Comms Dealer

More than 600 resellers descended on Gamma's museum themed 2015 roadshow, staged at museums across the UK during March including Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and London.

The Museum Roadshow provided delegates with the opportunity to hear about Gamma's 2015 product roadmap, how its range of voice, mobile and data services can create opportunities that meet the demands of today's businesses and how resellers can gain access to commercial incentives and marketing support to help them sell more.

Gamma's Marketing Director Richard Bligh said: "It's been a busy time for Gamma with lots of exciting new products and services being launched. With all of this activity going on, it's important to us that we don't lose sight of what matters - understanding the needs of our Channel Partners and their customers, providing access to products, services and commercial initiatives that give them an edge and, ultimately, helping them make more margin."

Pictured at Gamma's London roadshow is CEO Bob Falconer 

Mitel has recognised the contribution of its channel partners in driving growth, presenting awards to the three UK partners who have contributed the greatest revenues in 2014 along with those who have contributed the greatest revenues in the Hosted Cloud Communications and Contact Centre sectors.

The winners of the Mitel Partner Awards were announced at the annual Mitel Directors Briefing in London. The awards focused on total overall sales and also those partners contributing specifically to Mitel's focus areas for growth: Cloud solutions and the Contact Centre.

The winners were: Cloud Services Provider of the Year - Worksmart Technology; Contact Centre Partner of the Year - Britannic Technologies; Partner of the Year - Daisy Group (runners up: Azzurri Communications and Alternative Networks); and Carrier of the Year - BT.

Simon Skellon, Vice President Sales, UK, Mitel, said: "Our partners have all played an active role in supporting our growth. Our awards recognise their contribution within the market overall and in helping us to actively grow our market share for Cloud solutions and within the contact centre.

"The UK continues to be a core region for Mitel and we remain committed to our channel model, providing our partners with the products and services that are designed to meet customer demand and help them to grow their own businesses."

Mitel has more than 200 channel partners in the UK who work directly with Mitel or through its distribution partner Trust.

A year-long partner recruitment campaign launched by Unify UK & Ireland will greatly advance the vendor's plan to become a channel-centric business, according to Tony Smith, UK&I Channel Sales Director.

In October last year Thomas Veit, Senior VP of Channels for Unify EMEAR, stated that Unify intends to drive 45% of revenues through the channel within two years, up from 25%.

The step-up in UK channel activity aims to catalyse 35% year-on-year sales growth, noted Smith, who said Unify's expanded UK sales and marketing team will drive fresh demand for the vendor's new software-led communication and collaboration solutions via the recently launched Unify Partner Program.

Citing a sharp rise in UC attach rates from 4% to 21% during the last year, Smith said: "Over the next 12 months Unify will run a recruitment drive to join the Unify Partner Program, from both the traditional voice space and IT and software partners that can drive our virtualised solutions and our new SaaS solution, Circuit."

"The Program also offers structured incentives such as a rebate on growth with Unify providing up to a 15% increase to the partner's bottom line, and provides opportunities for amplified profitability."

Since November 2014 Unify has hired seven new members into the channel team, including Michelle Jones who was appointed in January as VP of Marketing for Channels in EMEAR. She joined from Avaya where she was the Director of Channel Strategy & Development for APAC and EMEA.

Unify also hired Owain Dobson, Head of Global Pre Sales and Technical Operations, and Ritesh Patel, Channel Finance - both join from Avaya. Meanwhile, Paul Riordan has been named as VP Worldwide Channel Sales Operations.

Richard Carter, Group Sales and Business Development Director at Nimans (Unify's UK & Ireland distributor), said: "We are playing a front line role in embracing the opportunities Unify's programme creates to help our customers accelerate and expand their business capabilities."

Nine Group has moved to a brand new, purpose built office in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, named 'The Hub'.

The move follows the service provider's rapid expansion over the last five years. The Nine workforce in Stonehouse has grown from 25 in 2009 to over 100 this year and further growth is forecast.

The Hub features the latest innovations in office functionality from touch-screen coffee machines to under-floor heating.

The Nine brand is well represented with purple tints to the glass office walls, quirky signage on director's doors (CEO James Palmer is badged as 'Le Grand Fromage') and even a purple pool table in the staff kitchen.

