Comms Dealer

Mitel has named Wes Durow as Chief Marketing Officer. The 20-year tech industry veteran joins Mitel from Sonus Networks where, as Vice President of Global Marketing, he was responsible for all marketing activities globally as well as inside sales and training.

Before joining Sonus, Durow was Chief Marketing Officer at Fonality, where he focused on accelerating the adoption of Unified Communications in a Software-as-a-Service model.

Durow also served as Vice President and General Manager of Global Marketing for Avaya, where he guided global marketing initiatives following their 2009 acquisition of Nortel's enterprise division.

He spent more than a decade with Nortel in a number of leadership roles, including end-to-end marketing, go-to-market, and strategic planning for their enterprise business.

Durow began his career in advertising, helping build brands for companies including American Airlines, Pace Picante Sauce, NationsBank (now Bank of America), The Dial Corporation and GTE (now Verizon).

As Chief Marketing Officer at Mitel, Durow is responsible for driving the vendor's global marketing and communications initiatives to increase brand consideration levels and directly contribute to the company's growth objectives.

He reports to Mitel's President and CEO, Rich McBee.

"In the last two years, we have expanded and repositioned our company and our brand to respond to market conditions and customer needs," said McBee. "Wes brings to Mitel the combination of industry domain knowledge and contemporary marketing theory and discipline necessary to drive our growth to the next level."

Durow added: "Understanding customers, meeting their business requirements and building brand loyalty will determine success. With 60 million end users globally, and a leadership position in the premise and cloud enterprise markets, Mitel has everything required to drive customer adoption and market expansion."

Resellers are being invited to swing into action and win a VIP place at the British Golf Open, courtesy of a Nimans and Unify sales incentive.

As Unify's official UK distributor, Nimans is offering new and existing customers the opportunity to enjoy top class hospitality at the 144th Open Championship in St Andrews as the world's top players converge to compete for one of the sport's biggest prizes.

All resellers who qualify will be treated to a full day of VIP hospitality on July 16th in The Champions Club plus two nights' accommodation in Edinburgh with local transport to and from the event provided as well as dining and drinks.

"The Champions Club is a new concept in sporting hospitality, offering guests the opportunity to soak up the atmosphere in the vibrant Hospitality Village next to the 16th hole," explained John McKindland (pictured), Nimans' Head of Systems Sales.

"They can follow the action by walking the course or watch on a giant outdoor screen as part of a day to remember."

The incentive runs until the 30th June and is open to all new and existing Unify partners.

Eight places are up for grabs based on high sales performance and official accreditation.

Nearly 60% of IT decision makers believe that more than half of their IT infrastructure will be cloud-based by 2017, according to survey data released by Adapt.

Asked how much of their IT infrastructure would be in the cloud in two years time, 40% of decision makers still plan to largely provision IT through a non-cloud environment.

The results indicate that most IT decision makers believe a balanced approach to infrastructure provision remains likely in the short-term, despite nearly 30% of respondents predicting between 75-100% of their infrastructure to be in the cloud in two years.

"It's clear that businesses intend to continue balancing multiple infrastructure environments over the coming years to retain the flexibility and control they need to meet their business needs," said Kevin Linsell, Director of Strategy and Architecture at Adapt.

Comms-care has bagged Microsoft's Gold Mid-market Solution Provider competency, demonstrating its expertise in the most current infrastructure solutions based on Microsoft desktop, business-management and server technologies.

Equipped with exclusive training, the latest software and support, partners are able to implement solutions to meet mid-market customers' business challenges and infrastructure needs.

Simon Day, Professional Services Director at Comms-care, commented: "Achieving the Microsoft Gold Midmarket Solution Provider Competency showcases our expertise in, and commitment to, today's technology market and demonstrates our depth of knowledge when it comes to Microsoft and its products."

The Microsoft Gold Midmarket Solution Provider Competency sits alongside Comms-care's existing Microsoft competencies including Gold Datacenter, Gold Devices and Deployments, Silver Cloud Platform, Silver Communications, Silver Messaging and Silver Identity and Access.

UC software vendor Swyx has witnessed a 126% hike in the number of cloud-users in 2014 compared to the previous year.

Swyx CEO Dr. Ralf Ebbinghaus said: "Our 2014 sales show that SMEs are embracing the cloud more and more by taking advantage of UC solutions hosted in a data centre. Compared to last year, the growth in the number of our cloud-users has more than doubled."

Gartner predicts that the cloud market will be worth $350bn by 2017; and IDC says that in 2015, 24% of IT budgets will be allocated to cloud solutions, with the highest percentage being allocated to SaaS models.

"Well placed for the tremendous growth potential represented by the SME market," added Ebbinghaus. "This applies not only to Germany, but to our international business where we are also successful.

"Companies that have started to adopt other applications in the cloud, and already have an affinity for hosted solutions, will also look to move their telephone system to the cloud."

IT service provider EMC has joined forces with Azlan in a move that ramps up its campaign to onboard more partners to resell its cloud-based solutions.

The full EMC technology portfolio will be available to Azlan's MSP partners, including EMC's Backup as a Service (BaaS), messaging and collaboration, multi-tenant file storage, converged infrastructure and DR as a Service (DRaaS) offerings.

