Comms Dealer

For the third year running south coast-based comms provider 4Com has received national recognition with a leading business award.

4com has been named as one of the Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to Work for 2015 having achieved three star award accreditation from Best Companies survey.

The accolade is a direct result of staff surveys and feedback conducted by Best Companies directly with 4Com employees.

These confidential survey findings are then attributed to the awarding of a one, two or three star Best Companies accreditation and a place in the Sunday Times Top 100 list.

Final positions for the Sunday Times top 100 small companies will be revealed at an awards ceremony at Battersea Evolution in London on the evening of Wednesday 25th February 2015.

The Sunday Times will then produce and print a feature supplement, distributed nationally with the printed edition of the newspaper on Sunday 8th March 2015.

4Com Chairman and MD Daron Hutt (pictured) told Comms Dealer "I am once again so proud and pleased for 4Com to be recognised with this award and accreditation. This award is so important to me and my fellow directors, as the award is awarded on employee engagement results. With over 98% of staff surveyed, the results are so pleasing, knowing that we have the best people, working so hard to achieve exceptional levels of customer service each and every day." 

Telstra has launched new Global Financial Trading Solutions to facilitate higher performance electronic trading around the world.

The solutions are said to combine reliable low latency trading networks with expert managed services including server infrastructure in financial hubs, managed cloud and global unified communications. 

Matthew Lempriere, Head of Financial Services Market Segment, Global Enterprise & Services, claims the new service provides UK businesses with a scalable, flexible and on demand ICT solution, helping them react to market events faster than ever.

"Backed by faster response times and higher scalability, Telstra's Global Financial Trading Solutions facilitate increased efficiencies, helping customers mitigate risk and address compliance concerns, while focusing on what's most important to them - driving revenue and sustainable business growth," he said.

NEC has scooped a top award for innovation in Unified Communications.

Based on its recent analysis of the UC infrastructure market, Frost & Sullivan has awarded the manufacturer with the 2014 Global Award for Technology Innovation Leadership.

NEC secured the award for leveraging software defined networking technology and integrating it across its Univerge UC and infrastructure product lines to deliver an optimised Software Defined Communications experience for customers.

"The level of integration NEC enables throughout its network, server, storage and enterprise communications product lines highlights the power of the technologies at play, as well as the application of those technologies to benefit customers," said Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Michael Brandenburg.

Gartner has slashed its 2015 global IT spending forecast from 3.9% to 2.4% ($3.8tr) blaming its downward revision on the rising US dollar and a modest reduction in growth expectations for devices, IT services and telecom services.

"The change in forecast is less dramatic than it might at first seem," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president. "The rising US dollar is chiefly responsible for the change - in constant currency terms the downward revision is only 0.1 percent.

"Stripping out the impact of exchange rate movements, the corresponding constant-currency growth figure is 3.7 percent, which compares with 3.8 percent in the previous quarter's forecast."

The US dollar spending growth rate on devices (including PCs, ultramobiles, mobile phones, tablets and printers) for 2015 was decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 5.1 percent. The smartphone market is becoming polarized between the high- and low-end market price points. On one hand, growth in premium phones with an average selling price of $478 in 2014 was dominated by iOS. At the other end of the spectrum, growth in Android and other open OS phones is in the basic phone segment, where in 2014 the average phone cost less than $100. As a result, the market opportunity is becoming increasingly limited for midrange smartphones.

Data centre systems spending is projected to reach $143 billion in 2015, a 1.8 percent increase from 2014. Growth for the enterprise communications applications and enterprise network equipment segments of the market have been increased from the previous quarter's forecast, while growth for the servers and external controller-based storage segments has been lowered. These growth fluctuations are due to extensions in replacement life cycles and a higher than previously anticipated switch to cloud-based services.

