Comms Dealer

Communicate Better CEO Wayne Cartwright completed the Virgin London Marathon (26th April) in a commendable 4 hours, 17 minutes, raising over £6,300 for Macmillan Cancer Support.

2014 was a particularly tough year for Cartwright and his co-Director brother Steve, who lost their father after several long battles with cancer.

"After the passing of my dad I wanted to do my bit and raise some money for all the people who helped him and my family through the last few months of his life," said Cartwright.

"I'm thrilled to have achieved the time that I did and it feels like a huge accomplishment. I am also proud of the amount of money raised for Macmillan. It's one challenge ticked off my bucket list and my dad was with me every step of the way!"

Aeromark Optimatics has secured a deal with Las Iguanas to provide service management including call handling, asset database, QR tagging, cost reporting and full update of sub-contract information.

The South American restaurant group has over 40 branches in the UK and its growing success created the need for an efficient Workforce Management System to enhance operations.

Aeromark has a track record working with large food groups most notably YO! Sushi and Greggs.

Optimatics will give Las Iguanas full visibility and ensure all assets including fridges, freezers, cookers and air conditioning units are kept up to date and maintained effectively.

The system will enable restaurant managers to report broken down equipment quickly by logging into a web portal and scanning the assets QR code.

The job will then notify a sub-contractor that service is required.

Once the subcontractor has completed the job, a request will automatically be created in advance for when maintenance is due and stored within the database providing management with complete visibility on all planned maintenance and total cost control.

"All service history will be stored and included in a monthly report saving management time and administration," said a spokesperson from Aeromark Optimatics.

Serial acquirer Elitetele.com has secured £20m in funding from Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking to build on its acquisitions to date including Modern Communications and Qualitel Voice & Data which were snapped up during the last 12 months.

Elitetele.com reported revenues of £31m for the year ending July 2014, an increase of 31% on the previous year driven by the successful integration of its previous 11 acquisitions and investment in emerging mobile and cloud technologies.

The funding provided by the bank's Manchester Mid-Markets and Strategic Finance teams will aid Elitetele.com's ongoing search for businesses to complement its growth in the telco, IT, PBX and connectivity sectors.

Matt Newing, CEO at Elitetele.com, said: "We see organic acquisitions as a key part of our growth strategy and the best route to attract new customers and establish ourselves as the unified communications provider of choice.

"As technology continues to evolve faster than ever, our customers require increasingly complex solutions. It is our goal to acquire the expertise to meet these needs in the next 12 months and the funding from the Lloyds Bank team will enable us to take a huge step forward to ensure we're at the cutting edge of data, hosting and connectivity."

ShoreTel has been positioned by Gartner 'Leaders' quadrant of the 'Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications for Midsize Enterprises, North America'.

This is the first Magic Quadrant focused on UC for the mid-size enterprise in North America, with Gartner evaluating 10 UC solution providers targeted to mid-size businesses (defined as companies with between 100-999 employees).

The evaluation criteria included market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy and vertical industry strategy; along with product/service, sales execution and pricing, and customer experience.

Mark Roberts, CMO of ShoreTel, said: "We've always been laser-focused on the mid-size enterprise market. We feel this is the group leading the innovation in UC and the most likely adopters of hybrid solutions.

"We continue to innovate while we execute on our product roadmap, and with the upcoming launch of ShoreTel Connect we will deliver a new platform that will further enhance our market position."

The mobilisation of apps and content is gathering pace with total app activations up 160% over the past year, according to Good Technology's 11th quarterly Mobility Index Report.

More companies are enabling their workforces with enhanced collaboration tools and corporate content across an increasing range of mobile devices, says the firm.

Insurance emerges as an early adopter of custom apps with over a third of all apps activated focused on mobilising custom business processes. Over 1,600 Good-secured apps have been built on the Good Dynamics Secure Mobility Platform.

"As organisations continue their secure mobility journeys our customers are realising that they can transform their businesses with custom apps," said Christy Wyatt, chairman and CEO at Good Technology.

"The Good Dynamics Platform enables forward-thinking industries and companies with new business processes to drive new revenue, productivity and access into new markets through mobile."

An Education E-guide produced by Tech Data and Microsoft explains the different ways Microsoft is working to help students and teachers get the best from technology and online protection.

Information on special offers and how Tech Data can support partners in winning business in the education is also provided.

There is a Touch Device Finder, a section that compares Windows devices to iPads and Chromebooks, and a visual tour of Tech Data's renowned Virtual Classroom environment and Demand Generation Portal tools.

Kirsty Prigmore, Public Sector Marketing Manager at Tech Data, said: "Education remains a key area of focus for Tech Data and we see new opportunities emerging for resellers all the time.

"Microsoft is a key player in education and the guide is a simple way to get up to speed on Microsoft's activity and offerings in the sector and how Tech Data can help you to make the most of the opportunities."

It will also help resellers prepare for the heightened activity that comes during the summer months in the education sector, she noted.

