Comms Dealer

MWC 2015 - a personal view by Andrew Skinner, Relationship Director for Barclays' Technology Media and Telecoms Team

Wearables obviously attracted a lot of media attention at MWC this year because of their appeal to the consumer, but for old hands, it will come as little surprise that a number of the more interesting conversations had were about what 5G means for the industry. After all, despite all the hype about wearables, what good is a connected watch when there's no network available for you to connect to?
 
For all the timelines being bandied around 5G remains largely conceptual. Yes, the Wireless Alliance tested a device on a 5G network, providing connectivity of approx. 5,000 times faster than on 4G. But we are still to define exactly what it is that 5G needs to be and the services it needs to enable, and the industry must move relatively quickly to put a framework in place to achieve the lofty goals that have already been set.
 
One of the major problems facing those charged with development of 5G standards and technologies at the minute is that they must do so in tandem with maximising the opportunities that 4G brings; not to mention 3G in the developing world. And actually, there's an argument in an increasingly globalised economy for focusing on the latter, or else risk widening the gap between the developed and the developing world. After all, there are still several countries in Africa, relying predominantly on GSM (2G), let alone the luxury of 3G.
 
One of the fundamental requirements of 5G is the need for ultra-high availability, but how much of that can be achieved by augmenting and optimising existing technology? Google announced its plans to launch a virtual mobile network in the US, enabling users to switch seamlessly between cellular, Wi-Fi, and different wireless carriers, to provide an optimum mobile experience for the end user. For plenty of telcos and hardware manufacturers, it seems like the biggest opportunity can be found in the convergence of cellular and Wi-Fi to achieve near universal connectivity.
 
The development of 5G for 2020, cannot be at the expense of advances made to fully realise everything that 4G was supposed to achieve. Some of the most interesting companies I found myself speaking to while out at MWC buy into this vision of the future, but understand that even if 5G is delivered to the market in five years' time, many improvements in connectivity can be achieved in a considerably shorter timeframe by focusing on the networks that are already in play.
 
And actually, that's all part and parcel of one of the shows other big themes; enterprise mobility. To properly take advantage of the roll-out of 4G services and integrate mobile into the work place, it is increasingly important that businesses employ mobility practices to provide the necessary support, infrastructure and security, to enable fully mobile ways of working. From robust BYOD policies, to delivering enterprise applications for collaborative ways of working, there are already so many different ways for businesses to mobilise their workforce.
 
The internet of things remains a hot topic and it's pleasing to see that we've moved significantly forward in terms of the hype cycle, to a place where practical deployments of machine to machine interactivity are becoming part of mainstream society. But for IoT to truly take off, the focus must once again be brought back to how we can make best use of 4G technology to deliver robust M2M deployments as quickly as possible.

Virtual1 has announced plans to roll out The Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) Connection Voucher Scheme nationally.

Partners will be able to provide some of the fastest quotes nationally on the BDUK scheme via the company's portal - 1Portal, said the firm. Quote to orders are done in real-time with APIs into major carriers.

The company already offers its partners' end customers superfast business Internet as part of the BDUK scheme across London.

The scheme offers up to a maximum of £3,000 of Government funding to SMEs covering installation and connection costs on connectivity.

On 3rd December 2015, the Chancellor announced that the Government will make up to £40m available from April 2015 to March 2016 to support more cities administer The Broadband Connection Voucher Scheme.

CEO of Virtual1, Tom O'Hagan, commented: "It makes sense for us as provider to roll-out the BDUK scheme nationally.

"Our network and our offers need to reach where our partners' end customers are."

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise partner SBL is the first to deliver the OpenTouch Enterprise Cloud (OTEC) solution to UK businesses.

SBL, an Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Premium Partner, secured a deal to supply the solution to the UK HQ of a global hotel group with plans to take in over 100 of its hotels over the coming years.

SBL has appointed David Marsh (former Director of New Business Development at the Steria Group) as Commercial Director to spearhead a wider drive to market.

The OTEC solution delivers UCaaS through a variable usage licensing model, with an initial focus on providing a low-cost-to-market solution for the hospitality, retail and education sectors.

