Comms Dealer

Opportunities in cloud and mobile topped the agenda at the BT Business Partner Sales annual partner conference staged at the iconic BT Tower.

According to Martin Clarke, General Manager, the BT Business Partner Sales portfolio aligns neatly with end user demand for cloud and mobile services as well as unlocking opportunities in a spectrum of technology areas.

"With new propositions in our cloud portfolio and BT One Phone now available we can expect to see more businesses take up these offerings," he said.

"BT Business Partner Sales will deliver a step-change in broadband and mobile and drive further growth in data networking and managed WAN."

Addressing sales opportunities in IT services, M2M, security and surveillance is also a high priority, with John Goy, Head of Sales for BT M2M, lifting the lid on one of BT's little known operations.

Goy's team sits in the same part of BT Business as BT Business Partner Sales and has over 20 years experience in M2M.

"This is perhaps one of BT's best kept secrets," he said. "The business provides two-way secure managed networks for M2M devices, connecting customer owned devices and hosted systems using private and secure mobile, cloud and wired services.

"We currently connect hundreds of thousands of devices, and the areas for application are seemingly endless with existing customers in verticals like transport, retail and banking. Expect to see growth coming from this area over the coming year."

According to Clarke BT Redcare underlines BT's play in the security space operating in markets such as surveillance where BT Redcare Surveillance connects over 44,000 CCTV video channels across the UK.

Brian Jackson, Head of Sales at BT Redcare Surveillance, explained some of the applications based on technologies available from BT and pointed to one big opportunity that speaks volumes about other hotspots in all market sectors. "IP migration is happening across UK public CCTV, 90% of which is currently analogue," he said.

Clarke stated: "It looks to be an exciting year ahead for BT Business as we see more innovation in areas like M2M, security and cloud services. We'll work closely with our partners to get them engaged in the opportunity to exploit new areas of the portfolio."

BT Business Partner Sales Award winners 2015:

Volume partner of the year - DMSL

Solution Partner of the Year - Koris

Growth Partner of the year - Original Telecoms

Innovative Sale - Award for the most innovative sale - Wavex

ICT Partner of the Year - SAS Global Communications

Distribution Partner of the Year - Getech

BT Ireland Award for the top performing partner in NI - Nitec Solutions

Onetek's Lee Donaghey has again snatched top prize for the fastest lap in Eclipse's latest Fastest 4 race, open to partners who sell its fastest four connectivity products.

Over 20 partners including Adept Telecom and Nexus Telecommunications raced in suped-up vehicles including the BMW M4, Ariel Atom and the Caterham 7 Superlight at the Palmer Sport venue in Bedford.

Top Gear's original Stig Ben Collins thrilled partners with a white knuckle ride in the Jaguar JP-LM machine.

Donaghey said: "I'm happy to keep the title and guarantee a place at next year's Fastest 4. Bring it on! And seeing Ben drive up close was fantastic."

The IDC EMEA Server Tracker shows that in the first quarter of 2015 the EMEA server market continued the positive year-on-year growth seen throughout 2014, to report $3bn in vendor revenue and 557,182 units shipped, for YoY growth of 6.3% and 3.5% respectively.

The EMEA market has now shown positive YoY unit growth (3.5%) for the fourth consecutive quarter, though this is slightly slower than the growth seen in vendor revenue (6.3%), as vendor ASPs continue to increase as the EMEA market moves toward richer configurations. Larger US-based European vendors in 1Q15 have also continued to feel the impact of the fluctuating euro.

Looking at the market in euros, EMEA reported very strong YoY revenue growth (29.2%) in 1Q15, but a weakening euro has had a negative impact on some vendors that have been forced to adopt new pricing structures in Europe as the euro continues to depreciate against the dollar. It will be interesting to see how this will affect unit growth in the EMEA market, says IDC.

The EMEA non-x86 market built on the positive signals seen in 4Q14 to report a good 1Q15, including the first positive YoY revenue growth in over 15 quarters (2.0%), reaching $526.2 million, as CISC and traditional RISC machines showed low-single-digit growth. 1Q15 saw strong yearly volume growth (up 102.4% YoY), driven mainly by the second shipment of ARM-based servers into the EMEA region; although this has a major impact on unit growth rates, these systems contribute less than 1% to the non-x86 server market.

