Comms Dealer

Diva Telecom's reseller partners will have more time on their hands following the launch of a new one-stop portal in March.

The platform provides fast access to a single interface that manages Diva's portfolio, including its white labelled SMS and audio conferencing services and access to WLR3.

The system was developed in-house and also incorporates CRM and a billing platform, meaning that Diva customers do not need to rent or buy their own.

Diva recently appointed Kevin Harrison as Head of Sales and part of his remit is to drive channel development and adoption of the Diva Partner Portal.

He brings 25 years experience in the industry including 16 years in channel development.

Harrison said: "We are always looking for ways to make life easier for our customers and felt resellers would benefit from being able to manage everything from one place, including their billing."

IPGENIE is gearing up to launch IPGENIE v3, the latest version of its UC platform which includes additional features such as SMS, presence, web call back and outbound dialers.

Also included is a new contact directory that will enables users to import directly from their current contact database including Salesforce, SugarCRM, Sage and Google.

The IPGENIE solution operates through a licence agreement based on the number of extensions using the software. The customer will have Bria soft phones on site, and users will be able to accept calls on their wireless desktop handset - a 'regular' desk phone which works on Wi-Fi - as well as on their iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows OS devices and even tablets.

Paul McWilliams, Technical Director at IPGENIE, said: "Our new offering provides high end features at a low cost and will allow businesses in the UK and Ireland to save money on their telephony costs."

Annodata has bolstered its print capabilities following the acquisition of STS, a provider of managed print services. The acquisition was funded entirely by Annodata's existing cash reserves and pushes its annual revenues above £80m with over 400 employees.

Based in Wetherby STS has developed a niche in specialist print services and works with both the public and private sector organisations including William Hill, the Manchester Evening News and the Yorkshire Post.

The acquisition fills a gap in an area where Annodata has not traditionally focused - wide format specialised printing.

The additional turnover from STS is expected to approach £3m per annum.

The two businesses will be integrated in full, with Annodata's Leeds office set to be relocated to STS's offices in Wetherby.

STS's existing staff including the Managing Director Peter Langstaff will remain in situ.

Martin St. Quinton, Annodata's Chairman, commented: "STS has an impressive portfolio of longstanding customers including national and local newspaper groups and, much like Annodata, is particularly strong in the housing association market.

"Vendor agnostic and with a strong, profitable business model, STS is a great fit for Annodata."

Langstaff added: "Becoming part of the Annodata Group is good news for our staff and, importantly, for our customers, who will benefit from the additional resources and capabilities that a company of Annodata's size and breadth can offer.

"In addition, it means that suppliers will have the opportunity to pitch for a larger amount of expenditure by Annodata, given the increased revenues."

Exponential-e has appointed Jonathan Bridges as Head of Enterprise Cloud with a remit to develop agile propositions that help businesses transition from legacy IT infrastructures to private cloud platforms.

Lee Wade, CEO, said: "Jonathan brings a deep understanding of the cloud and we are confident that he will be able to use this to help our customers extract greater value from their investments and accelerate the adoption of cloud-based infrastructures.

"The cloud has become an integral part of IT systems, with recent research from the Cloud Industry Forum revealing that 78 per cent of UK organisations have adopted at least one Cloud-based solution.

"However, businesses are still resistant to moving all IT operations into a hosted environment, often starting their journey in stages. Using his specific emphasis on value-based selling, I am confident that Jonathan will play a key role in enabling Exponential-e to continue advancing forward in a high growth, competitive market."

Bridges brings 17 years of IT experience to the role and has held a number of leadership roles within the enterprise software space, helping organisations to scale and execute Cloud initiatives.

He was instrumental in developing Fujitsu's first Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering and was accountable for driving the adoption of cloud services within COLT's enterprise division across Europe.

He has created and managed many teams in the UK and Europe, providing multi-region delivery of sales, projects and ongoing operations. Bridges's most recent role was as Global Head of Business Development for Canopy's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) portfolio.

