Comms Dealer

Purple WiFi, the UK-based WiFi social login and location analytics platform, has announced new funding to accelerate its rapid international expansion. 

The $5m funding was led by Sir Terry Leahy, Bill Currie, Iain MacDonald and Bob Willett from the William Currie Group with participation from Juno Capital a leading Angel Syndicate. 

Purple WiFi allows users to gain free access to a public WiFi network through their existing social media accounts or a short form.

The user gets access to family friendly WiFi, while the benefit to the business hosting the service (such as a restaurant, hotel, shop, museum, sports stadium or shopping mall) is that they are rewarded with valuable analytic insights into the profiles and movements of their customers and a sophisticated built-in marketing platform.

Purple WiFi have also appointed new board members as part of the process, including Sir Terry Leahy, former Tesco CEO who took the retailer from the third largest in the UK to the third largest retailer in the world, launching the Clubcard during his tenure; and Ian Kelly, Serial Entrepreneur in Telecoms, Energy and other markets.

Additional investors include Bill Currie, Iain MacDonald and Bob Willett from the William Currie Group; Jonathan Hammond and Steve Ashton from the beverage distribution industry; Juno Capital a leading Angel Syndicate, including high profile investors such as Sir Nigel Rudd, Chairman at Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited (formerly BAA) and formerly Chairman Alliance Boots, and three senior Ernst and Young partners, who facilitated the round.

Purple WiFi was originally established due to a recognition of the world's growing need for fast, free public WiFi.

The service has been designed to be user friendly, to be technology agnostic, cloud based and scalable across geographic boundaries.

Purple WiFi's social media authentication covers a number of global social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google and Instagram, with Chinese Weibo and Russian VKontakte coming soon. The login journey and analytics platform auto-translates into 18 languages.

Thousands of venues globally have already been secured, with strongholds in Europe, Asia-pac and the Americas. Deep technology partnerships have already been established, most notably with Cisco, Cisco Meraki, BT, Telstra and Vodafone, but also many others.

A channel organisation, Purple WiFi has distribution agreements with Ingram Micro and Westcon Comstor.

Sir Terry Leahy said: "Having been in the retail space for many years, I have seen how technology has and will continue to revolutionise the industry.

"Purple WiFi is a brilliant example of how additional value can be driven from an existing infrastructure. I've been incredibly impressed with what Gavin and the team have achieved to date. I very much look forward to helping them drive global expansion and adoption."

Gavin Wheeldon, CEO, Purple WiFi, added:  "WiFi is something that is expected, for free, just as we expect access to heat, light and water.

"But the big question in recent years has been how to monetise WiFi. Purple WiFi has created an low cost solution that gives analytics and insights, while driving true ROI for businesses.

"We have seen unimaginable interest and demand for the product, not just within the obvious sectors of retail, leisure and hospitality, but also unexpected sectors such as social housing, education and healthcare, where they want to use WiFi to communicate better and deliver services."

Business comms specialist VIA has secured a deal to supply software company OpenCRM with Microsoft Lync with other bespoke functionality across its sites in Richmond, Yorkshire and its satellite offices in Swansea, Sunderland, Iceland and Spain.

The Internet-based system replaces OpenCRM's previous IP telephony setup and brings together voice communication, instant messaging, email, video, and audio, across a variety of devices, such as landlines, smartphones, PCs, and tablets.

Graham Anderson, MD, OpenCRM, said: "Previously we had disparate systems for voice, video, instant messaging and screen sharing, with limited integration with email.

"The VIA system has made life easier and our workforce is now able to choose the right channel of communication at the right time, which helps to increase efficiency across the business."

Alex Tebbs, Sales Director, VIA, said: "The VIA solution allows employees to stay continuously connected at all times, whether they are based in the UK or even overseas."

Nimans has added free music on hold functionality to its GS-hosted proposition.

Group Sales and Business Development Director Richard Carter said: "Music on hold is proven to enhance the customer experience, dramatically reducing the amount of abandoned calls.

"More and more businesses are polishing-up their image with a professional service that can be set-up easily. The standard package is bundled for free whil other bespoke paid-for options are available. These represent a great way for resellers to ramp-up their sales and take advantage of additional revenue opportunities."

