Comms Dealer

Three key appointments have boosted Maverick's strategy to advance the benefits of AV solutions in the wider business market.

The audio-visual business unit of Tech Data has appointed Shaun Elliott as Sales Director while Simon Millidge has been named Education Channel Manager.

Carmel Keightley has joined the firm as its new dedicated Marketing Manager, moving over after two years working in the Public Sector team. She will take responsibility for Maverick's customer focused campaigns, supporting business growth for both professional AV and B2B resellers.

Director of Maverick UK, Simon Fagan, stated: "We grew significantly last year and we have shown how effective we can be in driving and supporting development for our partners and customers.

"With the experience and expertise they bring, Shaun, Simon and Carmel will add even more energy and enthusiasm to our team and enable us to evolve and enhance the strategic focus of our business."

Advertised salary rates continue to rise strongly across the UK and there is little sign of a slowdown in wages growth, according to Clive Jefferys, MD of Telecoms recruiter JMA Network.

"The latest report from Adzuna points to accelerating pay pressure with a whopping 8.1% growth in aggregated advertised salaries over the last 12 months," he said.

"As the skills shortage bites deeper, the old adage that the best people are attracted to the best paid jobs has never been truer. Given that agreed job offers generally exceed advertised salaries, the true rate is likely to be well over 10%.

The volume of job advertising continues to grow with 25% more positions available compared with the same three month period last year. Nonetheless, the time taken to fill positions continues to slow as a dearth of candidates frustrates hirers.

"The average time to select and start new employees is now around four to five months. The wisest hirers have thrown away formal hiring schedules and interview candidates at every opportunity."

Bolton-based IT services firm Imerja has reported record financial results for the first half of the year with six month revenues up more than 60% on the same period last year.

The company is on course to exceed £9m by the end of the current 2014/2015 financial year.

A growing portfolio of annuity customers, supported from Imerja's accredited 24x7 operations centre, means the company already has significant forward revenues secured through to 2020 and beyond.

Its telemedicine services, such as Telestroke and Video-as-a-Service, have enabled critical and sometimes life-saving services to be accessed by patients regardless of location, improving clinical outcomes and delivering efficiency in terms of resource utilisation and cost savings.

Imerja's MD Ian Jackson said: "It is satisfying to see such strong and sustainable growth resulting from our long-term strategy for inward investment.

"We want to be a company that makes a difference. Our strong in-house capabilities are underpinned by high levels of accreditation and secure 24x7 operations, and from our headquarters in Bolton we deliver critical solutions to a large number of government, healthcare and blue light services each year.

"Our focus on achieving accreditation to HMG OFFICIAL across our core services will ensure Imerja is able to continue to provide robust and accredited services into the public sector for the foreseeable future."

NTT Communications has bought a big stake in Germany-based e-shelter, a data centre service operator. This puts NTT into the third place in terms of data centre space in Europe, it claims.

e-shelter is currently managing nearly 90,000 square meters of data centre space in four major cities in Germany, as well as Zurich, Switzerland and Vienna, Austria. One of its main facilities, Campus Frankfurt 1, Europe's largest data centre with some 60,000 square meters of data center space, comprises five free-standing buildings constructed specifically as data centres.

NTT Com currently operates data centres in the UK, France, Germany and Spain which e-shelter's six locations in central Europe will complement.

NTT Com President and CEO Akira Arima said: "e-shelter is a growing company offering data center capabilities. We look forward to expanding our share of the EU's overall ICT market."

According to e-shelter CEO Rupprecht Rittweger: "As our multinational customers expand beyond EU borders, and undergo rapid ICT evolutions, they are increasingly demanding globally seamless ICT solutions.

"To meet their demands ahead of our competitors, we believe that the best way to ensure e-shelter's growth and development is in partnership with NTT Com, which has a presence in Asia and is a provider of ICT services worldwide. At the same time, we look forward to strengthening NTT Com's global ICT infrastructure and market share with our strong presence in Europe."

NCONNECT is predicting a big increase in cloud telephony business from large corporates and blue chip accounts following a significant rise in the number of channel partners on boarded by the company, which is aiming for 300% revenue growth in 2015.

NCONNECT has also kicked off a major reseller recruitment campaign based on strategy to talk with 5,000 prospective UK partners about cloud telephony opportunities.

"Businesses are undergoing a comprehensive change of thinking and are tired of over-priced service contracts and being tied into long-term agreements," said Rami Houbby, Managing Director of NCONNECT, the UK subsidiary of NFON AG.

"Business communications operate differently in this day and age. They are straightforward, secure and cost-effective. With our product, we are helping businesses free themselves from the constraints of the established manufacturers. It will become increasingly difficult for IT decision-makers to keep holding on to antiquated forms of technology."

A new plug-and-play IP phone system aimed at small businesses has been launched by BT Business.

BT Cloud Phone offers a range of features including the ability to transfer calls to employees working out of the office.

The system is hosted in the cloud, which means that customers can access it from anywhere there is a BT Internet connection or wi-fi, and it removes the complexity of installing central processing hardware in the premises of small businesses.

Graham Sutherland, CEO, BT Business, said: "As businesses look to technology to help them increase their productivity, enhance flexibility, and control costs, we are seeing IP and cloud-based communications really take off.