"The macroeconomic fundamentals have remained strong and despite all major players having executed strong pricing adjustments to make up for the falling euro, server demand hasn't slowed down. New projects in the cloud space have combined with a fairly broad infrastructure refresh on latest generation x86 chips especially in large global organizations," said Giorgio Nebuloni, associate research director, European Infrastructure, at IDC.

"A number of major vendors that experienced transition periods in the past year managed to recover from the temporary declines seen previously and are actively building out their channel partnerships across our region," said Andreas Olah, senior research analyst, European Infrastructure, at IDC. "At the same time, the rise in ODMs continues to put increasing pressure on established players, while competition is also heating up in niche areas with more vertical and workload specific models emerging. This trend drives the convergence of form factors and continuous advances in the hyper-converged space."

"Linux continues to make positive strides in Western Europe, and its reported 15.9% YoY growth in 1Q15 can be attributed to higher levels of attraction seen by this OS in cloud, HPC, and Big Data scenarios," said Eckhardt Fischer, research analyst, European Infrastructure, at IDC.

"Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa [CEMA] server revenue recorded an annual decline of 2.4% to $677.84m in the first quarter of 2015," according to Jiri Helebrand, research manager, IDC CEMA. "While sales of non-x86 servers grew 8.5% year over year, driven by an installed base refresh, x86 server growth was negative at 4.4% due to a lack of large projects at the beginning of the year."

The Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) subregion declined 14.9% year over year with revenue of $301.69m, dragged down by weak server sales in Russia. The Middle East and Africa (MEA) subregion grew 10.7% year over year in revenue to $376.15m, supported by a large HPC deal in Saudi Arabia and strong server sales in Turkey.

Veeam has kicked off a new drive to attract partners in the UK while building out on the European business.

The message to customers and partners at the VeeamON UK Forum was about a new story to take to existing users and the 'huge market' in front of the business, says Gilles Pommier, EMEA VP Channel and Cloud.

No longer thinking of itself as a start-up, it is stressing a growth strategy going forward, with lots of market potential.

Half the company's partner base of 6,800 is based in Europe, and while Germany is one of the strongest areas, and France is OK, the real growth in Europe will come from the UK, he says. It announced record results for Q1 2015 earlier in the year as it progresses towards its goal of reaching $1 billion in annual revenue by 2018.

In the UK and Ireland the total number of customers has reached 10,737, with 2,200 ProPartners now licensed to sell Veeam products and services.

On par with overall growth, the UK and Ireland has recorded 19% growth on the same period last year.

"We could go faster, but it depends on the channel," he says.

The backup message has moved to one of data protection, and it is pushing its channel training and support to help get this out, using a dual cloud/virtualisation pitch. "Cloud is now 15% of the business and growing fast," he added.

Partners were told about the new EMEA ProPartner Program, with enhanced deal registration, a focus on partner hosting and a new lower level of registered partner. The Veeam Certified Engineer program has been relaunched and a service-provider lookup made available to customers and partners.

Billing firm Aurora Kendrick James has marked the next phase of its development with a company name change and a rebrand.

Now known as Aurora, the name aptly signifies a 'new beginning' or 'new dawn'.

This progressive move includes the launch of a fully responsive website that offers customers login access 24/7, a new corporate logo and software developments to the billing platform, now rebranded as the Affinity Software Suite.

The site reflects the Aurora brand and showcases the Affinity software and the diverse product range it can bill, including fixed line, mobile, cloud and data and utilities.

The website also features a new online resource centre with all the information needed to use the Affinity billing platform to its full potential.

This is a core component of the site and has many new features including software and industry webinars along with 'how to' videos.

Aurora has also re-categorised Affinity into six 'simple' modules, each reflecting the billing operation process, and all incorporating the Affinity name: Affinity Sales, Affinity Fulfilment, Affinity Billing, Affinity Finance, Affinity Online and Affinity Service.

Derek Watson, MD, said: "These changes not only reflect the business we have become, but have been designed in line with what we know our customers and our customers' customers require to operate efficiently and successfully in an increasingly complex and competitive market."

