Comms Dealer

NTA's target busting hosted telephony resellers were rewarded with an all-expenses paid trip to Cyprus (May 16th-20th) where they enjoyed a selection of activities including golf, a boat trip and diving, along with evening treats such as a Casino trip.

NTA Sales Director Justin Blaine commented: "It's great to have so many partners who qualified. During the trip they have not only forged a stronger relationship with the NTA team, but also between themselves by sharing business ideas and stories about their different routes to success."

Hosted UC provider thevoicefactory (tvf) has developed a cyber security solution for its Hosted Telephony and SIP Trunking customers.

The SENTRY fraud management service monitors and reports any suspicious activity enabling customers to identify and thwart attacks on their telecoms systems. It is mandatory and free of charge and is designed to ensure tvf's partners and their end customers are protected against fraud.

"Unified Comms applications such as voice, video, messaging and file sharing are as prone to network attacks as web and data applications," said MD Paul Harrison. "However, businesses tend to focus their security efforts on incoming and outgoing data and neglect real-time communications.

"Attacks can include theft of service, telephony denial-of-service (TDoS), voice phishing, toll fraud and eavesdropping. Cyber criminals are actively targeting cloud platforms which provide diverse attack points for hackers and there has been a rise in attacks using SIP. SENTRY ensures our partners' customers are not left vulnerable to such attacks."

A team of 22 staff from Telford-based communications wholesaler Entanet completed the Tough Mudder Half Midlands challenge, raising funds for the stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands.

The Entanet team comprised a mix of men and women from various departments within the company, including two even completing the challenging run dressed as Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs.

Stephen Barclay, Entanet Sales Director, said: "The course lived up to its name. It was really tough and very muddy, but it was also a lot of fun.

"It must have been particularly difficult for our T-Rex duo, who really went above and beyond to support Sands. However, it was well worth the effort to raise money for such a special charity."

A new study carried out by Cisco has revealed that 60% of IoT initiatives stall at the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage and only 26% of companies have had an IoT initiative that they considered a complete success. A third of all completed projects were not considered a success.

"It's not for the lack of trying," said Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President and General Manager, IoT and Applications, Cisco. "But there are plenty of things we can do to get more projects out of pilot and to complete success."??Inbar Lasser-Raab, VP of Cisco Enterprise Solutions Marketing, added: "We are seeing new IoT innovations almost every day.

"We are connecting things that we never thought would be connected, creating incredible new value to industries. 

"But where we see most of the opportunity is where we partner with other vendors and create solutions that are not only connected but also share data. That shared data is the basis of a network of industries - sharing of insights to make tremendous gains for business and society, because no one company can solve this alone."

Daisy Group has been awarded Gold Business Partner status by hardware manufacturer Lenovo, its highest tier.

The announcement follows a period of revenue growth over the last 12 months during which Daisy's Lenovo revenue stream achieved over 170% year-on-year growth.

Andrew Pring, Group Vendor Alliances & Supply Chain Services Director at Daisy Group, said: "Lenovo underpins our desktop lifecycle services to some of Daisy's longest-serving and most prestigious customers. It's exciting to consider what more we can achieve together as this partnership continues to develop."

8x8 has appointed Rani Hublou as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) responsible for aligning 8x8's value proposition, products, packaging and positioning with global marketing initiatives.

"Rani is a proven innovator, competitor and winner and her accomplishments at Comprehend, PSS Systems, BEA Systems, Broadvision and Icarian speak for themselves," said Vik Verma, Chief Executive Officer of 8x8.

"She has the marketing expertise, management consulting background and successful track record using a big data analytics approach to help companies create and expand into new markets."

A new report from West states that over 88% of organisations expect digital customer interactions to overtake voice by 2020 or sooner, and 92% say customer experience can be linked to revenue, but just 29% are confident they can deliver a seamless customer experience across multiple channels.

The report also reveals that the biggest obstacle to designing and delivering an exceptional customer experience revolves around flexibility, the ability to integrate and the costs linked to creating the required architecture.

