Comms Dealer

When Voicenet Solutions was acquired by US giant 8x8 Inc in December 2013 for $18.4 million the UK-based cloud comms provider suddenly looked very different...

Following the acquisition and now known as 8x8 Solutions the Bucks-based company found itself on a springboard to growth with access to a leading technology platform and the resource, investment and financial strength of its NASDAQ listed parent. "The brand and platform is attractive to new resellers and we are benefiting from these door-opening credentials," said Charles Aylwin, Director for Channel and Public Sector, 8X8 Solutions.

Strategists working within 8x8 Inc's 'brain department' showed incredible foresight when they identified Voicenet Solutions as a prime acquisition target. The timing of the deal quickly proved propitious and the outlook is getting brighter, according to Aylwin. "The rapid growth now being seen in the economy is enabling companies to review and upgrade their technology," he commented. "They are concentrating on improving productivity through better collaboration. The move to the cloud has reached a tipping point and our experience with this technology puts us in a strong position."

Aylwin fully expects to augment his partner base with companies more adept at complex selling techniques. "As products continue to integrate we will work with future partners to develop the skills and knowledge they will need and take them with us on the journey."

He also pointed out that a priority for 8x8 Solutions is to ensure that the market is aware of new technology and its benefits to drive demand for channel partners in the hosted space. "The time for cloud-based communications is now and it touches almost every aspect of business today," he commented. "The opportunities to start a discussion with an organisation, no matter how large or small, on how the cloud can help them are plenty and varied."

8x8 Inc has developed its own technology and gained control over it having been awarded 100 patents. "We determine what happens with our product and will continue to invest in the R&D supporting our roadmap," added Aylwin.

The firm has also established best in class product partnerships with leaders such as Knoahsoft, Teleopti, Zendesk and Salesforce. Such link-ups enable the company and its channel partners to discuss integrated business systems with customers, and therefore appeal to a wider audience. "These partnerships address the mid-market which obviously helps existing partners grow, but it also attracts new partners that are working with larger enterprises," added Aylwin. "We are encouraged by the new great enterprise deals we have won with our partners this year."

8x8 Solutions enables partners to work with it in a way that best suits their business. Some address niche verticals and geographies and partners come in all shapes and sizes. "We try not to be overly prescriptive so give partners the choice of being an Affinity Partner, a Dealer Partner or a Co-brand Partner," noted Aylwin. "To capture the massive opportunity in front of us we need to ensure that we provide our partners with the right training, support and incentives. For this reason we are constantly reviewing our programme and refreshing our training scheme."

According to Aylwin there are four primary enablers of growth: Technology, a sound roadmap, a pure cloud offering and the best people. Also blipping bright on his radar screen is the critical role of training as a driver for gaining market share. This is something the company takes seriously and its Academy testifies to the high priority status given to partner education.

"Our Academy is a permanent resource with full time staff and support," explained Aylwin. "We ask our partners to attend a full two day course as part of their accreditation. The Academy has been expanded this year and the courses are modularised so they can be revisited for refreshers, and the curriculum is expanded on a monthly basis and supported by webinars. Our channel team follow up partners immediately after they have attended courses to reinforce their learning in the real world of revenue generation. We aim to enable our partners to differentiate themselves with real expertise as a basis for long-term relationships with their customers."

When Voicenet Solutions transformed overnight into the UK arm of 8x8 Inc's US operations 15 months ago a remarkable growth story unfurled as uptake of the firm's UC and Contact Centre portfolio began to accelerate. Notably, these solutions are proving popular with mid-market and enterprise customers and this trend continues to gather pace.

"Our journey from Voicenet Solutions to 8x8 Solutions has been fast and exciting," said Aylwin. "We have a fantastic team, are recruiting good people and will build on the success we are already experiencing. We work hard in this business every day to make sure we get all the basics, as well as the value adds right. There is a massive opportunity and we are pedalling hard to make sure we maximise the potential for us and our partners."

Darren Garland once patrolled the world's seas unnoticed but today he's plain sailing in the channel as Managing Director of highly visible distributor ProVu Communications.

Garland submersed himself in communications and command and control systems when he joined the Submarine Service after leaving school. During his 14 year stint in the Royal Navy he also achieved an honours degree in Electrical Engineering and became a Chartered Engineer. Two commercial roles followed his departure from the Services and with comms being a strong theme in his career story Garland set up his own company selling lines, minutes, PBXs and mobile contracts to businesses. "This is where I learnt the nuts and bolts of selling telecoms," he said. "I then helped to establish a SaaS company before anyone had heard of cloud. From there I moved to ProVu."

