply make existing information and transactions accessible online. They are embracing open innovation and experimenting with advanced applications such as 3D mapping and Virtual Reality (VR) to reduce the cost of urban planning functions.

The survey asked leading real-time cities about their data-centric strategies and initiatives. Responses from 27 cities in East and West Europe are represented in a Heat Map that highlights longer-term progress towards commercialisation.

"Public sector information (PSI) is being published on open portals and used internally to improve the efficiency of public sector services," says Principal Analyst for Information & Communication Technologies Europe, Sheridan Nye.

"Cities are also collaborating with academic partners and ICT vendors to build governance best practice into data transactions. This is the necessary foundation for commercialisation of data-enabled services in the near future." ??In a related report, 'Open Data Strategies of Real-time Cities', Frost & Sullivan profiles four leading European cities - Milton Keynes, Grand Lyon, Helsinki and Dublin.

Each sees an opportunity to stimulate economic growth by opening up their substantial sources of data to digital services innovators.

In return, applications developers and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) suppliers benefit from access to the city as a live test bed, both for R&D and as a high-profile, proof of concept.

"Cities are saying they want suppliers to engage with local priorities rather than promote one-size-fits-all, end-to-end solutions," says Nye.

"However, the danger is that the market fragments and vendors struggle to build the economies of scale."

Longer term, multiple opportunities exist for vendors as cities prepare to integrate ICT into core operations. "Early investors can get a head-start in developing these data-centric solutions to try to become the Google of real-time cities," added Nye.

"As projects reach the end of their funding, typically 3 to 5 years, managed services providers will tender for a lucrative and wide-ranging role that will be central to the city's development."

Cloud security vendor CensorNet is working with software distributor Blue Solutions, aiming to use channels to reach SMB customers.

"As the modern business ecosystem diversifies, organisations are struggling to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce as existing web security solutions are generally on premise," said Mark Charleton, co-founder and director of Blue Solutions.

"With more organisations moving to the cloud, it's becoming increasingly difficult to monitor and control what users are doing online.

"CensorNet's next generation web security solution, together with its in-built cloud application control (CAC) functionality, will give our resellers the opportunity to generate additional revenue streams.

"This will provide their customers with better visibility of what cloud applications their employees are accessing regardless of whether they are authorised or unauthorised."

Blue Solutions is focused on supplying to a diverse spectrum of resellers and MSPs across all vertical sectors.

"While we are strong in end-point security, we've been looking for advanced web security technology and CensorNet combines traditional web security and cloud application control in one single solution," added Charleton.

Ed Macnair CEO at CensorNet said: "This partnership marks an important step in our plans to grow aggressively in the UK by offering SMBs our enterprise-class web security solutions."

The announcement follows CensorNet's launch of its new Secure Web Gateway product which bridges the gap between web security and Cloud Application Control, aiming to offer the ability to discover and analyse cloud application use in a single solution.

Homes and businesses in York will be able to take TalkTalk's new ultrafast broadband at no extra cost.

The service, called Ultra Fibre Optic, will come as standard with TalkTalk's three consumer packages, SimplyBroadband, Essentials TV and Plus TV, as well as TalkTalk's Complete Business Broadband package for small to medium sized firms.

With gigabit speeds, households will be able to download a HD movie in less than 30 seconds, 100 photos in less than 5 seconds or an entire album in a second. The step change in connectivity will also boost businesses, improving efficiency and provide a competitive edge - all at no extra cost.

TalkTalk will use a new pricing model where customers will pay an all-in monthly price instead of splitting out a headline cost and line rental.

TalkTalk and its joint venture partners Sky and CityFibre are also testing techniques to drive local engagement. Residents and businesses in the Huntington and Groves areas of York have been invited to vote to say they want the pure fibre network, which is independent to BT Openreach's infrastructure, in their area. With enough votes, the joint venture will also provide Ultra Fibre Optic to nominated good causes in the local community free of charge.

Dido Harding, Chief Executive of TalkTalk, commented: "The UK has lived with broadband infrastructure that has suffered significant underinvestment for too long and we lag well behind the rest of Europe when it comes to rolling out pure, ultrafast, fibre networks. We need this kind of investment in superior fibre infrastructure to make this a reality.

"Ultra Fibre Optic will revolutionise the broadband experience in York by giving consumers and businesses access to all the speed and bandwidth they could ever need, future-proofing the city and making York better off."

The first customers are expected to be connected this autumn and homes and businesses currently with TalkTalk will be able to receive a priority upgrade to Ultra Fibre Optic.

Content Guru's Dutch team and Benelux network partner, KPN, have signed a storm deal with Chubb Fire and Security to deliver multi-channel cloud contact centre services to power multiple sites across the Netherlands.

Founded in 1818, Chubb (a global player in the provision of security and fire safety systems for businesses and heavy industry) employs circa 48,000 people worldwide and has annual sales of £1.6 billion.

Despite the large size of its operations in the Netherlands, Chubb had previously only operated a single, centralised contact centre to service all of its customers.

However, the company needed to decentralise this single contact site in order to facilitate closer relationships with operational departments.

This has to result in an higher level of customer satisfaction, especially for large and special accounts, and also has to provide more localised services to its SME customers, said the firm.

With its existing central site powered by on-premise communications equipment, Chubb was not only facing substantial capital expenditure to establish contact centres at its six new contact sites, but also faced the challenge of multiple disparate sites with no way of effectively interoperating.

Chubb chose a storm cloud contact centre solution, enabling the company to rapidly roll out the solution at all seven sites, migrating the existing PBX infrastructure to the cloud and delivering iACD (intelligent Automated Contact Distribution) across all locations.

By provisioning local numbers for SMS and voice, and by using location-based routing for web channels, the storm CONTACT solution ensures that Chubb is able to engage with customers on a localised basis, enhancing service levels.

Real-time and historical reporting provide granular insight into the effectiveness of each centre.

Mr Bas de Beer, Project Manager ICT, Chubb, commented: "Because of storm's cloud-based model, we are able to rapidly roll out the solution and deploy multi-channel capabilities at all of our new sites in weeks rather than months.

"The platform's intuitive service creation applications simplify every aspect of the deployment, from setting up completely new sites without any hardware, through to rapidly constructing all contact centre routing pathways.

"All of our contact centres are also linked through the cloud and we can manage the entire estate from a single location, providing us with agility in how we respond to changing customer demands."

BT Wholesale and NEC in the UK have completed interoperability testing to certify the use of NEC's communication servers on the BT Wholesale SIP Trunking (WSIPT) platform.  

WSIPT is a secure, cloud-based IP voice solution, used by businesses of all sizes.

The certification confirms NEC as an approved equipment vendor for the WSIPT platform and covers the SL1100, SV8100 and SV9100 award winning communication servers.

Gemma Hutchins, Senior Product Manager at BT Wholesale, said: "This opens up a huge area of the market to our resellers as NEC are one of the major communication vendors in the UK."

WSIPT is built on BT's strategic ISDN replacement platform within the heart of the BT 21CN core network and has the capacity to handle anything from one to 10,000 SIP channels.