Comms Dealer

NEC's major distributors and key business partners from 40-plus countries descended on Athens for the vendor's EMEA Partner Conference 2015.

At the three-day 'Advantage' themed conference, Paul Kievit, President at NEC Enterprise Solutions, said: "Our growing market penetration and expanding partner community is reflected in the increased number of participants, this year comprising some 300 from different partner organisations across the region."

NEC shared its vision and plans for the upcoming year and showcased a suite of ITC solutions set behind the company's Smart Enterprise approach.

Enhancements and expansions to the portfolio include High Availability Servers, Storage, Software Defined Networking and Virtualisation to Unified Communications & Collaboration and Business Mobility solutions.

NEC's awards were presented during the Gala Dinner to recognise its top distributors, resellers, system integrators and areas of excellent performance.

Ronald Schapendonk, Director of Marketing at NEC Enterprise Solutions, added: "It is inspiring to experience the enthusiasm of our business partners for our brand, our strategy and our portfolio. The awards are recognition of our mutual commitment and business success."

Avaya channel partner C-Ways has implemented a comms network to support media coverage of the first Test of the 2015 Ashes series to be staged at Glamorgan County Cricket Club's SWALEC Stadium in Cardiff (8th-12th July).

The Avaya Fabric Connect network will provision 120 journalists from around the world with Wi-Fi in the broadcast and media centre, as well as providing pitch-side access for live correspondents and photographers.

The network was deployed in five days including a full migration from Glamorgan's existing set-up without any service interruptions.

Hugh Morris, CEO, Glamorgan Cricket Club, said: "In my playing days, you'd typically have a press box of writers filing their copy over the telephone or even by fax machine.

"Today sports fans expect immediate coverage of events, regardless of where they are in the world, and increasingly technology-savvy and digitally-minded viewers demand an engaging and interactive experience.

"Our media need to know they can count on the network running seamlessly from the very first Tweet of the day, until the last story is filed."

Garry Veale, president of Avaya Europe, added: "With the sheer amount of time fans spend in the stadium, there's huge potential to make more of the fan experience through custom apps, e-commerce, marketing initiatives and promotions, and to boost the value proposition."

Wireless network provider Xirrus has been selected as a winner of the Red Herring Top 100 North America award.

Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring, said: "We believe Xirrus embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture."

Shane Buckley, CEO of Xirrus, added: "The Red Herring award is synonymous with growth, success and innovation.

"Our employees work day in and day out to design, engineer and deliver reliable, high performance wireless solutions. This award is a testament to their efforts."

Exponential-e has joined EMC's Cloud Service Provider programme, using its low latency private Cloud Network (CloudNet) to provide access to its Enterprise Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) offering, powered by EMC's storage solutions.

The integration of Exponential-e's Enterprise Cloud and CloudNet services enables customers to experience a simplified and de-risked journey to the cloud so they can store, manage, protect and analyse information in a scalable, secure and cost-efficient way.

"As more businesses drive their digital agenda towards a hybrid Cloud model, EMC's underpinning technology enables us to equip customers with the best services available for their business," explained Jonathan Bridges, Head of Enterprise Cloud at Exponential-e.

"Cloud services remove the need for our customers to make an upfront capital investment in storage hardware and this will play a pivotal role in allowing us to deliver richer services.

"Through using EMC technology we can ensure that our cloud services are best of breed, supplying everything from highly-scalable, low cost architecture for Big Data projects to combining our high-capacity Cloud Network powered by EMC for companies that use our Desktop-as-a-Service for Graphics Processing Units (DaaS-GPU).

"The new service model will deliver all the features expected of the Cloud in relation to flexibility and agility, while providing a secure environment for business data that allows customers to focus on driving innovation in an ever changing competitive landscape."

The EU and Japan are to invest 12m euros over the next two years in 5G-related projects such as a development of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and Big Data platforms.

They will also expand their collaboration on joint research and innovation projects, according to an agreed joint vision which includes setting up a joint funding mechanism to help finance the R&I projects and strengthen work towards common policy aspects, such as Open Science.

The deal will also lay foundations for joint research works around the ICT and aeronautics as well as help stimulate scientific exchanges between Japan's JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and the European Research Council (ERC), it says. This new agreement, additionally, comes as a part the EU's efforts towards building a Digital Single Market in Europe, it says.

Earlier this year Japan and the EU signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Japan's 5GMF and an EU-based 5G Public-Private Partnership with regards to close cooperation on 5G mobile technology. The EU is separately investing 700m euros by 2020 under its Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Prior to this agreement, the EU and Japan were already established partners in the field of R&I with Japan being an active participant in the EU's 7th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. This means that the total of all the signed deals including Japanese organisations brings the EU's contribution to 9.8m euros as of May 2015. The EU also supported the Japanese researchers and co-financed joint projects across the ICT and aeronautics, materials and energy sectors.

"Europe and Japan must tackle many of the same challenges such as energy security, ageing populations or access to critical materials. So it's only natural that we also work together closely to find solutions to these challenges. The joint vision endorsed today will take our cooperation to the next level," said Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.