ProVu was established in 1999 by Chairman Peter Bryant and Sales Director Ian Godfrey. The business was set up to capture the nascent video phone market. But with broadband replacing ISDN-based services and demand growing for SIP-based communications ProVu shifted its focus onto SIP and phones and signed UK distribution agreements with snom and Sipura. "ProVu has grown year-on-year since its creation, but the last three years have seen us ratchet up growth significantly," said Garland. "With our secure financial position developed through organic growth ProVu is now considering expanding via acquisition within our chosen market area."

He attributes this uptick to the growing popularity of hosted telephony combined with the value added services that ProVu has developed to win additional business. Since 2012 ProVu has grown sales from £2 million to almost £5 million. Staff headcount has also increased and is forecast to number 19 by the summer. "Our location in Huddersfield is a key asset to ProVu," stated Garland. "Not only do we benefit from lower property overheads, our staff also benefit from more realistic house prices coupled with short journey times. Equally, Huddersfield has excellent education facilities and we have a sensible supply of capable dedicated people.

"Our staff turnover is extremely low which has allowed us to build a knowledgeable and committed team that understands our products and services. We have also recently taken on our first apprentices which is working out well. I am proud of all the team. Every member has contributed to the ProVu success story."

As a specialist VoIP distributor the majority of ProVu's sales are for the supply of SIP handsets to service providers and resellers. "We have selectively widened our portfolio of products to cover most of the hardware areas that a service provider or reseller would require," explained Garland. "We have also got better at communicating and connecting with our widening customer base about what we do and how we can make their life easier and better by dealing with us."

ProVu took an early decision not to sell services such as connectivity. "We complement rather than compete with our customers," added Garland. "We felt it was the correct strategy to develop close customer relationships. We have therefore invested heavily in developing systems that automate the process of ordering, deploying and managing hardware, thereby more efficiently serving our resellers. We can automatically provision handsets for our customers across all of our ranges."

Resellers buy through ProVu's ordering and provisioning portal called ProSys. The distributor also sells supporting kit such as gateways, IP PBXs, access control and paging equipment. ProVu has become a one-stop-shop where resellers can source all the hardware they need to deploy a VoIP solution. It also offers a technical service across all aspects of its portfolio.

Not one to sit on his hands, Garland has recently engaged with two vendors that are bringing UC applications to mobile phones. "Mobile will continue to converge with fixed line comms and the technology is moving at a rapid rate," he noted. "Wireless networks will also continue to gain traction and bring more flexibility to how communication devices are deployed. The more control you have over the customer's infrastructure the easier it will be to sell services to them. For example, if you do not control the LAN it's harder to put kit on the network and subsequently trouble shoot that equipment. Resellers need to invest in these areas of expertise and sell infrastructure to sell communications."

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: We are all pressured to do more, especially when it comes to marketing - have a presence on more social networks, write more blog posts, send more emails, run more reports, capture more leads, generate more sales etc. Doing more works well most of the time. Blogging more, for example, can increase website traffic, improve brand awareness and generate leads. But other times, doing less can be a much better idea.

Adding more to your plate is likely to make your marketing activities less effective. And with only so much time in the day, you have to figure out how to get more results without doing more work. You have to be ruthless about cutting ineffective tactics from your marketing so you can focus on the effective ones.

Here's what should you cut out from your marketing: Don't engage on social networks that are not working for your business. It is a good idea to do some research and find out the most popular networks for your specific industry and audience.

Also, cut out trying to create new content continuously. It is hard for any business to write new content on top of all the day-to-day work. However, content marketing is a key component of online marketing and SEO, primarily acting as a tool to drive customers to your website. Re-purposing and recycling your existing content can be the solution.

Putting too much emphasis on the use of keywords to improve SEO can also be 'overworked'. Search engine algorithms place less importance on keywords because of their overuse as an SEO technique. However, keywords are still important. You may want to mention your chosen keyword in the title or throughout the article in order to catch your reader's attention about a specific product.

By Anton Le Saux, Head of Connectivity and Partner Sales at O2 Telefónica UK: We attended this year's Mobile World Congress at the beginning of March. It reminded us again about the influence and growth of new technology and the transformative power of the Internet of Things and m2m.

Did you know there will be over 50 billion connected devices by 2020? Even more by some predictions. These m2m solutions are already creating 9.5 trillion bytes of data every day. That means more and more opportunities for businesses to keep control of their assets and provide added value to their customers in a myriad of ways.