In addition to the range of BT IP phones customers can also use a softphone on their PC, or having installed the BT Cloud Phone app use their iPhone or Android smartphone.

The system is looked after, maintained, and run by BT Cloud Phone, backed up by a dedicated service team and an online portal which allows customers to manage the system.

Mitel's cloud seats increased 83% year-over-year according to the vendor's financial results for Q4 2014 and full year ending December 31st. Total cloud seats installed stands at a milestone 1,039,000.

Other highlights include quarterly and annual revenue of $301.4m and $1.1bn respectively, with record quarterly and annual adjusted EBITDA of $57.9m and $166.9m.

"2014 was a transformational year for Mitel in which we set new benchmarks for our financial results and emerged as a true global market share and industry leader," said Richard McBee, President and Chief Executive Officer.

"Our sales performance speaks to the fact that our broad portfolio of business communications solutions - premise, cloud and hybrid - is able to address the diverse and evolving needs of customers in markets around the world.

"We have carried that momentum into 2015 with confirmation earlier this month that Mitel is now the fastest growing and #1 market share leader in cloud communications, with more than 1,000,000 total seats installed.

"Our foundation is solid, our growth initiatives are delivering, our team is running at full speed, and we are seeing the results of the full scale and power of the new Mitel."

In the fourth quarter Mitel installed over 177,000 new cloud seats, including over 24,000 recurring cloud seats.

Year-over-year, Mitel's recurring cloud seats increased to 269,155, up 122% and its total installed cloud base increased to over 1,039,000 seats, up 83%.

HP has acquired wireless specialist Aruba Networks for $3bn in a move that boosts HP's capabilities in the delivery of converged campus solutions.

Aruba has approximately 1,800 employees and notched up $729m revenues in fiscal 2014, and has reported compound annual revenue growth of 30% over the last five years.

"Enterprises are facing a mobile-first world and are looking for solutions that help them transition legacy investments to the new style of IT," said Meg Whitman, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of HP.

"By combining Aruba's wireless mobility solutions with HP's switching portfolio, HP will offer the simplest, most secure networking solutions to help enterprises easily deploy next-generation mobile networks."

This new combined organisation will be led by Aruba's Chief Executive Officer Dominic Orr, and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, Keerti Melkote, reporting to Antonio Neri, leader of HP Enterprise Group.

Orr added: "Together with HP we have a tremendous opportunity to become an even greater force in enterprise mobility and networking.

"This transaction brings together Aruba's best-of-breed mobility hardware and software solutions with HP's switching portfolio. In addition, Aruba's channel partners will have the opportunity to expand their businesses with HP offerings."

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of HP's fiscal year 2015, subject to Aruba stockholder approval, regulatory approvals in the US and other countries as well as other customary closing conditions.

Mitel is to acquire Mavenir Systems, a provider of software-based networking solutions for mobile carriers, in a $560m deal. The addition of Mavenir solidifies Mitel's UCC portfolio across fixed and mobile environments, and expands its addressable market to a potential $14bn by 2018, and capitalises on the growth of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) as mobile carriers make the move to all IP and 4G services.

The deal also expands Mitel's service provider and mobile operator footprint to over 130 service providers and mobile operators, including 15 of the top 20 mobile carriers worldwide, covering two billion subscribers.

"With wireless adoption of IP and 4G LTE and demand for next gen mobile services ramping quickly, we see a compelling opportunity to capitalise on a major market transition to add a high-growth mobile business to Mitel," said Rich McBee, President and CEO of Mitel. 

"We believe the combination of Mitel and Mavenir creates a powerful new value proposition for enterprises and mobile service providers, using a common IP technology layer as the foundation for convergence, growth and competitive differentiation." 

With an established footprint of over 130 mobile customers including 15 of the top 20 mobile carriers worldwide, Mavenir is a key player in 4G LTE mobile solutions and claims a number of 'industry firsts' including the world's first live network deployments of VoLTE and RCS5 with MetroPCS (now T-Mobile); the first mobile network deployment of IMS-based VoWi-Fi (Wi-Fi calling) with T-Mobile US; and the first implementation of Virtualised RCSe with Deutsche Telekom.

The deal gives Mavenir the financial and operational footprint to drive further market expansion of the company's mobile solutions. 

Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO, of Mavenir, said: "The move to all-IP LTE mobile networks has created an opportunity for service providers to leverage a converged all-IP network to offer feature-rich business and consumer communication services to any device, anywhere, on any access network. 

"We believe that the combined company is positioned to capitalise on the trends within the communications industry today - namely, the convergence across enterprise and mobile networks to all-IP technologies, and the transition to cloud-based unified communications telephony and software-defined virtualised infrastructure."

Mavenir will become the mobile business division of Mitel, operating under the brand Mavenir. Kohli will join Mitel in the role of President, Mavenir, reporting to Rich McBee.

MeetingZone is rolling out a cloud-based Lync as a Service (LaaS) solution to resellers through its new LaaS Partner Programme.

CEO Steve Gandy said: "The service complements our partners' broader enterprise deployments of Microsoft technology and can potentially double the value of any O365 or Exchange deal.

"It also allows partners to tap into the cloud-based voice telephony opportunity giving them a recurring monthly revenue stream and an attractive margin."