Bridges added: "In a constantly evolving marketplace, it is those organisations that can adapt, stay nimble and innovate rapidly that are poised to succeed."

3CX, developer of next generation software-based PBX 3CX Phone System, has announced the integration of clientless web conferencing into its PBX making organising and attending web conferences as easy as making a call.

Users of the recently released 3CX Phone System 12.5 are now able to use 3CX WebMeeting for 10 participants without charge.

Due to the integration of Google's agentless WebRTC technology meetings are joined by following a link, eliminating the need for additional downloads and plugins.

Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX said: "The seamless integration of web conferencing into the PBX really takes unified communications to a whole new level, enabling every PBX users to quickly organise video conferences.

"WebRTC makes it easy for participants to join - no plugins are required. This is how Unified communications was meant to be."

A new data centre opened in the heart of Media City Manchester has been designed as an incubator for new and growing tech companies.

Constructed by local tech business Sandyx the site was built and operational in just four months.

Created in an unused warehouse unit the 4,000 square foot site will provide flexible, commitment free monthly contracts.

"With the population of SMEs in the area steadily growing and Manchester becoming a major hub in the UK's high-tech boom, the importance of data centre space for growing companies has never been more important," said Mashukul Hoque, MD and owner of Sandyx.

"As MD of a tech business in Manchester I was frustrated by the difficulties in accessing data centre space at a reasonable price.

"As I didn't have a large footprint or a wholesale requirement I felt that I was being treated as if my business was small potatoes to them. So we decided to build our own data centre to work with local SMEs as well as technology and media companies."

Data Centre Plus will provide hosting and server co-location as well as connectivity services.

The data centre will create 25 new jobs over the next 12 months with former Daisy Wholesale and Exponential-e employee Gareth Riley already appointed to drive sales.

Riley said: "I'm relishing the challenge of starting something from the ground up and doing things differently.

"We place the customer at the forefront of all we do and offer a transparent service with no hidden charges.

"Our offering will provide enterprise grade service at manageable price points and offer flexibility. We can do this because we own our DC and therefore don't have investors to answer to on decisions we make"

Data Centre Plus is part of the Sandyx Group of privately owned companies. The company was founded in 2000 and provides IT services ranging from custom software development to DC servers.

Manchester-based BCH Solutions has unveiled its new partner development programme spearheaded by a training academy aimed at helping reseller partners gain sustained revenue and profitability from its hosted call handling solutions.

Former Callstream founder, Mark Drury, has invested in the company and has taken the lead role in channel development alongside fellow directors Rob Macdonald and Amanda Franklin.

He maintains BCH is one of the industry's best kept secrets and aims to ramp up its profile and channel outreach in the months ahead.

"The channel was our initial route to market, so this is not so much a launch or a relaunch. Rather, we are communicating our channel proposition to the market for the first time.

"Although our brand is relatively unknown, we have one of the most sophisticated product sets for hosted call handling solutions and PCI level telephone card payment applications, which we supplement with an on-tap engineering capability to bespoke applications when required."

Drury is committed to building high value reseller partnerships and says the BCH Academy is central to that strategy.

"Our channel plan is different to competing models," added Drury. "It is not prescriptive in nature and we are not looking for low quality volume resellers, we are about building long-term sustainable value and close working partnerships.

"The BCH Academy will put a plan in place for every BCH partner that will support their business size and capabilities appropriately.
?"The Academy focuses on building their knowledge of the product set and how they can maximise on opportunities within their existing client and prospect base.

"The ultimate objective will be to provide an environment whereby the BCH partner is able to confidently experience growth through our applications."

The number of UK SMEs outsourcing their IT infrastructure has risen six-fold in a year according to Node4's latest research.

The new report Responding to the IT Infrastructure Challenge shows how UK SMEs are looking to generate the maximum ROI and reliability from their IT investment.