Annodata has strengthened its senior management team and underscored its growth ambitions with the appointment of Joe Kelly (pictured) as Group Finance Director. The move comes soon after the company acquired Keltec in late 2014 and chimes with its plans to become a £100m business by 2016 through organic growth and by acquisition.

Former Group Finance Director Suki Purewal is now the company's Commercial Director.

Prior to joining Annodata, Kelly worked for a range of listed, private and private equity-backed businesses, including 365ITServices, PRGX Global Inc and the Parity Group.

"With significant financial, operational and M&A experience working in mid-markets in the technology and business services sectors, Kelly will play a key guiding role in helping Annodata fulfil its growth ambitions," said Martin St. Quinton, Chairman of Annodata

"Joe joins the company during a period of intense growth and rapid change as we seek to diversify our product offering and strengthen our nationwide footprint.

"Annodata has major growth ambitions and to achieve them it's important that we have a strong senior management team in place.

"Joe's extensive experience working with dynamic organisations and excellent track record makes him a strong addition to the company, and I would like to welcome him on board."

Kelly added: "Annodata has undergone a number of important changes in recent years and, in the process, done a lot of growing up, making it an exciting time to join the company.

"2015 is shaping up to be a busy year as we look to make a number of strategically important acquisitions and bed in those acquisitions already made. I look forward using my experience to capitalise on the advances already made and help to drive the business forward."

A partner event hosted by Cloud Telephones and Gamma aims to get resellers thinking about VoIP opportunities, in particular the Horizon Hosted VoIP service.

The event will be staged at Gamma's City of London showroom in February where delegates will be given an overview of Gamma's service and insights into the future development of voice services. There will also be an opportunity to trial the service first-hand.

Cloud Telephones will outline how it is helping partners to develop and grow their voice business, and how VoIP can be used as a stepping stone to developing a long-term, sustainable business model based on hosted services.

John Carter, MD of Cloud Telephones, said: "This will be a good opportunity for resellers who are new to VoIP, and those who have dipped their toe in the water previously, to assess the business potential that exists in the market today.

"Customers understand the benefits and they are ready to adopt digital voice services, so there is a really good opportunity now for resellers to take the VoIP message to both their existing customer base and new prospects."

Interest in VoIP has been increasing in recent months and Carter believes 2015 will see a substantial rise in adoption.

"VoIP is taking off and now is the time to grasp the nettle," he said. "Resellers that ignore it will soon find the rug pulled from under their feet and with the whole market moving towards hosted and subscription services, VoIP is an ideal starting point. It's easy to sell and services like Gamma's Horizon are proven and easy to install."

Cloud Telephones also offers other cloud services and provides a billing engine that can be used by resellers to bring together the costs of all the services they provide to customers into one simple monthly bill.

Pent-up demand for a job change among UK workers has reached its highest level in a generation, according Clive Jefferys, Director at JMA Network Recruitment.

"Never in my working life have I seen so much bottled-up demand for change among UK workers," he said, commenting on the latest poll from the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) which found that 37% of those questioned want to move job in 2015.

"Unsurprisingly, this level of demand is three times higher than it was in 2013. With inflation now below 0.5%, and Deloitte forecasting a 9% increase in business capital investment this year, the stage seems to be set for some major expansion in the economy.

"Salaries for new job offers rose between 6% and 11% last year, depending on where you live in the country, and the New Year spike in jobsite registrations supports all these positive indicators."

However there is an issue looming, warns Jefferys. "Every General Election causes anxiety among businesses," he added. "I believe the overall picture will remain unclear until well after May."

ISPA has called for a 'better approach' and 'better leadership' on Internet surveillance power.

Nicholas Lansman, ISPA Secretary General, said: "As calls are made for new wide-ranging Internet surveillance powers following the horrific events in Paris, ISPA is concerned that politicians are taking the easy way out by demanding greater surveillance powers without explaining how they can effectively help to prevent future terrorist incidents and without giving proper consideration to valid concerns about civil liberties and the impact on business in the UK."

It has been reported that those responsible for the terrorist attacks were known to the security services. Existing legislation already allows for suspects' communications to be intercepted via a warrant. And the retention of communications data, which is already being retained in the UK, would also have been available to the intelligence services and the police under the existing RIPA process, pointed out Lansman.