Prigmore added: "Schools are already starting to plan their upgrade activity for the summer and it's important to make contact early on in the build-up so that everyone can plan ahead. Tech Data will be ready to help you maximise the potential."

Azlan has won a Brandon Hall Group Silver award for excellence in the Best Sales Training Program for Extended Enterprise category, and a Bronze award in the category of Best Advance in Learning Management Technology for External Training.

The awards commend Azlan's TD Academy online training platform for HP partners, which provides interactive e-learning modules, sales enablement tools and bite-sized training modules to help resellers accelerate their HP business and improve sales capability.

The training modules emphasise how partners can understand customers' needs and sell effectively, rather than focusing on products. Every reseller is provided with a tailored training plan and delegates achieve recognised sales qualifications on completion.

Stephen Cant, Director of Azlan's HP Enterprise Group, said: "This independent recognition is a testament of the investment, effort and commitment that we have made to providing our HP reseller customers with the knowledge, support and resources they need to develop and grow their business."

Network provider TFM Networks has introduced a new product designed to help businesses protect themselves from threats triggered by their own network users.

Called Cloud Filtering, the new network security tool (based on an OpenDNS Umbrella platform) uses big data analytics and machine learning to intelligently predict and protect against both known and unknown threats, blocking them before they can strike the network.

According to a recent Ponemon Institute study, approximately 15% per cent of attacks that penetrate corporate networks or enterprise systems damage or destroy physical equipment such as servers, storage devices, routers and other IT devices.

Using Cloud Filtering, businesses can apply up to 60 category filters to customisable blacklists or whitelists, enabling them to manage which users can access specific pages on the business network, helping prevent phishing, botnet and malware attacks from malicious websites.

The visitor's IP or Username is matched against this list and the appropriate filtering policy is applied before the Internet traffic is passed through to the network.

This reduces the network overhead and latency involved in the filtering, giving customers a faster browsing experience, said the firm.

Alison Irvine, Group Sales and Marketing Director, explained: "Network security and efficiency is business critical, but achieving it does not have to be costly or time-consuming.

"Cloud Filtering prevents attacks from getting into the network, providing protection against liability for illegal downloads, preserving bandwidth for business use and requiring no additional infrastructure or overheads. This means companies can focus on their core business knowing that their network is working harder to keep them safe and secure."

Cloud Filtering is hosted and maintained in the cloud with a 100% uptime guarantee, requiring no hardware installation for the customer.

Available in two versions for Internet and MPLS networks, the technology also offers real-time, exportable reporting and is transparent for end-users to promote compliance with corporate network policies.

Spitfire's graduate recruitment programme is in full cry having ticked off Bath University's Graduate Fair and already gearing up for the Queen Mary University of London Graduate Recruitment Fair on 19th May.

Spitfire is on the hunt for high quality graduates for roles in sales, customer support and installation provisioning.

Minimum requirements for graduate entrants are a 2.1 degree in an academic subject awarded by Russell Group and top 50 universities. Selected applicants will participate in an assessment day at the end of June.

The company provides a graduate recruitment training programme which was developed in-house to address a growing skills shortage in the ICT industry.

The specialised nature of Spitfire's service has created the necessity to train graduates from scratch which is overseen by highly skilled and experienced members of Spitfire.

Susie Ward (pictured), HR and Marketing Director, stated: "We had an excellent day at Bath University with lots of interest from some very able candidates.

"We're looking forward to attending the graduate fair at Queen Mary's and offering career opportunities to the participants there."

Spitfire provides carrier network services and ISP connections to over 400 channel partners and their customers. The company employs over 100 staff and has an annual turnover of nearly £23 million, with offices in London and the Midlands.

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is the biggest catalyst for cloud migration according to Databarracks MD Peter Groucutt.

"Improved maturity, greater provider choice and lower monthly service costs are playing a key role in broadening the appeal of DRaaS across a variety of organisations regardless of size," he said.

Research from Databarracks' annual Data Health Check survey of over 400 IT professionals revealed that uptake of DRaaS in particular has grown year-on-year since 2012.

For the year ahead it is expected to be the top service choice for those looking to adopt cloud services.

Groucutt cited Gartner's first Magic Quadrant report for Disaster Recovery as a Service, launched in April, and he believes that Gartner's research is proof of how much the disaster recovery market has matured in recent years.

"As the report points out, traditionally early adopters of DRaaS tended to be fairly small organisations who needed to free up the time of their over-stretched in-house IT teams.

"For most large organisations, with big secondary sites for disaster recovery and dedicated staff for business continuity, the move to a cloud-based DR service was both too expensive and overly complex.

"The flexibility of DRaaS has changed this. As well as being more cost-effective than traditional DR, it's a lot simpler to implement.

"Organisations today are under immense pressure to deal with rapidly growing data and ensure consistent uptime for their users. For them, DRaaS is a lifeline."