Chris Brassington, CEO, SBL, said: "The shift to cloud is gaining momentum but we are now seeing customers start to push back at the idea of a one-size-fits-all approach to delivery.

"Combined with the maintenance and hardware side of our business, one of the advantages of OTEC is that it allows us to offer our customers the level of tailoring we know they want from their solutions, and being able to tie our pricing model to vital industry metrics allows us to tie the cost of the solution to key business processes and revenue flows."

Peter Tebbutt, Country Leader UK&I, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, added: "SBL has impressed us with its go to market strategy and it brings a high level of competence and professionalism to the delivery of UCaaS in the UK.

"This partnership is set to meet the growing business demand for flexible solutions that offer access to Unified Communications and collaboration tools, but without the prohibitive up-front capital costs."

Strategic moves made by Chess and outlined at last month's first Chess Partner Services conference got a big thumbs up from delegates with 98% of partners likely to take on new products and services.

John Pett (pictured), Sales Director at Chess Partner Services, said: "The industry is changing. Partners can no longer survive on just one product and have to acquire more of their customer's wallet share in order to grow their business.

"We take the pain out of adopting new services for our partners by providing them with the tools they need to go out and do what they do best - win business."

Formed in August 2014 following the merger of Chess Wholesale and Avenir Telecom's Airtime division, Chess Partner Services has 700 partners and £29m turnover, and has dubbed 2015 as the 'Year of Growth and Opportunity'.

The conference brought together expertise from all areas of Chess including voice, connectivity, networking, IT and professional services, and featured guest speakers from O2 and Microsoft.

The event included news on the ebillz billing solution which now sits under the Chess Partner Services umbrella and caters for all partners from start-ups to enterprise businesses.

A One Stop Shop for products and services was introduced alongside a new Elite Partner Programme launched with incentives and commercials.

"Partners with Chess now all have the opportunity to earn a further £16,000 each and every year with the new commercial bonus scheme, and will benefit from having £1,000s in cash, holiday prizes and tickets to the nation's biggest events," added Pett.

Poole-based VoIP Unlimited has supported its charity of the year, The Brain Tumour Charity, by taking part in Bandanas for Brain Tumours 2015.

In a mission to encourage awareness of the symptoms of brain tumours the team embraced casual Friday and donned bandanas exclusively designed by The Brain Tumour Charity as part of its Wear it out campaign and Brain Tumour Awareness Month, raising £86.

The key objective of Bandanas for Brain Tumours 2015 was to get the message to Parliament that diagnosing brain tumour patients earlier can save lives, as despite the government's commitment to early diagnosis of cancer it has provided no funds or resources to raise awareness of the symptoms of brain tumours.

Mark Pillow, MD of VoIP Unlimited, said: "VoIP Unlimited is dedicated to supporting The Brain Tumour Charity in its work to fight brain tumours and save lives through ground-breaking research, awareness and care.

"Taking part in Bandanas for Brain Tumours was a way to get behind the charity and spread the word about the incredible work it does, and to encourage the government to sit up and listen."

VoIP Unlimited also supports The Brain Tumour Charity's HeadSmart campaign, which aims to raise the awareness of brain tumour symptoms in children and young people.

Planet Hippo, part of The Network Selector Group, has launched a new reseller hosting solution. The company is also seeking to acquire additional hosted services businesses to extend its reach across the UK.

Darren Lavender, Managing Director of Planet Hippo, said: "This new hosting service takes care of server maintenance including backups, security, software installations and more, allowing resellers to concentrate on growing their businesses instead of supporting their own hosting service.

"The investment we have made in building new data centres can be leveraged by resellers to provide clients with a value-added service."

Planet Hippo offers Linux-hosted solutions across dedicated, cloud and shared networks enabling the delivery of a reliable and resilient hosting service. "With no minimum-term contracts and a 30-day money back guarantee, this new service presents a risk-free option for resellers looking to switch ISPs," added Lavender.

"We have experienced a significant expansion over recent months with a 100% growth month on month as an increasing number of digital agencies outsource their web hosting operations to Planet Hippo."

