Comms Dealer

ScanSource Imago has signed a distribution agreement with Vaddio, a pan-tilt-zoom camera, AV and VC manufacturer.

The new deal will enable ScanSource Imago to meet increasing demands from the reseller channel for flexible 'huddle room' solutions supported by Vaddio's video conferencing products.

ScanSource Imago will be providing resellers with Vaddio's PTZ cameras for conferencing, lecture capture and general AV, as well as its enterprise video collaboration and bridging systems.

ScanSource Imago will also deliver services and support including education and training, technical and marketing support.

"Vaddio's solutions present additional opportunities for our reseller partners," said Phil Boyd, VP of Merchandising, ScanSource Imago. "There is particular interest in huddle space technology."

Volume sales of PCs (desktops, notebooks, workstations) through Western Europe's largest distributors continued to decline at -2.4% in Q1 2017 compared to the same period one year ago.

Revenues, however, increased +8.3% due to a shift in sales to higher value products, according to latest data published by Context, the market research company.

This was most noticeable in the UK where a 10% drop in sales was translated into a 14.6% rise in revenue in local currency.

"Revenue growth was driven by a significant rise in distributors' average sell prices for the quarter", said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at Context. "Across the entire Western European region, average selling prices were up by +11% to €553 compared to Q1 2016. Across just the eurozone countries, ASPs for the quarter rose +7.3% to €535. "

Context says that average selling prices in the PC segment have been on the rise since Q3 2016, driven by currency fluctuations, the effects of recent component shortages on pricing, and by a unit-mix shift to higher value products such as gaming systems in the consumer segment and powerful high-end notebooks in the commercial sector.

Pennine has achieved Elite Specialist and Platinum Partner status under Motorola Solution's new PartnerEmpower programme.

The accreditations are the highest achievable under the global two-way radio and communication solutions manufacturer's reseller programme.

"That we have secured top tier status on both revenue and expertise parameters speaks volumes about our standing in the market," said Pennine's Sales Director, Steve Watts.

"Crucially, these accreditations give Pennine Radio staff access to the widest range of Motorola sales, technical and training awards. Being an Elite Specialist also secures higher profile positioning in the Partner Finder tool Motorola promotes to organisations seeking its solutions."

Cloud security company Zscaler has appointed Jamie Farrelly as EMEA Channel Director. He brings over 15 years experience in building channel partnerships.

"Jamie's expertise and experience is exactly what we need to accelerate our channel growth and expand awareness around our Zscaler cloud security platform," said Matt Piercy, VP and GM EMEA at Zscaler.

"The old way of stacking up security appliances in the data centre and creating a moat is no longer effective to protect today's agile business. Digital transformation has security at the very heart of it."

Exclusive Group's Cloud First strategy has a new man at the helm, Patrick van Arendonk, who brings almost 30 years experience and joins from Exclusive Networks Netherlands where he held positions including General Manager and Director of Business Development.

Prior to this he was founder of VADition Benelux (acquired by Exclusive Group in 2011) and has also worked in senior sales roles at Juniper, F5 and Cisco, among others.

"It's time for some blue sky thinking now that the cloud consumption model is beginning to become more relevant," said Barrie Desmond, COO of Exclusive Group.

"The Cloud First initiative is our way of helping us, our vendors and reseller partners understand their relevance in this journey and get them to put cloud at the forefront of their proposals and strategic mindset.

"Cloud First means always thinking cloud, something we've done ever since the launch of BigTec four years ago. And to underline the significance we have appointed Patrick as our envoy to spread the message and activate new, practical programmes across all divisions of Exclusive Group."

Arendonk, Director of Cloud First, commented: "The traditional on-premise hardware-based markets for cybersecurity and infrastructure are still growing. But the private, public and hybrid cloud alternatives are growing 10 times faster. The opportunities for partners are huge but only if they take some steps to evolve."

Excell Group has acquired IT and Apple support company MacSeven Consultants adding over £2m turnover to the bottom line.

MacSeven's main service offering is Apple Mac computer support. It also offers PC support and project work.