Palmer told Comms Dealer: "The move to larger premises reflects our strong performance. Nine's success and growth comes as a result of the determination, expertise and professionalism of our staff. We are excited about the office move and the increase in space will enable us to continue to expand in the future."

Nine Wholesale has renewed its sponsorship of Porsche Carrera Cup GB 2014 Champion Josh Webster for the 2015 racing season.

Josh Webster flew into the history books in 2014 by becoming not only the youngest champion, but also the first Porsche GB Scholar in history to win the championship in his first year of racing.

Josh said: "It's fantastic that Nine Group are supporting me again this season. They are an ambitious and dynamic business and it's great to be associated with them. I'm particularly grateful to the many Nine staff and resellers who turn up to support me at every race - it makes a huge difference."

Josh's father, Nine Wholesale MD Nick Webster, will attend all of the race days and will be joined by a selection of Purple Partners who get the chance to watch the racing action from the trackside, meet Josh in person, sit in the car and attend a Q&A session.

The season officially kicked off on 17th March with a media day hosted at Silverstone.

James Palmer, Nine Group CEO, commented: "We're delighted to be sponsoring Josh for a second season of racing. We were thrilled with his incredible success last year, so our continued support was a no-brainer. Nine employees apply a sporting ethos and fierce desire to win to everything we do - this makes us a perfect partnership."

Cash rich Excell Group has announced a new acquisition strategy headed up by Finance Director, Edward Pettit.

Pettit played a pivotal role in the recent acquisition of Resource Utilities and Green Mobile customer bases which increased the London based comms provider's turnover to £27m.

He told Comms Dealer: "The Group's strong cash reserves leave us well placed to capitalise on such opportunities.

"Acquisitions are targeted to complement the existing products, expand our base and provide cross selling opportunities with a focus on hosted and managed services.??"With changing demands of technology becoming increasingly prevalent and complex and with new regulatory changes on the horizon, any acquired customer bases will benefit from Excell Group's support and range of cloud products and services.

"We will remain focused on our customers and strengthen and build on our offerings to deliver even greater value."

Excell Group Chairman Darren Strowger stressed that recent acquisitions utilise charity affinity schemes that 'further support Excell's commitment to social value and adds to charitable commitments already made to Teenage Cancer Trust and local charitable projects and initiatives'.

Following Ofcom's decision to implement new regulations for B2C business using NGNS (Non Geographic number services), Elitetele.com is offering free consultation to any business set to be affected by the changes which will come into force from 1st July 2015.
 
The team of experts behind Elitetele.com's numbering solutions will now be available to educate and assist any business that uses or advertises 08, 09 or 118 numbers which consumers can call.

The organisation will also provide advice on the changes to unbundling charges, reduced price points and the removal of set-up fees from call charges.
 
Working with carriers, Elitetele.com can provide insight on how the changes to service charges will impact 08 and 09 wholesale charges, revenue share and the change in 0800 rates to accommodate calls from mobile networks.
 
Matt Newing, CEO of Elitetele.com, said: "The changes are widely acknowledged in the industry to be confusing. All businesses using affected numbers need to decide how to manage their numbering estate moving forward.

"There are various options available depending on the set-up, and our team of experienced experts are now on hand to offer free, impartial advice to any business which needs it "

IT provider SCC has strengthened its play in the data centre and hosted space following an investment in Fluidata by Rigby Group (which owns SCC).

Th deal signals Rigby Group's 14th piece of M&A activity since hitting the acquisition trail in 2013, and the first in 2015.

The investment is another milestone in the accelerated growth of SCC's services division, with services turnover alone increasing 8% to £148m by the end of September 2014.

SCC witnessed growth of 69% from data centre and cloud services alone last year following a succession of key customer wins including Gist, Aggregate Industries, BOC, IBM, Oxfordshire County Council, CAA and Highways Agency.

Founder and managing director of Fluidata Piers Daniell said: "Collaborating with SCC is good news all round - to our customers, their customers and the market - as together we are able to deliver a wider range of connectivity and data centre services based on our shared values."