In the enterprise software market, spending is on pace to total $335 billion, a 5.5 percent increase from 2014. More price erosion and vendor consolidation is expected in 2015 because of fierce competition between cloud and on-premises software providers. In particular, in the customer relationship management (CRM) market, a key cloud battleground, seat prices for segments such as sales force automation (SFA) are expected to decline by 25 percent through 2018.

This will be caused by incumbent on-premises vendors discounting their cloud offerings heavily to try and maintain their customer base. There will also be increased price competition from cloud offerings in other areas (such as database management system (DBMS) and application infrastructure and middleware, albeit at a somewhat slower and weaker pace than for CRM.

The outlook for IT services in 2015 has been reduced to 2.5 percent growth, down from the 4.1 percent growth forecast in the previous quarter. Globally, reductions to software support services contributed disproportionately to a lower outlook through 2018, because of lower growth rates expected for enterprise software. Regionally, short-term growth rates were lowered slightly in Russia and Brazil, due to declining economic conditions and political uncertainty in both countries.

Telecom services spending is projected to grow 0.7 percent in 2015, with spending reaching $1,638tr. A multitude of factors have affected each national market - some positive, others negative - with the primary driver for growth being a reduction in expectations for mobile voice revenue across several markets in Western and Eastern Europe (such as Austria and Italy) as a consequence of the declining growth of new devices sold in the region over the forecast period.

Polycom has appointed former Motorola VP Marco Landi as President of EMEA responsible for leading the company's regional sales strategy.

He joins from Zebra Technologies (formerly Motorola Solutions) where he was Vice President and General Manager EMEA. He has a long career history with Motorola Enterprise where he served in several sales leadership roles, which included Motorola's acquisitions of Symbol and PSION during his tenure.

Peter Leav, President and Chief Executive Officer, Polycom, said: "Every market in this region has unique opportunities as more organisations discover the benefits of video, voice and content collaboration solutions. Marco will focus on strengthening our go-to-market with our strategic partners and our channel partners."

Landi added: "Polycom's solutions help businesses of all sizes, in virtually every industry, improve productivity through collaboration experiences. The opportunity is significant, and I look forward to working closely with our partners."

Landi was also part of the leadership team responsible for the acquisition and sales integration of PSION into Motorola in 2012. More recently at Zebra Technologies he led the 1,000 strong team responsible for $1.3 billion revenue across EMEA.

IP handset maker snom has entered into a partnership with TCS TürControlSysteme AG as part of its strategy to partner with companies looking to extend their portfolio by adding IP voice and video capabilities to their product set.

TCS TürControlSysteme AG operates in the building access market and will be supplying and installing a new electronic component, designed by snom, for use on internal doors to enable voice communications and video installations.

This new product provides significant enhancements compared to the previously employed analogue communication technology. SIP-server technology provides snom with the ability to connect the equipment to the Internet.

Property managers and residents can exchange messages, with information as such dates for meter readings, directly using the display on the indoor telephone units.

Since all the components are standard compliant IP there is also the ability to connect additional devices, such as IP phones and video equipment, to the door.

"In snom we have found a partner with extensive experience in the development of IP communication solutions and this complements our own expertise in the development and manufacture of high-quality door communication systems", said Otto Duffner, Chief Executive Officer of TCS.

Markus Schmitt-Fumian, CEO of snom technology AG, added: "The solutions developed in cooperation with TCS demonstrate the potential provided by modern IP-based communication technologies. The networking of different areas of home automation enables a huge improvement in comfort, safety, and quality of service."

Jabra is on track to realise its goal of being the topmost headset maker within two years, posting record 2014 results, up 25% on the previous year following a string of record breaking quarterly performances.

The vendor has attributed its growth spurt to a sharper focus on partner engagement and recruitment, its new Be Assured Programme, the launch of the Jabra BIZ 2300 corded headset, greater uptake of the Jabra PRO 900 series while in the UC space the Q4 launch of Jabra's Evolve range hit the ground running and is also growing in popularity.