"While the draft Communications Data Bill would have provided access to broader data set, it is questionable whether it would have helped to prevent the incidents in Paris and the industry and UK citizens should be provided with a clear justification for why the Bill is needed now," he added.
  
"Restricting the use of encryption and encrypted communication, as suggested by  the Prime Minister, further risks undermining the UK's status as a good and safe place to do business.

"In the wake of an increasing number of cyber attacks and Government initiatives to raise the awareness of cyber risks, encryption is widely accepted as a key measure to do business safely online.

"Business, individuals and governments around the world rely on encryption to carry out everyday tasks and services, forcing companies to weaken encryption measures would weaken protection against cyber criminals, foreign intelligence agencies and others."

Lansman also noted that ISPA accepts that the communications landscape is changing but an independent, Government-commissioned review is being led by David Anderson QC into investigatory powers.

"This is the sort of considered and informed process, listening and involving the various stakeholders, that we hope will inform and develop policy in this area," said Lansman. "The review is set to report before the election and we are concerned that politicians have pre-judged the review and will ignore its conclusions."

SMT Data's cloud-based IT Business Intelligence (ITBI) solution has been adopted by software and services company Macro 4 as part of its performance management portfolio.

According to SMT Data, most IT departments typically cannot attribute IT costs to business activities, meaning that business decisions can be made without knowing the impact on IT costs.

"SMT Data's solution brings greater transparency to the relationship between IT costs and business activities, typically delivering an average 10-20% saving in operational IT spend," said Jim Allum, Director, Commercial and Technical, Macro 4 (a division of Unicom Global).

Available as a cloud-based service, the ITBI software works by collecting and processing the data generated by an organisation's IT infrastructure, including performance, capacity and other operational data.

Using data warehousing and business analytics the data is analysed and mapped against business activities. The findings are presented through a web and mobile management dashboard.

Jan Vilstrup, CEO of SMT Data, added: "With complete insight and transparency regarding capacity, performance and software utilisation, ITBI helps companies make decisions based on facts not guesswork or supplier estimates.

"By partnering with Macro 4 we can also help businesses to reap further cost savings through deeper analysis and optimisation of their core business applications."

Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) has emerged as a significant revenue opportunity for managed service providers, according to Andrew Thomson, EMEA Channel Manager at Centrify.

The company specialises in unified identity management across cloud, mobile and data centres and has added an extra tier to its channel programme aimed at MSPs.

Thomson cites shadow IT and mobile device usage as key drivers for customers wanting solutions that overcome the need for numerous passwords and logins.

Centrify's IDaaS technology is designed to address customer requirements for single sign-on (SSO) to SaaS apps such as Office 365, multi-factor authentication (MFA), user provisioning, enterprise mobility management (EMM), and VPN-less access to on-premises applications such as Sharepoint.

Thomson cited high demand for Office 365, Google apps and other applications. Dropbox for business has been particularly buoyant, he noted.

"MSPs have historically provided remote monitoring and security management for on-premises PCs, servers, apps and network devices, but as their customers migrate to mobile and the cloud their clients' IT management challenges are fundamentally changing as identity becomes the new perimeter," said Thomson.

Centrify currently has around 150 EMEA partners, up nearly 140% on last year. Thomson plans to add another 10-15 partners in EMEA during the coming 12 months. "Identity management is well understood in the channel but we can do more with partners," he said.

snom technology has named Olivier Gerling, the former Director of snom France, as Chief Sales Officer with immediate responsibility for snom's worldwide sales and marketing operations.

Gerling joined the company in 2009 and has extensive knowledge of snom's products and processes, the snom sales channel and all aspects of the VoIP and IP Telephony markets.

He brings over 20 years of experience including an in-depth understanding of how to drive incremental revenue through sales and channel marketing.

"Gerling`s experience in sales and channel operations made him a natural fit for this position," said Markus Schmitt-Fumian, CEO at snom. "His understanding of creating, communicating and ensuring sales effectiveness will help snom scale its sales expertise in the coming years."

As CSO, Gerling is responsible for expanding snom's market presence and leading growth in its core markets.