Ingram Micro has revealed details on its European participation in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program.

The program allows partners to provision, bundle, invoice, manage and support Microsoft Cloud offerings including Microsoft Office 365 and Windows Intune subscriptions.

The first Ingram Micro European countries to participate in the scheme include Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, with central and eastern Europe to follow.

"Ingram Micro was one of the first to join the Microsoft CSP program in the United States and has seen early success," said Carl Alloin, executive director, Cloud Europe, Ingram Micro.

"Our goal is to differentiate Ingram Micro's Microsoft CSP offering by providing the cloud solution plus the migration services and a 24/7 customer-facing help desk for partners that choose not to staff a support organisation."

A new SLA launched by Fluidata offers customers a higher level of compensation if their service is down.

Customers will receive a monthly performance report which details any downtime with information on tickets and performance of the business as a whole.

Any payment owing will be automatically calculated as a percentage of the monthly fee and repaid.

"High speed Internet access is essential for businesses to operate," said Piers Daniell, Managing Director.

"Companies want assurances that they won't have any disruption to their service, which could cost them heavily. We can give that assurance, and our SLA+ is proof of our commitment to customer service.

"Service levels like this are essential now in our industry especially around measures like Jitter, Packet Loss or Latency."

Fluidata's standard SLA has also been improved, offering higher compensation (in some cases up to 40% higher than previously) for downtime.

Fluidata's SLA and SLA+ offer clients on annual contracts the option to cease their service early if they have consecutive breaches to their SLA.

Virgin Media Business has joined forces with Outsourcery to launch its first UC product for start-ups and smaller companies.

Multi-Tenant Lync can be scaled up or down each month and the cloud-based tools include instant messaging, web conferencing and IP voice.

The solution is accessible through a single interface, regardless of where employees are or whatever device they're using.

Mike Smith, Director of SoHo/SME at Virgin Media Business, said: "Small businesses are a driving force for our economy but without the right connectivity and tools in place they are not always able to realise their potential.

"We are offering them a simple, flexible solution so they can better communicate and challenge their biggest competitors."

Piers Linney, CEO of Outsourcery, said: "Multi-Tenant Lync is a great example of different technologies working together to help users share and communicate with each other.

"Our Cloud service will underpin this development for smaller businesses and we are delighted to partner with Virgin Media Business to develop such a tailored solution for their SME customers."

Despite 75% of IT decision makers wanting to procure all cloud services from a single provider, the majority have purchased offerings from three vendors, resulting in a complex cloud environment that may be hindering their agility and speed to market.

So finds a new report from Telstra, and according to Martin Bishop, Head of Network, Applications & Services, with consumers more in control of their purchasing power than ever before, a flexible and scalable cloud infrastructure has become increasingly critical to an organisations' success or failure.

"We are living in a buyers' market and our research suggests that in an effort to satisfy diverse customer expectations, many businesses initially turn to multiple cloud vendors to meet their various infrastructure needs. The result can be a complex cloud environment that is hard for the business to manage, integrate and control.

"Despite this, our research also reveals that pooling resources into a single private cloud isn't the ideal end-state either, with the majority of IT decision makers arguing this model fails to deliver the flexibility required for the varying types of processes, services and workloads that global companies must support.

"In a move away from the private clouds of yesterday, the trend in 2015 appears to be towards a hybrid approach, delivered by a single partner, fully accountable for an organisations cloud services end-to-end.

"In fact, our research shows that 72 per cent of IT decision makers would prefer a single provider or broker for all cloud services, then go through the challenge of managing multiple vendors."

According to Telstra's research, the flexibility and scalability associated with a hybrid cloud are what local IT leaders consider the most appealing benefits of this model.

Bishop added: "The market has shifted and customers now have the power to do what they want, when they want and how they want. Technology is clearly at the centre of this enablement and organisations that can align the power of hybrid cloud with customer demands are well placed to create what we're terming the Customer Centric Cloud - enabling more agile development and testing of applications, faster decision making and overall, an enhanced customer experience."