SCC CEO James Rigby added: "SCC and Fluidata provides additional services capability and a stable foundation for us to enter the data telecoms market with a full and flexible DCS offering."

Rigby Group is the parent company for a portfolio of privately owned and successful businesses operating across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

The £2bn company, owned by Sir Peter Rigby, has interests in the technology, airports, hotels, real estate, financial and aviation sectors.

Abzorb has rolled out a national, fully white labelled PBX maintenance and support package to its channel partners as it moves towards total UC service provision.

The service provider is claiming to turn quotes around in eight hours under a simple two level cover programme.

"We wanted to make this easy so we decided to make the highest level of maintenance cover as standard at no extra cost, with only 24/7 covers as an extra add-on," said Darren Smith, Head of Data Services.

Abzorb is also set to roll out a hosted solution called ZORB IP, promising simple administration for channel partners through its tiered portal system.

"The ZORB IP hosted voice solution will go hand-in-hand with the Abzorb SIP service we suppy alongside BT which enables us to deliver converged voice and data over the same connection," added Smith. 

"In addition, we are planning to add QoS to the voice we supply. This will provide our partners with the ability to sell a true UC product.

"In today's marketplace you can no longer just sell single circuit connectivity, you need to focus on the consultative sell and really maximise the connectivity you supply."

Comms service provider Plan has unveiled an ambitious strategy to ramp up profits for its mobile reseller partners by adding a complete range of communications solutions to its portfolio. The additions include fixed line voice and data connectivity through BT plus the full suite of Microsoft communications apps and software.

The strategy is pinned on a comprehensive overhaul of the Plan partner portal and seven new 'channels' which were revealed to an enthusiastic audience of 350 plus partners at the Plan.Live partner even at Manchester's Media City on March 19th.

In what will be seen as a major challenge to full service channel competitors, the new Plan offerings include fixed line, data and VoIP services, a complete hardware ordering mechanism with free delivery plus mobile broadband, IoT (Internet of Things) and a full suite of Microsoft Apps and Software with a promise to pay the best commission in the UK on Microsoft 365 deals.

Confessing to '30 sleepless nights' preparing for the launch, CEO Dan Craddock said the company had a big war chest to call on plus the skill sets and passion to fund the ambitious rollouts and urged partners to work with him and his team on changing comms provider paradigms.

"We run lots of successful companies around the world and have a massive infrastructure at our disposal, and we want to share our vision for the future with you, our partners, because we could not have achieved the success we have achieved so rapidly without you guys."

At the core of Plan's channel strategy is Version 3 of Plan Portal which has had a 'top to tail' revamp at the front and back-end and aims to offer partners what Operations Director Ched Willard described as 'a seamless user experience with maximum usability, flexibility and performance'.

He said: "The Portal is the tool that connects us together. It has been remodelled over thousands of man hours to give partners full control. The key is customisation and a completely new dashboard experience which users can organise in a way that suits their business."

Plan demonstrated its resolve to cater for the growing demands of partners and the entire business communications needs of the businesses they serve by announcing a range of valued added services all designed to add margin and glue in dealer/customer relationships.

These include a Recycling channel enabling partners to cash-in on end of life smartphones; a Mend channel offering a 72 hour quick fix repairs service for the 35 out of 100 users who managed to 'break' or 'drown' their devices; and a Wallet back-end to the Plan Portal enabling partners to stack up as many channels as they like and administer all customer services.

A mobile version of the portal is also being rolled out to enable partners to react 24-7 to business customer demands (for example, weekend broadband barring, data expenditure etc).

Plan also pledged a support and training programme to help partners get to grips with the new services and portal upgrade.

Plan co-founder Keith Curran said Plan's entry into the Internet of Things and simplification of M2M connectivity orders for partners via the Plan portal was a response to market predictions.

"IoT is a planetary game changer for the mobile industry," he said. "It is forecasted there will be 70 billion M2M connections made worldwide in the next five years at the rate of 130 a second. The market could be worth £14tr dollars. It is a massive untapped opportunity for our partners."

Craddock said Plan has no strategy at present to introduce a wholesale reseller model or enter the consumer market but he did not rule anything out in the future. "We are in this for the long haul and we are open to all ideas," he said.