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In a move to motivate more Ethernet sales Zen Internet is giving away a series of prizes to customers who place the most orders.

Up for grabs is an Apple Watch (launched 24th April) with the runners-up scooping iPads, a five-star meal, and more.

Steve Warburton, Zen's Managing Director for Indirect Markets, said: "We're seeing increased demand for Ethernet as a result of improved coverage, falling prices and government funding with more businesses than ever now taking services from us.

"We're keen to extend our Ethernet provision along with our portfolio of other services across the market and will continue to run incentives like this well into the future."

The competition closes on 30th June 2015.

In its Q3 2015 results Avnet Technology Solutions reported sales of $2.5bn, an increase of 4.3% organically on a constant currency basis.

In constant currency, Avnet Technology Solutions' sales growth was led by its EMEA region, which grew 6.0%, and the Americas, which grew 4.9%. At a product level, Avnet Technology Solutions grew year-over-year in software, storage, and networking and security, it says.

Patrick Zammit Global President, Avnet Technology Solutions, says the growth in Europe has been down to good management and strong demand. "The team has been focusing for a few quarters on the market and on the customers. We also have powerful relationships with our manufacturers.

"Demand in Europe is good at the moment, indeed you have end customers basically upgrading the IT infrastructure and we're taking advantage of it."

AppSense, the expanding desktop virtualisation and management vendor, is boosting its channel in Europe to reach further downmarket.

It follows a two year plan for simplifying its software, and the release later this year of its version 10 which will be the easiest yet to use and setup, it says.

"We are driven by the customer experience," says Jed Ayres, newly appointed SVP channel marketing, in London for the two day EMEA AppSense channel event, which saw over 100 partners discuss the products and share best practices.

AppSense depends on channels for around 70% of its US sales, targeting 85% now that the product is more stable and has better out of the box functionality.

But it tends to have partners who are closer to systems integrators in approach, and having taken a lot of the complexity out, wants them to drive downmarket in size as well as pitching for the multi-million euro deals.

With changes last year to the partner programme, the desktop specialist is prepared to back its channel with more MDF and encourage them into the smaller projects with shorter sales cycles.

He says that it is doing well in financial services, healthcare and government, where the larger roll-outs tend to be, but these take time to uncover and deliver, so he wants to invest ahead of revenue with 10% more MDF.

With these verticals, and a fast growing market in retail, AppSense is doing well in the UK market and to certain extent in France, but wants more from the Netherland and DACH regions.

Not that it needs to add too many new partners, he says. "We don't need to expand the partner base; we have some very good partners, but we need to them to work at scale," said Ayres.

Some of the growth it wants may depend on its cloud component, also expected later this year, since it finds itself competing with cloud workspace virtualisation vendors.

It has had to adjust to a wider range of involvement by people at the customer now that department heads have more of a say in which IT they buy, and who may be attracted by the cloud systems.

But the double digit growth last year shows what can be done, and leveraging the relationships with Citrix and VMware resellers may yet deliver in Europe.

Arrow has signed an EMEA-wide agreement with Taiwan-based AIC Systems.

AIC's OEM/ODM server and storage solutions will offer customisation with storage options and a range of interfaces.

"We identified the need to collaborate with a leading OEM solution provider to grow our business in key market sectors in EMEA," said Jeff Lin, vice president sales, AIC.

The AIC OEM/ODM portfolio offers storage solutions including Direct-Attached Storage (DAS), Network-Attached Storage (NAS), and IP-SAN storage solutions.

Hats off to the STL sales team for completing the beastly Monster Race in Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire. Their blood, sweat and mud endurance test was rewarded with almost £400 raised for SpecialEffect, a charity that helps people with disabilities to play computer games.

Led by Sales Director Phil Donigan, the STL team encountered 25-plus obstacles over the challenging 5k course which they completed twice.

Donigan said: "It was a great example of teamwork as they guys helped each other over some of the more challenging obstacles and kept going to the very end."

Billing software solutions specialist AKJ is holding a NGCS webinar on May 1st to support its customers with the forthcoming requirements to comply with Ofcom's 'simplifying non geographic numbers' legislation which comes into force in June 2015.

AKJ has been communicating consistently with its customers since October 2014 advising them of the changes they will need to undertake.

This communication programme has consisted of legislation information email updates; customer research into how they wish to incorporate the changes into their billing solution and businesses; technology development research; and practical customer support sessions, including product updates, webinars and support documents.