As well as training and technical support to MSPs working towards their accreditation as EMC Powered Cloud Service Providers, Azlan will provide lead generation for partners through its dedicated MSP portal.

Service providers will also be able to manage their EMC accreditation through the website and keep their business profile up to date.

Azlan will also offer EMC partners assigned sales and marketing support and executive sponsorship, working with them to create tailored EMC Growth Plans.

Joel Chimoindes, European Cloud Services Director at Azlan, stated: "EMC is providing a range of solutions that enable MSPs to embrace important opportunities and continue the transformation of their business to a services-based model.

"This is a strategically important business relationship for Azlan. One that significantly strengthens and extends our value proposition to MSPs and provides our partners with an opportunity to differentiate their business."

Philippe Fosse, Vice President Europe Channels at EMC, added: "This business relationship combines EMC's best of breed cloud service offerings with Azlan's experience to deliver a quick and powerful route-to-market for managed service providers across Europe."

Alastair Edwards, Principal Analyst at Canalys, observed: "This is a critical time for the channel, as resellers adapt their business models in response to growing customer demand for hybrid IT.

"At the same time, new types of MSP partner are starting to emerge. Distributors have always played a central role between vendors and channel partners, and that will remain true for new IT consumption models.

"Azlan's ability to help partners develop a portfolio of IT-as-a-service offerings, expand their managed services capabilities, as well as provide training, lead generation and sales support, aligns closely with the direction we see the channel taking."

UC software vendor ipcortex is set to launch the latest version of its platform with keevio, the web interface that enables easy access to video, screen and file sharing, IM and voice (one-to-one or multiway) with no specific requirement for software.

Using WebRTC, businesses can experience rich multi-media collaboration and conferencing with customers and colleagues, wherever they are and whatever device they're using.

ipcortex CEO and founder Rob Pickering said: "This technology will change the baseline of what people expect from UC and, indeed, customer service.

"It's not just about replicating what we can already do with collaboration and conferencing software in a more web-centric way, it's about delivering that in a far more accessible way with the same universal reach you'd expect from a phone system.

"Customer can join a multi-media chat session with the click of a link, with no software or plugins needed.

"The real world impact of that is that every business can make customer service a defining element of their brand. It becomes a human, memorable experience - not just an efficient process. It's the sort of thing that turns customers into loyal fans."

Keevio was also designed to help businesses to devise services that deliver a competitive advantage and new revenue opportunities.

"The accessibility and universal reach makes real 'art of the possible' use cases a reality," added Pickering. "Remote personal shopping, faulty goods inspection/support, health consultations, virtual incident rooms, live video feeds from public to newsrooms, all suddenly become possible with little more than some imagination.

"Suddenly, you're not just improving the services you already offer - you're creating new ones that differentiate you from your competitors."

Keevio can also be enabled as a softphone in the web browser, with no separate product, interface or VPN to consider, resulting in phoneless call centres and mobility for remote workers.

The release also adds WebRTC to the ipcortex JavaScript API, making it easier for developers to add sophisticated real time comms functions to their own applications.

Pickering added: "Businesses are already able to integrate ipcortex with existing systems to gain a real competitive advantage, but now with WebRTC functionality that benefit increases immensely."

Sixty videos designed to showcase new technology trends and products have been launched by Nimans.

Among the categories covered are Headsets, WLAN, Systems, Conferencing, Long Range Wireless Technologies, Call Management, Cabling, Own Brands and a Call Blocker.

Group Sales & Business Development Director, Richard Carter, said: "Video production is playing an increasingly important role in helping resellers understand and educate their own customers about the benefits and features of product sets and individual solutions. They are a great way of bringing products to life."

C4L has become a registered supplier of the Government's Connected Cities voucher scheme which is now available to the Bournemouth City Region.

A recent Tech City Tech Nation report confirmed Bournemouth as the fastest growing technology cluster in the country, and C4L recognises that this growth is fuelled by access to faster broadband technology.

Matt Hawkins, Chairman and Founder of C4L, said: "We have already deployed huge connectivity infrastructure at our Data Centre based in the heart of Bournemouth, linking local businesses with the global Internet and we are aiming to link them to incredible speeds.

"This government supported initiative allows us to extend our network directly into Dorset enterprises. In many cases the connection voucher covers the set-up costs entirely, effectively removing the barriers to the service.

"Too many businesses are running on domestic grade services, I am looking forward to empowering them with business calibre connectivity, so that they are better able to operate effectively and competitively. My aim is to provide all Dorset businesses with ultrafast Internet speeds as the norm."

Tollring has achieved certification to international standard ISO/IEC 27001 for Information Security Management.

The ISO 27000 family of standards helps organisations to keep information assets secure.

ISO/IEC 27001 is the best-known standard in the family providing requirements for an information security management system (ISMS).

Certification in ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management highlights Tollring's ability to identify risks and put controls in place to manage or reduce them, ensures procedures are in place to enable prompt detection of security breaches, shows the company's flexibility to adapt controls to selected/all areas of the business, proves to customers that their data is protected and demonstrates compliance.

The ISO/IEC 27001 standard is based around continual improvement, and requires Tollring to regularly review the effectiveness of their information security management system (ISMS) and take action to address new and emerging security risks.

"Achieving certification shows Tollring's commitment to information security at all levels throughout the organisation," said a spokesperson.