Some of the leading tech players brought their newest devices to the event in Barcelona. Many will assist m2m solutions for businesses, keeping 'things' connected and contributing to the growth of the IoT. And even more devices will keep business itself connected with consumers, including wearables. It's clearer than ever that the business landscape is in the middle of a massive transformation, with the two strands of tech combining into a truly mobile workforce, with access to greater insight than ever before, greater control and the ability to offer ever better experiences to their customers, who are researching, shopping and engaging with brands globally, 24/7/365.

As some brands adopt these new technologies early they will raise the bar for the rest. Consumers quickly expect a higher level of service and brand engagement, and woe betide those who fall behind the curve. It's going to be interesting to watch this year which brands get there first and which lag behind. It's often in these periods that new front runners appear and the market sees a shift towards smaller, more agile businesses.

For more information emailanton.lesaux@telefonica.com or visit partnersdigital.telefonica.com

Tech Data Europe has extended its distribution agreement with Logitech to cover the distributor's full European footprint.

The new agreement means that Tech Data resellers in Germany, Austria, Poland and Czech Republic now have access to Logitech's range of products, building on existing long-standing distribution partnerships with Logitech in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland.

Klaus Schlichtherle, head of distribution EMEA at Logitech, said: "Tech Data Europe has been a strategic and valued partner to Logitech for many years. Extending our relationship to complete coverage of our European footprint made perfect sense to us."

Resellers wanting more speed, automation and visibility throughout the leased line ordering and provisioning process have welcomed ICUK's new addition to its web-based control panel.

Ordering leased lines can be complex and frustrating for a reseller but Surrey-based ICUK reckons it has made the process a breeze with the introduction of a new provisioning tool within its web-based control panel. Designed and developed in house, the control panel sits at the heart of ICUK's channel engagement methodology and enables resellers to place orders, create tariffs, manage customers, run diagnostics in real-time and book Openreach engineers in just a few clicks. Customers can also log-in under a reseller's own custom branding and manage their own services.

The tool came about as a direct result of the service provider's ongoing success with Ethernet sales, as ICUK's founding director Paul Barnett explained: "Our Ethernet sales increased by over 400 per cent last year and continue to grow month-on-month. This posed a challenge as the leased line provisioning process was not nearly as automated and slick as other products in our portfolio, so we worked hard to fix it."

ICUK says it has taken the approach it applies to all its other products - ADSL, FTTC, WLR3, Wholesale calls and web hosting - to address the issue. Paul Lydon, Senior Developer, said: "We wanted to make sure that the quoting, delivery and diagnostic experiences of an Ethernet circuit were the best we could develop. And we wanted to ensure consumers know where they stand at all times, giving them full confidence that we are working for them throughout and beyond the provisioning process."

Regardless of an order's complexity ICUK has devised a simple flow chart (see below) showing the state of a current Ethernet order and the steps required to reach completion. Resellers can follow the exact movement of a provision and get real-time notifications confirming when a new stage has been reached. "The notifications are an important element in providing assurance and removing any unnecessary anxiety the customer may have by outlining what event has just happened, what happens next, what the customer needs to do now, and most importantly when we will next be in touch by," said Business Development Manager Neil Barnett (pictured).

ICUK has also included white label step-by-step install guides with the managed Cisco routers they supply with each circuit, removing the need for channel partners to visit the end user site. Paul Benn of Enterprise Connected Cloud commented: "When ICUK gave us a demo of the leased line quoting tool it generated a customer-ready PDF showing prices for various speeds provided by BT Wholesale and Virgin Media Business, including our chosen margin, in less than 60 seconds. Needless to say, we were impressed."

 FLOWCHART: ICUK's ORDER OF THE DAY

Kent-based Rainbow Telecom has installed a Video as a Service (VaaS) solution at the Enfield offices of The National Office of Animal Health to help supporters meet regularly online.

NOAH is a non-profit members association representing the UK animal medicines industry.

The association is made up of committees and working groups with members from companies scattered across the UK.

Due to the ever increasing pressure on people's time, together with the unpredictability caused by road works and traffic incidents, apologies and late arrivals had become a common occurrence.

Rainbow's VaaS service allows members to dial in from any device, without the need for compatible video conferencing equipment.

All it takes is the download of an app, a reliable internet connection and an internet enabled device such as a laptop or tablet.

Commenting on the deployment, NOAH Office Manager Joanne Jeffs said: "Our overall aim was to bring as many members together and to enhance engagement at our meetings. We've achieved that thanks to the Rainbow Video Service."

