Comms Dealer

Recruitment companies have added their name to the 5,000 SME letter to PM David Cameron.

Praising the Government for managing to 'get the economy moving again by tackling the deficit, helping to keep interest rates low and inflation down', notable recruitment industry signatories included, John Mortimer of Angela Mortimer PLC and Steve Morrisey of IQ Telecom.
 
"The recruitment sector is a major bell-weather of the UK economy and people should take heed of its performance," said Clive Jefferys, MD of Telecoms Recruiter JMA Network.
 
"The slowdown in our sector warned us of the crisis of 2008, a full nine months before it hit the markets. Today's economy has the strongest recruitment demand for a decade and no-one should wish this to change."

A third of IT infrastructure spending will go on the cloud this year, reckons IDC in a new report.

The research firm calculates that investments in technology will leap by 20%-plus, driven by public cloud data center expansion.

Total cloud IT infrastructure spending (server, disk storage, and Ethernet switch) will grow by 21% year over year to $32bn in 2015, accounting for approximately 33% of all IT infrastructure spending, which will be up from about 28% in 2014.

Private cloud IT infrastructure spending will grow by 16% year-over-year to $12bn, while public cloud IT infrastructure spending will grow by 25% in 2015 to $21bn.
For the full year 2014, cloud IT infrastructure spending totaled $26.4bn, up 18.7% year-over-year from $22.3bn.

Private cloud spending was just under $10bn, up 20.7%, while public cloud spending was $16.5bn, up 17.5%.

For the five-year forecast period, IDC expects that cloud IT infrastructure spending will grow at a CAGR of 14%. Both public cloud and private cloud are expected to grow at the same CAGR.

By 2019, IDC expects cloud IT infrastructure spending to be $52 billion, or 45% of total IT infrastructure spend.

"The pace of adoption of cloud-based platforms will not abate for quite some time, resulting in cloud IT infrastructure expansion continuing to outpace the growth of the overall IT infrastructure market for the foreseeable future," said Kuba Stolarski, Research Manager at IDC.

"As the market evolves into deploying 'third platform' solutions and developing next-gen software, organisations of all types and sizes will discover that traditional approaches to IT management will increasingly fall short of the simplicity, flexibility, and extensibility requirements that form the core of cloud solutions."

The battle for data centre security domination is raging, particularly at the high end of the appliance market, according to Infonetics Research.

"2014 brought major market share changes, and this will continue in 2015 as buyers jump ship to get the throughput, interfaces, connection performance, and detection and mitigation technologies they need," said Jeff Wilson, research director for cybersecurity technology at Infonetics Research, now part of IHS.

"The somewhat isolated market for virtual appliances and virtualisation-aware security solutions is merging with software-defined networking (SDN) in the data centre, and this combination will lead to explosive market growth," he added.

ShoreTel's financial results for Q3 fiscal year 2015 (ended March 31st) show total revenue was $85m, an increase of 3% compared to Q3 2014. Notably, recurring revenues accounted for more than 50% of the total figure.

"We continue to execute our strategic plan of transitioning our business to a recurring revenue model," said Don Joos, president and CEO of ShoreTel.

"We are positioning the company for the growth in the cloud sector while remaining strong in the on-premises environment.

"We have reached significant milestones as our recurring revenue exceeded 50% of our total revenue. Customers and partners started participating in our new platform beta program and we are introducing our cloud offering in the UK planned for later this quarter."

A MPLS workshop hosted by Channel Telecom helped key partners to better understand the technology involved in an MPLS network, and how to spot sales opportunities with sound advice on winning the contract.

The day included an overview of the different circuit types Channel Telecom provide, the sales process, followed by a short assessment.

Successful partners will become accredited resellers of Channel Telecom MPLS Networks.

This was the first of many workshops based on networks over the coming months as Channel Telecom looks to move across the country.

"These workshops will not only vary in technical depth but also size and location," said a spokesperson.

ShoreTel Mobility has been revealed as among the first UC applications available for the Apple Watch.

The application enables businesses to integrate iPhones and iPads with their existing enterprise phone systems.

"Wearable technology is a fascinating frontier for the mobile professional," said Pejman Roshan, vice president of product management at ShoreTel.

"By extending ShoreTel Mobility to the wrist, accessing your enterprise UC system is literally as simple as checking the time."

Apple Watch owners can stay connected with ShoreTel Mobility on the go, without taking their iPhone from their pocket.

The ShoreTel Mobility home screen on the watch allows users to access commonly used UC functions, such as viewing any unread instant messages, accessing favourites, and joining a meeting.

The Glance view reveals ShoreTel Availability State, missed call and IM indicators, as well as Notifications alerts, and allows the user to act on incoming calls and messages.