In recognition of its achievements Jabra picked up the 2014 Comms National Award for Best End Point.

Jabra UK&I MD Nigel Dunn (pictured above) said: "We aim to exceed our 2014 growth figures and will strive to ensure that 2015 is another year of records.

"This will be achieved through ongoing product innovation while strengthening the team with key new hires and additional aggressive sales and marketing campaigns - all of which will provide us with opportunities to take greater market share and achieve our goal of being number one by the end of 2017."

The Las Vegas CES event points mainly to new consumer products that users and channels can expect to see later this year, but those looking further ahead are taking stock of the building blocks for those technologies.

A key pointer is the level of Bluetooth at the show. Now 15 years old, this standard has become a core part of short-range wifi and connections, and is set to be used in the expected wave of wearables and Internet of Things products being worked on in the next year or so.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has produced a graph (see below) of shipments which shows its growth over the last decade or so. What CES brought out was a group of chip-makers offering the next wave of low-power, high-performance and multi-function devices that will measure and control things we can only dream of today.

Chinese companies such as Actions Semiconductor now have 64-bit quad chips at high speeds, competing with the likes of Nvidia and Samsung.
This gives developers the power and by thinking ahead, we can expect to see their products at CES 2016 and 2017.

Avnet Technology Solutions UK has been named Juniper Distributor of the Year 2014 at the latest Juniper Networks UK & Ireland Partner Summit.

The accolade was awarded to Avnet in recognition of its revenue growth, supported by well executed marketing initiatives and its skilled technical team.

Phil Soane, business unit director, security and networking, Avnet Technology Solutions, UK, said: "Over the past 12 months we have seen significant year-on-year growth of our Juniper business. In particular, we have worked with business partners to maximise new opportunities in the security portfolio. Being named Distributor of the Year reflects the growing success of our partnership with Juniper Networks and is a great basis for going forward into 2015."

Vanita Ashley, Distribution Manager, UK & Ireland, Juniper Networks, added: "Juniper offers high performance network solutions to help service providers, enterprises and the public sector create value and drive success. Avnet complements our offering by supporting resellers with expert knowledge, commercial acumen and marketing know-how, through every part of the sales cycle. This was a well-deserved award for a talented team of committed professionals and we look forward to our mutual success in the future."

In addition to this award, Avnet's networking achievements in the last 12 months include continued investment in its 24/7 service desk, which allows business partners to provide support to their customers 365 days of the year without any extra capital or operational costs.

The Government's Superfast Broadband and Superconnected Cities campaigns have prompted strong demand for connectivity services, and the rising uptake of VoIP and hosted apps is also playing into the hands of resellers according to Cloud Telephones, the distributor and aggregation partner for connectivity and VoIP services.

John Carter, MD, said. "The BDUK's current Superfast Nation campaign is increasing awareness of high speed fibre and the Superconnected Cities scheme is giving businesses a strong incentive to upgrade.

"With rising uptake of hosted services making a fast web connection even more vital and a more positive economic outlook as well, it's almost a perfect storm for our partners.

"More businesses want superfast connections and that is also creating more opportunities not only to sell the connections themselves, but also to offer VoIP services and hosted applications."

The company has seen a surge of enquiries for fibre connectivity services and for VoIP services over the past three months.

"We expect to see the momentum that started to build in 2014 continuing and growing throughout the coming year," added Carter. "Businesses are going to change the way they consume and buy IT and this is a big opportunity for resellers to get in right at the start. If they own the connection, they own the customer."

Superfast broadband is currently available to 78% of premises in the UK and that figure is set to increase to 90% by 2016 and 95% by 2017.

The SuperConnected Cities programme encourages businesses in urban areas that are covered by the scheme to upgrade using a connection voucher.

There are currently 22 Superconnected Cities in the scheme but additional Government funding will extend the programme which was due to end on 31st March 2015 for a year to bring in more towns and cities.