Over half (57%) of companies say that ensuring technology keeps pace with changing customer behaviours is a top priority, yet organisations across the board have been slow to adopt consumers' favoured communication methods.

While 49% say they offer email as a customer communication channel, only 39% use webchat and just 21% offer web self-service, which is rapidly becoming a top preference for consumers.

Just 47% of contact centre decision makers strongly agree that 'my contact centre meets my needs as a customer', highlighting the gap between the ideal customer experience and the one many organisations are actually able to deliver.

Even though a majority (92%) agree that customer experience can be linked to revenue, just 35% of organisations are using customer experience as a performance indicator and only 25% are currently measuring customer effort, confirming that customer service metrics have failed to keep pace with the changing priorities of organisations.

Enda Kenneally, VP Sales & Business Development UKI at West Corporation, said: "With digital interactions set to overtake voice within just a few short years, organisations are going to need to make fundamental changes to people, processes and technology.

"Yet our study shows that while customer experience professionals understand the challenges ahead, they are preparing for the future against a backdrop of outdated technology and organisational structures, as well as dated processes and management practices.

"The pace of technological change and consumers' willingness to embrace new communication methods means that your customer service operation needs the ability to add new channels without large capital investment and have the ability to re-configure your contact centre within hours or even minutes if necessary.

"It may sound obvious, but it's important to offer customers a range of communication channels, including self-service, or risk losing customers and revenue to more agile competitors."

Our thoughts and prayers go to the victims and anyone caught up in the horrific Manchester Arena attack.
This is a devastating day for your city and our country, but we know you will go about your business as normal and we know there are people in our industry doing everything they can to help people find missing relatives. Stay strong Manchester, everyone is behind you.

Node4 has been awarded a place on G-Cloud 9, the UK Government's cloud services procurement framework.

"A number of public sector organisations are increasing their use of cloud services due to its flexibility and cost savings," said Paula Johnston, Head of Public Sector at Node4.

"G-Cloud 9 makes it easier for organisations to check which types of suppliers meet the Crown Commercial Service's (CCS) approval criteria and readily engage with them.

"Being a G-Cloud9 supplier means that public sector services have better access to Node4's solutions to run mission-critical systems and services."

According to G-Cloud figures, updated on 10 January 2017, approximately £1,696,137,364 of G-Cloud sales (ex. VAT) have been reported since the initiative launched in 2012.

Just over half (56%) of total sales by value and 64% by volume, from all reported G-Cloud sales to date, have been awarded to SMEs. 77% of total sales by value were through Central Government; 23% through the wider public sector.

The CCS, which oversees the G-Cloud framework and Digital Marketplace, acts on behalf of the Crown to drive savings for the taxpayer and improve the quality of commercial and procurement activity.

CityFibre has appointed George Wareing (pictured) as Sales Director with a remit to lead the sales and business development team and drive growth across the carrier, wholesale channel, mobile and public sectors.

His 18 years experience in the cable and mobile sectors includes a 15 year stint at Virgin Media Business where he built a commercial team and transformed the mobile backhaul market through a £100 million national backhaul deal with MBNL.

He left Virgin Media Business to become UK Sales Director for Telecity Group in 2014 (now Equinix) where he led many record contract wins.

Wareing said: "As an alternative, full-fibre communications infrastructure provider we have the ability to transform digital infrastructure, alter the status quo for the benefit of all and meet rising demand and expectations for better service and affordable gigabit connectivity. As Sales Director, I'm looking forward to playing a lasting and significant role in this journey."

Rob Hamlin, Commercial Director, CityFibre, added: "George is one of the most respected and highly sought-after Sales Directors in the industry. His achievements in previous roles are renowned and this appointment marks a significant milestone in CityFibre's ambitions to transform digital infrastructure in the UK.

"With George on board, we are positioned to secure fast-paced, well scaled strategic growth with a focus on developing high performing teams and customer satisfaction.

"He will be an asset to the team and we're all delighted that he joins CityFibre at such a pivotal time as we focus on accelerating the number of Gigabit Cities across the UK."