Derek Watson, AKJ's MD, said: "This webinar is part of our considered approach to industry changes and ensures we are supporting our customers throughout these often complex processes."

The webinar will re-cap on AKJ's Affinity system changes, as well as review the additional consultation AKJ is offering for the changes needed for tariffs, and review the key activities that customers need to be focussing on over the coming months. It will then end with a Q&A session.

Telford-based Entanet his thrown its weight behind staff member Matthew Mills, Head of Software Development, who is limbering up for two gruelling runs.
 
He will be running in the Great Birmingham 10K on 3rd May and then again in the Great Birmingham Run half marathon, on 18th October, raising money and awareness of a charity close to his heart, The Birmingham Women's Hospital, which treated his wife and premature daughter three years ago.
 
"The Fetal Medicine Unit at Birmingham Women's Hospital saved our daughter Imogen's life," he said. "If it wasn't for them and the work they do then we wouldn't be celebrating the third birthday of our lively, chatty little nutcase this October.

"That's why I'm fulfilling my promise to the hospital this year and taking on this challenge to raise much needed funds for this worthy cause."
 
This isn't the first time Entanet staff have picked up the pace and run for charity. Last October two members of staff, Steven Wood and Daniella Stewart from the Sales and Provisioning teams respectively, successfully completed the Birmingham Half Marathon raising almost £500 for Birmingham Children's Hospital.

Entanet encourages members of its team in their charitable efforts and helps them to promote their fundraising. The company also organises it own events and has activities scheduled for later in the year to raise money for the local Severn Hospice.
 

A new service launched by wholesale network operator Simwood is poised to ‘deregulate mobile', claims MD Simon Woodhead (pictured). Simwood Mobile and the associated Developer Pack gives CPs a new level of access to mobile services including full control of voice, text and data traffic, mobile numbers, porting and SIM branding.

This achievement has been hard earned, pointed out Woodhead. "Simwood Mobile has been the toughest mission we've ever undertaken," he explained.

Any concept that turns a long-term status quo on its head needs time to filter through, but having upset the apple cart Woodhead is impatient to wake up an industry that is accustomed to being conditioned and shackled by the entrenched limitations of mobile voice to date. "Voice mobility has been static compared to the rapid developments in all another areas of communications," he said. "If I wanted anything approaching mobility 15 years ago I could divert a DDI to a mobile number or ring a dial-in number from the mobile to make calls from the office. It was ugly, slow and expensive. It still is."

He believes that despite fixed line deregulation happening in 1991 there has been no real progress. "What is called fixed-mobile convergence is commonly just combined billing," added Woodhead. "Convergence actually happens only when the bill is printed. Our customers have disrupted the fixed side already with VoIP solutions, but mobile remains a silo. That silo represents about 50 per cent of end user telecoms spend.

"We wanted to be able to treat a SIM as an end-point on a VoIP network, just like a VoIP phone on somebody's desk. That way, anyone could leverage the fully integrated user experience of native on-mobile call handling - rather than a non-integrated over the top app - while bringing the full commercial and technical benefits of VoIP to bear."

Careful consideration of the proposition is recommended, according to Woodhead, who is at pains to emphasise the distance Simwood has travelled from the former mobile modus operandi. "With Simwood Unbundled Mobile we send all mobile originated voice, text and data traffic to the CP's network so they can terminate it however they please," he said. "This opens the door for value add mobile services such as call recording and PBX convergence."

In operation, calls and SMS sent to Simwood's mobile numbers or the CP's end user's ported number are also routed to the CP's network for the same flexibility on inbound traffic. Woodhead added: "For customers who only want to take some of the traffic onto their network we offer multiple traffic profiles which can be configured per SIM through our API."

According to Woodhead, Simwood's new Mobile Developer Pack provides a springboard for CPs to quickly get started in mobile service development. The pack contains five developer SIMs and provides access to Simwood's API, portal, mobile numbers and porting. "We're taking pre-orders for Developer Packs - SIMs that have the full feature set of voice, SMS and data," added Woodhead. "We have M2M and Mobile Data SIMs coming too which will focus on the respective data options with advantageous economics for each. We have built our own mobile core and SIM card profiles. We are not simply reselling another service, this is based on our own network."