Gunther H. Oettinger, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, added: "5G will be the backbone of our digital economies and societies worldwide. This is why we strongly support and seek a global consensus and cooperation on 5G.Our agreement with Japan is a milestone on the road to a global definition of 5G, its service characteristics and standards. It shows that our countries are ready to take leadership in building our digital future."

Financial services institutions are sitting on thousands of hours of voice recordings that could hold the key to better understanding customers and improving service.

However, almost 15% of organisations say they plan to make separate, expensive customer analytics investments, rather than reuse existing systems, according to a new TeleWare-sponsored whitepaper.

Financial sector organisations are mandated to record all company calls to comply with Financial Services Authority fraud and security regulations.

The voice recording systems used are capable of complex capture, consolidation and analysis of voice data. However, authors and industry analysts Ovum, found that the same technology is not being used to analyse call content, understand individual customer behaviours, take corrective action and make business improvements.

"Organisations are missing a huge CRM opportunity by not reusing existing compliance-related voice recording and analytics systems,", said Rik Turner, senior analyst and report author, Ovum.

"Customer service typically operates under significant cost constraints, but is under pressure to be more effective. Call analysis can improve efficiency, drive product development and better customer relevancy."

In the whitepaper, Ovum found that around 15% of organisations say they intend to make separate customer engagement technology investments. Re-use of existing voice monitoring and analysis technology, argues TeleWare, would override this fresh and mainly unnecessary spend.

Steve Haworth, CEO of TeleWare, said: "We're seeing a classic case of financial services organisations not knowing what they have. They have voice recording and analysis technology in place to meet compliance requirements, but they don't see how the same systems can extract customer insights that could differentiate service and improve sales."

Train to Win.tv founder Julie Mills along with a hard core of customers have completed the Tough Mudder challenge raising £2,500-plus for the Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity.

The 12 mile extreme assault course also marked a milestone for Mills who celebrated five years in the clear having been diagnosed and successfully treated for breast cancer in 2010.

She said: "I decided to do something outside of my comfort zone to commemorate my five years all clear as well as raise money for a very personal cause.

"This was the hardest thing I have ever done, but the knowledge that the money we raised will go towards finding a cure for this awful illness spurred me on."

Comms Supply has added the software-based PBX 3CX Phone System for Windows to its portfolio, a move that also augments 3CX's expanding network of SIP trunk providers.

Paul Clarke, Sales Executive UK and Ireland at 3CX: "We fully support Comms Supply's determination to push the SIP trunk market to the next level and believe in a strong and lengthy partnership."

Karl Alderton, founder and MD at Comms Supply, added: "This relationship with 3CX is a core element of our long-term strategy for supplying the channel with SIP trunks and PBX systems."

A top performance from staff at Nimans raised £100-plus in aid of two theatre-based local charities. The firm staged a movie style theme day with staff dressing up as characters from films such as Despicable Me, Grease, Men In Black, Clockwork Orange, Kelly's Heroes and St Trinians.

Chairman Julian Niman and the company directors doubled up their leading roles, taking their cue from Reservoir Dogs.

Event organiser Sue Goldfine said: "The day was a spectacular success and proves just how many great characters we have working at Nimans."

A significant number of cloud providers are not doing enough to support customers' migration to the cloud, according to research from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) which found that 35% of IT leaders think that their cloud suppliers could have provided better support to migrate to the cloud.

The figures show that many suppliers are yet to mature in the cloud market and end users need to make more careful assessments before choosing a provider.

Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery said: "Moving to the cloud is often more complex than just flicking a switch to get an off-the-shelf-service.

"Depending on the cloud service being adopted, data will have to be transferred and staff migrated to new ways of working. It can be a complex process.

"IT leaders looking for a provider should first assess their existing in-house skills and experience to understand how reliant they will be on the supplier to ensure a smooth transition.

"Equally, cloud suppliers need to be more sensitive to their customers' requirements and tailor their service to the level of support needed for successful cloud adoption."

The research polled 250 senior IT decision-makers in companies with UK-based operations and was conducted in February 2015.

Problems in service delivery could be caused by a number of factors. The stack of cloud services on offer may be poorly constructed, leading to complications with integrating services with a customer's legacy systems.

There could be a lack of knowledge within the cloud provider of the customer's existing IT estate, which would make it harder to achieve a smooth migration.

Alternatively, the network of partners established by the cloud provider may not be stable enough so that if difficulties emerge, there may not be clear lines of responsibility to resolve issues swiftly.

"The cloud industry is still reaching maturity and without enough due-diligence some end users could get burned," added Liney.

"However, the CIF research also reported a 90% satisfaction rate and that 70% of IT leaders intend to increase their use of cloud in the next 12 months.

"The most critical factor is for IT leaders to get under the bonnet of their potential cloud provider, make sure that the have a strong and highly integrated stack of partners and a proven track record of delivery for other customers with needs similar to their own."