Comms Dealer

German IP phone company Snom Technology has hired Armin Liedtke as Head of Global Sales with a remit to meet bold targets within a new global strategy following the takeover by VTech.

He brings more than 25 years sales experience in the voice market, most recently as Polycom's Sales Director Voice, Central Europe. He also spent 13 years at Cisco in a number of key roles.

"Not only does Armin bring his voice expertise, industry knowledge, contacts and experience to Snom, but also the drive to meet Snom's high expectations for swift growth in this competitive technology segment," said Gernot Sagl, Snom's CEO.

"Snom is now putting the final pieces into place for what will be a major drive to capture a much bigger slice of market share."

Liedtke added: "With all of the advantages the recent takeover by VTech offers, the expectations are high and this is a great opportunity for me."

TalkTalk Business has again proved itself to be a key contributor to the wider Group's revenues, reporting a 30.8% increase in data revenue in its preliminary financial results for the 12 months to 31st March 2017.

Across the year, revenue growth accelerated in H2 to +6.1%, up from +2.3% in H1.

The number of new Ethernet and EFM lines increased by 8,000 during the year.

Overall revenues grew by over 4% year-on-year.

TalkTalk Business has ambitions to double its size over the medium term driven by growth in high bandwidth data products and next generation voice services ahead of the 2025 ISDN switch-off.

The company recently announced its intention to take advantage of the opening up of the Ethernet market with the introduction of Dark Fibre access later this year.

While legacy voice revenues declined by 17.9% there was a strong take-up of TalkTalk Business's new next generation IP voice product, with revenue growth during the year of 20%.

The launch of new IP Voice products followed TalkTalk Business' acquisition of tIPicall in April 2015.

116 Partners have now signed up to sell this new service and the total base of SIP channels on the platform, including acquired base, increased by 7,340 channels (+65%) during the year.

The acquisition has continued our diversification into next generation telephony services, further demonstrated by our hosted telephony platform which saw the user base grow by 43%.

Kristine Olson-Chapman, MD at TalkTalk Business, stated: "TalkTalk Business continues to be one of the highest growth parts of the TalkTalk Group.

"Even more encouraging is the increase in demand for next generation voice and data services."

European VARS are outgrowing the market, riding a wave of demand for software and solutions along with managed services.

The overall EMEA market is forecast by Gartner to grow at just 1.9% this year, following growth of just 0.2% in 2016.

But new research by IT Europa in its report Solution VARs in Europe - The Top 1000, shows that Europe's leading solution VARs have achieved an average growth in sales of 9.44% over the last two years, with more than 85% of them now offering some form of managed service solution (a big jump from the 77% figure just six months ago).

Overall, 94% of the VARs supply software, some 44% of them working with their own packages, so claiming a role as software houses in their own right.

Looking at the vertical markets served by VARs, the public sector was top at 63% followed by financial services market, supplied by just over half (55%) of the top VARs.

Manufacturing was also supplied by a majority at 52%, Education at 46% was also perhaps surprisingly strong, just slightly ahead of healthcare at 44%.

It was slightly better to be an independent than a publicly-listed VAR last year as the latest analysis of the European VAR markets reveals.

The independents lifted their sales by 10.5%, the listed firms by 9.65%, according to the report.

The publicly listed firms, generally larger in size, had a higher overall sales result - the average sales figure for this group of 39 was $440m. The independents, though more numerous at nearly 800, had average sales of just over $30m.

The figures also show that some 315,000 people work in these top 1,000 VARs.

Hot on the heels of news that Beta Distribution's bid to buy Entatech collapsed the struggling Telford-based IT distie fell into administration. In February 2016 Entatech settled its lengthy legal battle with the liquidators of Enta Group company Changtel and became solely owned by Stevinson Capital, a business controlled by Entatech MD Dave Stevinson (pictured).

The settlement was a long running, challenging and complex deal involving multiple firms of lawyers, and at the time Stevinson ranked the outcome as his best career achievement.

Dabs.com founder David Atherton shared Stevinson's vision and joined Entatech as Chairman.

Dabs.com was one of the earliest online retailers of IT equipment, growing from scratch to over £200 million revenue per annum. Atherton sold the business to BT in 2006.

On Entatech's challenge Stevinson said in August last year: "Our challenge and opportunity is to be different from the big four competitors. So we are becoming more relevant to our clients and working smartly in niche sectors, using digital technology and advanced analytics as differentiators and accelerators."

It is believed that the planned sale of the business to Beta Distribution was scuppered by issues relating to due diligence.

Zen's incoming CTO Justin Fielder has compared the firm's potential with that of his old stomping ground Easynet, the first comms company to implement LLU, where he was a driving force.

Easynet was sold to BSkyB in 2005 and the network still forms the backbone of Sky's residential broadband service.

"The similarity between Easynet and Zen was a prime factor in tempting me to relocate from my home in the south east to the Manchester region," said Fielder.

"Easynet was operating at a larger scale but Zen has all the pieces in place and has just doubled its LLU footprint. There are big gaps in the market and major opportunities for Zen, so it's an exciting time to join the business.