An important USP, says Woodhead, is the de-coupling of numbers, SIMs, and the fact that all voice, SMS and data can go via Simwood to partner platforms where their creative customers can inject value. He cited one user case to illustrate the straightforward workings of Simwood's API (specifically the Advanced Inbound Routing functionality) in conjunction with the firm's pre-release SIMs to forward one number to multiple devices. "Users can also assign that same number to multiple SIMs creating one of the holy grails of mobile - one number on multiple devices," explained Woodhead. "Users can also have multiple numbers on one SIM if that's their preference."

All Simwood Mobile services benefit from the company's existing real-time CDRs, traffic statistics and fraud controls, available through its API and portal which have now been extended to include mobile services. "CPs already using our API to configure fixed line telephony services are only a few API calls away from deploying mobile to their existing customer base," added Woodhead.

For service providers with Ofcom allocated mobile number ranges, Simwood offers Virtual Interconnect Mobile - voice and SMS enablement for a CP's mobile ranges. "Once up and running, numbers appear in our API and portal for their exclusive use," said Woodhead. "They can also leverage advanced numbering features such as anonymous and intelligent call rejection, hunt groups and diversion. Voice can be delivered via SIP or PSTN while SMS comes over HTTP or SMPP."

Woodhead believes that Simwood represents a new category of mobile supplier that does not fit into the traditional MNO/MVNO/MVNE type models. "We're somewhere between a roaming MNO and a completely unencumbered MVNE," he said. "Either way, we are unique."

Developing anything in mobile is difficult. There are technical and commercial challenges, and the extent to which Ofcom appears to protect mobile resources is a surprising hurdle, according to Woodhead. "Obtaining mobile numbers is hard," he stated. "And getting the other resources essential to operating a mobile network is nigh on impossible. This has been the biggest impediment to our progress, and we've spent a huge amount of time and money engineering around the need for the resources we're not allowed because we're new. Simwood is committed to a fair and transparent market and we will keep battling."

A stackable Ethernet switch that supports new and emerging technologies, unified wired and wireless access and the IoT has been introduced by Avaya.

This new line of switches, the ERS 5900 series, builds on Avaya's SDN Fx architecture and comes on the back of research by the vendor which found that SDN was on the radar screens of 88% of respondents, with an average adoption timeline of approximately 1.6 years.

However, 89% of C-level executives said that SDN deployment needs to be simple for them to consider adoption.

For this reason, said the vendor, the SDN Fx architecture delivers automation and programmability from the network core to the user edge, providing 'connect anything, anywhere' simplicity.

The Avaya ERS 5900 series also moves towards full network automation by extending Avaya Fabric Connect capabilities to the network edge.

This enables enterprises to smoothly migrate to next generation architectures that unify the wired and wireless network while preparing organisations to adopt new IoT strategies, claimed the vendor.

"The clock is ticking for businesses that want a competitive edge through greater network agility," stated Alan Hase, vice president, Unified Access, Avaya Networking.

"By some estimates, it's expected that nearly 25 billion devices will be connected to the network in just four short years.

"That could mean massive complexity unless a company or organisation has implemented a simplified SDN foundation."

Despite obvious productivity and communication benefits, almost half (44%) of IT professionals say that employees are still reticent to give up established tools in favour of new UC technologies, according to Jabra.

The headset maker has urged the tech industry to work closer with businesses and help create new incentives for employees to ensure greater adoption of UC technologies.

Jabra has called for companies deploying UC to take into account human behaviour and fear of change, and think beyond deployment to creative ways of increasing adoption.

Currently, says Jabra, UC adoption rates are just 10% due to employee reticence to give up their current working patterns and tools. And while companies are spending thousands implementing new technologies, employees are still failing to understand how UC can benefit their productivity and efficiency levels on a daily basis.
 
Jabra believes that education and incentives are crucial but having a companywide adoption plan, with considered input and expertise from key functions of the business, will be the key to a successful implementation and ensure that organisations are seeing actual return on their investment quickly.
 
Holger Reisinger, Senior Vice President Marketing, PMM, Alliances, CC&O at Jabra, said: "It's our job as IT professionals to redefine success as that time when UC technologies are actively enabling new and better ways of communication, collaboration, conversation and concentration - and not just whether the deployment was launched on time or within budget.
 
"UC is a key enabler in connecting today's modern knowledge economies. At the same time, these new tools require entirely new behaviours. And, as it has always been the case when introducing new technologies, we need to find ways to ensure that end-users adopt these new tools on their own terms.

"No matter how beneficial your new technology may be, not everyone will share your passion for it. To generate acceptance you need demonstrate how it benefits people personally and gently steer them toward embracing it."