Rainbow Managing Director Dave Corgat told Comms Dealer: "For some months we had been working on a VaaS solution that would deliver enterprise quality video conferencing on a flexible basis, with a system that offered excellent functionality, reliability and the greatest simplicity of use.

"The system is enjoying more use than originally anticipated. As well as committee meetings, NOAH has held remote meetings with suppliers and its PR agency, all of whom have commented on how easy it was to use, and the convenience of being able to meet face-to-face without travelling."

Adept Telecom's Chief Executive Ian Fishwick is gearing up for more acquisitions when the company achieves a cash positive position, he revealed in a trading update for the year ended 31st March 2015 (final results are expected to be announced in early July 2015).

According to Fishwick the firm beat city expectations in terms of the final dividend which has increased 58% from 3p last year to 4.75p this financial year.

"There can be no better sign of confidence for a business than announcing dividends like this," said Fishwick. "Our EBIDTA is in line with city expectations of £4.6m, up 14% on a revenue rise of just under 6%.

"Another area where we have exceeded city expectations is in cash generation. In March 2014 we announced that our net debt had fallen by £330K to just over £3m - a great result considering we had done an acquisition and increased the dividend.

"This year, debt dropped by £1.4m, so our cash generation was £1.1m better than expected."

With debt down to £1.6m and cash generation accelerating Fishwick expects Adept to be cash positive sooner rather than later, an event that will catalyse more activity around acquisitions.

"We don't like the idea of being cash positive in this era of low interest rates, so we are poised to look for earning enhancing acquisitions," added Fishwick.

Solutions provider ITS has celebrated 50 years in the IT industry. Founded in 1896, ITS started as a printing business in Northfield, Birmingham, under the name Kalamazoo.

Known for its business stationery (loose-leaf binders and account forms) Kalamazoo noted the shift in technology during the 1960s and began time-sharing its mainframe to offer computer services outside of the business.

In the early 1970s, Kalamazoo started the development for a car dealer management system (DMS) and by 1975 was supporting these computers with hardware maintenance.

By the 1980s Kalamazoo had become the UK's largest DMS provider. This success saw several acquisitions, including TE Datacare, an IT maintenance company for dealerships.

This acquisition prompted the company's transition into managed services outside of the automotive industry.

Following the acquisition by UCS in 2002 and UCS's merger with Reynolds and Reynolds in 2006, Kalamazoo has undergone several name changes.

Still situated in Northfield, the original Kalamazoo is now split into IT services (ITS) and DMS solutions (Reynolds and Reynolds UK).

Today, ITS focuses on offering IT services and solutions to the SME market.

ITS now has 250 staff across its three regional offices and engineer stations.

Terry Hanvey, Head of UK Operations, said: "We have always been an innovative company. As Kalamazoo we introduced time-sharing to our mainframes back in the 60s and more recently, entering the cloud arena.

"The company has been built on sound foundations of quality products and services topped by the excellent people who have worked for the company throughout this period. I am particularly proud to be at the helm at this key point in the company's history." 

Mitel's Graham Bevington has been appointed to the newly created position of Executive Vice-President and Chief Sales Officer responsible for the vendor's worldwide sales operations.

He will work to coordinate and leverage opportunities across regions through global strategic accounts, and establish a global network of distribution partners to drive Mitel's market presence.

In addition, with a strategic vision to expand Mitel's historic strength in vertical markets, Bevington will introduce and implement a series of global vertical market sales programmes. He will also play a lead role in assessing and evaluating potential M&A opportunities for the company.

An industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience, Bevington has held a series of senior sales management positions at Mitel for more than 15 years.

Under his leadership, Mitel has successfully entered and expanded its market presence in regions around the world. Prior to his current position, Bevington led Mitel's Europe, Middle East and Africa sales organisation.

"In a converging and consolidating marketplace, capitalising on competitive opportunities quickly and successfully is key to growth," said Rich McBee, President and CEO Mitel. "Graham is uniquely prepared to provide the industry insight, competitive knowledge, and strategic sales know-how to capitalise on evolving customer opportunities and to drive Mitel's sales programme to the next level."

Bevington added: "We have entered an extraordinary period in the enterprise market where technology advancement, upgrade opportunities and competitive disruption are unleashing customers and enabling them to think differently about their technology needs.

"Customers are determining the winners and losers in our industry, bid by bid, and on a daily basis. With one of the broadest portfolios in the industry, Mitel is situated to capitalise in this climate."