And 60% stated that outsourced data centre provision provides them with peace of mind.

With over 31,000 SMEs in the UK, Node4 reckons this means that there are now more than 17,900 businesses that have moved some part of their IT provision off premises.

The findings also highlight that 79% of UK SMEs are experiencing frustrations with their existing IT infrastructure, with 46% of respondents highlighting that their IT infrastructure suffers from technical limitations.

Reliability was revealed to be one of the top three IT infrastructure concerns in the report, closely followed by concerns that their infrastructure is too reliant on hardware that could fail. As a result, 66% of UK SMEs cited disaster recovery and business continuity as critical for their business.

As UK SMEs respond to the challenges involved with keeping in-house IT infrastructure in working order, there is an increasing awareness of the extent to which they rely on mission-critical IT infrastructure. With profitability closely linked to IT performance, outsourcing is becoming more preferable. Shockingly, 70% of UK SMEs would grind to a halt within a day without critical IT infrastructure.

Paul Bryce, Business Development Director, Node4, commented: "The UK SME is an incredibly savvy and responsive entity. In just a single year, much has been accomplished, namely the successful deployment of IT infrastructure that leads to profitability and efficiency across the board.

"In 2015 just 18% of SMEs demonstrated concerns that their IT infrastructure fails to match the needs of the business, compared to 64% in our last report. IT continues to be a major business enabler for the SME, but with heavy reliance, comes inherent risk.

"With so many SMEs frustrated with technical limitations and the day-to-day administration of their infrastructure it's hardly surprising that local outsourcing has become a preference.

"Businesses require a tangible face to be put to their IT provision, especially when outsourcing. The data they are asking someone else to take care of is vital, which is why locality becomes important. Therefore, it's understandable that outsourcing locally provides peace of mind."

A new UC service management system will unlock mid-market opportunities for resellers according to distributor Westcon Group.

Virsae VSM Express is a cloud-based service that provides network technicians with ready access to tools that automate changes to UC environments, provision monitoring services, fix faults, configure alarm monitoring and manage workflow and reporting.

Virsae Marketing Manager Simon Nicholson said the company's mid-market push was prompted by feedback from resellers. "Resellers told us that their mid-sized customers face the same challenges as large enterprise customers," he noted.

"They both hate disruption. However, in most cases smaller businesses manage less complex UC environments, so they don't require the same depth of monitoring and management tools. VSM Express makes smart UC monitoring and service management accessible to mid-sized businesses."

Tony Nevill, Managing Director, Westcon Group, added: "As unified communications is getting more complex it is harder to detect and solve problems on a network. The VSM Express is a low cost plug and play solution and identifies the issues and connects the dots between different management tools and UC network items, using monitoring and alerts to help remedy problems before they impact system users."

Ownership and access to business critical data is becoming a hot issue that will 'run and run', according Robin Hayman, Director of Marketing & Product Management for SpliceCom.

He said: "Call recordings are seen as business critical across many varied market segment, not just to meet regulatory requirements. But when you consider these recordings, who actually owns this sensitive data?

"In a traditional customer premise deployment it's a simple question to answer. The recordings and call management data reside on the customers' site along with the PBX. It's the customers'.

"But in a hosted environment where the customer is subscribing to a service on a month-by-month basis is that still the case? What about the rest of the data that might be critical to a customer's operation - call Management info and system database backups for example? Where do they reside? How easy are they to obtain? How quickly can you run searches to get the exact recording or report you require? What happens when you want to change providers for a better deal?

"And what happens if legislation requires call recordings to be kept for two, five or even ten years? How much is that going cost to keep archived whilst retaining the ability for fast and easy search and playback?

"There's no doubt that hosted telephony has got its place in the constantly evolving IP Telephony landscape, but hybrid with its mix of cloud based services with on-site hardware for added resilience just might be the answer for those who want a simple pay as they go service, but must have ownership and control of their data for legal and/or onward billing purposes."