MacSeven's team of seven is led by directors Michael Humphreys and Naveen Nahar. Their operational activities will remain autonomous post-acquisition and they will continue to be the point of contact for their existing customer support.

The acquisition follows last year's purchase of City Audio Visual Services which strengthened Excell's strategy of horizontal and vertical integration.

Excel said this latest acquisition is particularly relevant for the 6,000-plus customers in Excell-enabled business centres, many of whom use the Apple Mac OS and devices.

Finance Director Edward Pettit said: "There are multiple benefits here: Excell's customers can access expert Mac services and support, and MacSeven's customers can now take advantage of a range of telephony, network, comms and business resilience services. It's diversified our product suite further."

Naveen Nahar, co-Director of MacSeven, added: "Becoming part of Excell Group marks the beginning of an exciting time for both teams. With a 25 year pedigree and consistent growth, Excell will allow us to continue refining our expertise and resource, while significantly growing our offering."

Excell Group celebrates 25 years in business this year and is intensifying its activity with an acquisition fund of millions.

Exertis has extended its professional services portfolio with the addition of Exertis Monitor, a post sales service that provides a basic level of monitoring on any vendor's solutions across IT infrastructures.

Ian Gilbey, Exertis Technical Services Director, stated: "Exertis Monitor provides essential information on how resources are performing in different areas from any vendor and on any device that has an IP address.

"Resellers can now take advantage of device monitoring on switches, servers, virtual hosts, storage and UPS. Outside of these core areas, any other IP enabled device can be monitored to provide, at a minimum, availability reports."

Exertis Monitor provides availability monitoring and reporting with a notification process on outages or performance issues.

Nimans and Unify have staged a joint 'Cloud & Triple Play' workshop, a three hour event where attendees discovered how to identify, target and win more sales based on cloud as well as on-premise solutions.

"For example, resellers learned about the functionality, benefits, and user adoption tactics for winning new business with Unify's collaboration solution, Circuit," said Marcus Yates, Unify Solutions Business Manager at Nimans.

Unify also introduced its new 'Triple Play' marketing support programme which can be hosted on a partner's own website and provides resellers and end users with transparent solution choices.

"Triple Play is designed to increase revenues, enhance demand generation and motivate resellers to break into new markets," added Yates.

"Triple Play also plays into the digital buyer journey of today where its estimated 85% of small business owners begin the buying process in a digital environment. Triple Play enables partners to capture those buyer prospects during the early stage of their online research."

Telecoms training company Train to Win.tv has introduced a new fully managed service - Support to Win.tv - which provides outsourced expertise to channel partners who don't want the headache or business overheads of supporting hosted telephony customers in house.

Support to Win.tv takes care of all non-commercially impacting change requests by end users including moves, adds, changes and the provisioning of services.

Julie Mills, founder of Train to Win.tv, commented: "We have created Support to Win.tv following repeated requests by both channel partners and end users to extend our range of end user training services.

"We've set up a dedicated support centre and employed experts on an array of hosted telephony platforms to ensure we provide the same level of support we offer on site to customers who call in.

"All of this is underpinned by a white label ticketing system and telephone answering service which can dovetail into a partner's existing support process.

"We have also created a range of additional services aimed at solving some of the problems we've experienced over the last three years.

"A great example of this is the new guided install service. During the last 12 months the market has seen a significant increase in hosted sales to businesses of less than 10 users.

"These businesses simply don't warrant an onsite visit but still need handholding through the initial set up and installation to ensure they get the most from their new system.

"By offering a virtual installation over webinar and telephone we can ensure that customers get the same level of service you would get from an onsite deployment at a much lower cost."

Spitfire has concluded a supplier agreement that sees the addition of TalkTalk Business Ethernet to its portfolio which includes Ethernet from BT Wholesale, Colt and Virgin Media Business.

Spitfire's portfolio of Ethernet services includes delivery via fibre, EFM and GEA.

Justin Orde, Joint MD, commented: "Increasing demand for high speed bandwidth means we need to offer customers prompt implementation and flexible pricing options.

"We aim to provide customers with the right network connectivity solution for their business needs and not a 'one size fits all' product."