"Aurora is a particularly fitting brand name in an industry which is constantly changing.

"The strategic timing of this development has been most important. With the communications landscape and channel diversifying so significantly and rapidly, our services and software need to reflect these changes.

"No longer do our customers sell just one product. In fact 70% of our customers bill multiple products, so we think it's crucial that we move in line with the industry to secure the trust of our customers."

The registered company name remains unchanged.

Eclipse has been awarded Microsoft Gold Competency for its 'best-in-class' hosting services.

"Out of 24,000 Microsoft Partners in the UK, Eclipse is one of just 721 who have achieved the Gold Partner status," said Pete Tomlinson, director of product, marketing & sales at Eclipse.

"We were one of the first organisations to secure official CSP (Cloud Solutions Provider) status in the UK so it's great to solidify that relationship and offer our customers further confidence in our expertise."

Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft, added: "By achieving a gold competency, Eclipse has demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment to the latest Microsoft technology.

"Eclipse has deep expertise that puts them in the top 1% of our partner ecosystem, and their proficiency will help customers drive innovative solutions on the latest Microsoft technology."

Hats off to Southport-based AdaptiveComms for scooping a Business of the Year 2015 award at the e3 Business Awards, hosted by 1 Events Media at the Macron Stadium in Bolton.

Managing Director, James Brayshaw said: "AdaptiveComms has consistently offered outstanding solutions and services to customers throughout the UK, but to be recognised by an independent body of judges for our performance over the last 12 months gives further verification to the high level of service and care we provide to both our customers and to our business internally."

London's Globe and Manchester's Museum of Science were the venues for two Unify reseller onboarding events staged by Nimans.

Unify's Channel Sales Director Tony Smith outlined the vendor's strategy, pointing out that 30% of revenue from the company's OpenScape Business platform was now software based.

Resellers were given live demonstrations of OpenScape Business and Unify's next generation communication and collaboration platform called Circuit.

Delegates also got the heads up on a new range of handsets and version 2 of OpenScape Business.

Ilkley-based ISP Talk Straight has capped eight years of growth with a move to new custom-designed offices, its third relocation in six years.

Company owners David Tindall and Tim Sedgwick built the company from scratch and now employ 50 staff with room for a significant increase in headcount at the new HQ opened by special guest Ryan Hall from the Leeds Rhinos.

"As a forward-thinking technology company we wanted to create a head office that's exciting and comfortable to work in, and a highly functional space that will maximise working efficiency," said Tindall.

"It's taken a couple of months to convert the empty shell, but the office team are pleased with the end result".

Office features include zonal air-conditioning, motion-controlled lighting, a grassed indoor picnic area, mobile controlled kettles, a shower and relaxation areas for staff.

The new office will also house the control centre for the company's network operations team who look after the broadband for over 1,000 schools across the UK.

Solar panels will meet the company's environmental policy.

Sedgwick added: "It's been an incredible eight years and despite tough economic times we're proud to have flourished so well.

"As a company born in Ilkley it was always our intention to maintain our base here. Finding suitable office space for a growing company was challenging, but we're delighted with our new building and position in the town.

"I feel extremely pleased that we've been able to bring new employment opportunities to the area, particularly for young people as there are very few technology companies in the locality.

"Our new offices have the capacity for up to 35 additional staff and I hope the company will continue to grow over the next few years."

Updates to Unify's OpenScape Business and OpenScape Enterprise Express solutions will 'expand opportunities with SMB and mid-market customers', according to Jon Pritchard, Executive VP of Worldwide Channels. He also announced that Unify's services are available for channel resale.

Unify's software and hardware support resale programme is available in the US, Germany and the UK, with additional regions in the pipeline. The vendor also offers tailored managed and professional services to partners on a project-specific basis.

"The ability for partners to sell our end-to-end services and support frees partners to spend more time on higher value activities," said Pritchard.

OpenScape Business now supports up to 1,500 users, while OpenScape Enterprise Express, developed for mid-size enterprises, currently caters for up to 2,000 users with plans to scale to 8,000.