"My experience of growing a similar business at Easynet can help Zen fulfil its ambitions. We can swiftly automate everyday back-end processes, freeing up technical staff to focus on long-term projects for the benefit of the business." 

CEO Richard Tang stated: "There are few CTOs in our industry with Justin's level of experience. We are fortunate to have him on board."

Frontier Voice and Data has added cloud call recording solutions to its portfolio following a link-up with TeleWare.

The partnership will focus on mobile, fixed line and Skype for Business call recording particularly in the financial sector where companies must become compliant with the upcoming MiFID II regulations.

Nick Reaks, Chief Operations Officer, TeleWare, said, "MiFID II is demanding greatly increased call recording and storage from companies. For smaller businesses such as hedge funds implementing a total transformation of telephony systems to achieve full compliance is a costly and difficult process.

"Operating that system can be a full-time job which takes away from their main task of delivering performance. By providing systems that are easy to implement and sit on top of existing solutions we are able to help these smaller operations remain profitable and improve their communications solutions."

Nolan Braterman, Business Development Director, Frontier, added: "The analytics that we offer will also mean that companies can gather more data and apply it to inform their growth strategies.

"The joint solutions that we will be offering with TeleWare will do more than meet current needs and will go a long way to answering future requirements as our customers continue their journey."

Beta Distribution MD Steve Soper has confirmed that a deal to acquire Entatech has been called off. He revealed that Beta had been in detailed talks with Entatech and its advisors about acquiring certain assets of the company. "Although we have been in discussions for some time, information obtained during detailed due diligence meant we were unable to continue," stated Soper.

"It is disappointing because this is an industry sector that we are extremely interested in and are looking to develop."

Although not known as a company with an acquisition strategy Soper says that the business is 'always on the lookout for opportunities to grow the Beta name' and has pursued a number of opportunities in the past.

"We have been just as active as our competitors in looking for acquisition opportunities, but so far nothing has materialised," he added.

"We have a five year plan that is based around organic growth, but if the right opportunity came along to increase that growth by acquisition then we would consider it very seriously, as we have done with Entatech."

With annual revenues now approaching £200m and year-on-year double digit growth Beta has the infrastructure and financial capacity to support the right acquisition, believes Soper.

"We will look to buy a company that can contribute to our business that may have expertise that we currently don't have," he said.

"Entatech fitted the bill, with experienced people, important supplier relationships and a well established customer base, but in the end it wasn't to be."

The countdown has begun to VoIP distributor ProVu's latest partner event - 'supercharge your 3CX Sales with Snom' - to be staged at the Etrop Grange Hotel, Manchester on 24th May.

"Aimed at resellers and service providers, this event is designed to equip attendees with the knowledge to successfully position and sell integrated PBX and telephone systems to small and medium-sized businesses," said ProVu's MD Darren Garland.

"With our collaborative approach, we hope to enlighten resellers about the advantages of selling an integrated PBX and hardware solution from independent providers through our close working relationship with both Snom and 3CX."

To find out more visit the ProVu website.

Exertis is to extend the credit lines of a select number of SMB resellers in a move that the distributor described as 'a major credit initiative'.

The Credit Xtra initiative is offered to more than 1,600 accounts and could be worth up to £20m with plans to extend further where resellers have used their increased credit.

Mark Reynolds, Exertis B2B Sales and Commercial Director, said: "By working with our credit insurers, we are in a position to double the facility for over 1,600 resellers and even extend that further if they remain within our usual credit terms."

Exertis works with Chubb Ace, said to be one of the world's largest publicly traded insurers.

Econocom is acquiring operations or parts of companies in Benelux, UK and France as it looks to build business in new sectors.

It is buying 100% of BIS group, a multimedia solutions integrator in the Netherlands and Belgium, a 40% stake in JTRS, an Apple and Google partner for digital solutions in the education sector in the UK, and 100% of LP Digital in France, a digital strategy consulting firm, through its satellite Alter Way.

BIS Group posted a revenue of over €50m in 2016 and employs over 220 people.

This transaction will enable Econocom to bolster its position in the buoyant multimedia segment (indoor and outdoor digital signage, video-conference rooms, smart building, etc.), deploy its entire offering and develop new cross-business line solutions in the key Benelux area.

Econocom will now be present with its three business lines in the group's five priority countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and France), which was one of the objectives of the current strategic plan.

JTRS is a supplier of technology solutions in the education sector in the UK. This fast-growing company, which achieved around €11m in sales in 2016, is an Apple and Google Education partner.

Econocom, which is already established in the UK via its Technology Management & Financing business, has named the UK as one of the key geographical areas of the next strategic plan.

Alter Way, an Econocom company specialising in open source web solutions and DevOps services, has acquired 100% of LP Digital Agency, thereby increasing its annual revenue to €15m. LP Digital Agency specialises in digital strategy consulting for key accounts.

Bruno Grossi, Executive Director of Econocom Group, said: "We are happy to welcome BIS within Econocom and expect significant synergies between their know-how in the dynamic multimedia solutions segment in Benelux and our strong existing operations in the region.

"Being able to propose end-to-end digital solutions, including financing, brings in our view tremendous value to our clients."