The UK is fast becoming the entrepreneurial hub of Europe and Cambridge is one of the cities flying the flag, according to a new survey.

Research released last month from Barclays and Business Growth Fund showed that 8.6 per cent of 18 to 64-year-olds are involved in start-ups.

Due to growth in crowdfunding, incubators and accelerators, it is easier than ever for start-ups to get off the ground.

Cambridge finds itself at the centre of the boom, bringing in an impressive £135 million in investment funding in 2014 second only to London according to Business Zone.

Government policy is also increasingly placing entrepreneurial innovation as a top priority, especially within technology. The 2015 budget announcement made by George Osbourne pledged £500 million towards next generation technologies, an indication of just how much value is placed on the technology sector's potential future contribution to the UK economy. Included within the announcement was a promise of review on regulation which is inhibiting innovation within disruptive technology.

"The typical timeline from taking a high-tech product from inception to market has been reduced substantially in the last decade," said Benedikt von Thuengen, CEO at Speechmatics, a young speech recognition company.

"These shorter product lifecycles coupled with low entry barriers means that technology start-ups are booming, but as a result it has become a crowded marketplace with a lot of background noise making it more important than ever to stand out from the crowd."

More than 500 businesses in digitally deprived pockets of the UK have signed up to broadband services being offered by superfast infrastructure firm ITS Technology Group.

In the last two months uptake has accelerated from just 25 customers to more than 500 businesses signing up and utilising the government's BDUK (Broadband Delivery UK) voucher scheme designed to get 95% of the UK connected to superfast broadband by 2017.

With the first 100 customers now receiving services, ITS is connecting businesses at a rate of 80 a week, and more are signing up all the time in a bid to finally get access to a superfast service.

With many located on purpose built business parks across the UK, and having struggled to access speeds of up to 2Mbps, it goes to show that digital deprivation isn't limited to the rural population.

Roy Shelton, Group CEO of ITS, said: "Digital exclusion is more often associated with rural not spot locations, but in the course of our business, it is just as apparent in urban locations.

"Many of the businesses that have just signed up with us, have been over promised and under delivered to by a number of broadband suppliers; and with the only alternatives being to lease dedicated lines, put up and make do, or relocate, they have felt hard done by.

"ITS' services not only offer them a cost effective solution, but as the connection is subsidised by the government's BDUK voucher scheme, it means that superfast broadband is now accessible to businesses of all shapes and sizes that fit the criteria.

"These services are transformational in that it allows these businesses to take full advantage of what connectivity has to offer including access to a plethora of cloud-based services which will help them to collaborate and improve."

A cross-sector survey of UK employees by Phoenix seems to turn common perceptions about the extent of home working on their head.

According to the study half of UK workers work from home less than once a month, with over one third (36%) not working from home at all.

This is despite the fact that over three quarters (76%) of companies have a remote working policy in place, according to a separate survey conducted by Phoenix with 100 CIOs and IT decision makers across the UK and from a range of different industry sectors.

This survey also underlined the slower rate of adoption of remote working, with 62% of participants responding that just 30% or less of its company's employees work remotely more than once a week and 91% of CIOs and ITDMs said that 30% or less of those employees work from home full time.

Alistair Blaxill, Managing Director of Phoenix's Partner Business, said: "Remote working is often seen as a key ingredient of the successful business of the future but currently the reality is very different.

"Many companies have put remote working policies in place but that does not always mean it leads to adoption. Companies' intentions of increasing remote working is sometimes not being fully realised because the legacy infrastructure and IT support base is not as developed as it needs to be to implement it.

"We believe it is vitally important for businesses to address this in the future as mobility is seen as one of the most significant driving forces for the IT sector and an increasing number of workers will expect to be fully connected to work all of the time."

Claranet is to work with VMware to develop new cloud and hosted services as well as bolstering joint product, sales and marketing initiatives across EMEA.

In the pipeline is enhanced automation and orchestration of hybrid cloud services on an enterprise level, based on the latest VMware technologies, including VMware NSX, vCloud Director and vRealize Orchestrator.

VMware will provide Claranet with the technical expertise to assist with service design, deployment and support for Claranet's service offerings.

Neil Thomas, Claranet's Product Director, said: "Our respective expertise in working with enterprise-level customers will allow us to open new doors that would otherwise remain shut.

"Claranet's recent drive to supply application-led hosting services requires increased levels of automation and orchestration, from code and deployment to the infrastructure level.

"Working closely with VMware will enable us to supply a broader range of services, and keep up with the demands of our customers, which are quickly pushing beyond the confines of managed services providers' traditional operations."