Comms Dealer

Channel Telecom's top performing partners have been recognised during the company's annual Reward and Recognition evening staged at London's The May Fair hotel.

Top honours went to Virtual1 which collected the Supplier of the Year award, while Converged Comms picked up the New Partner of the Year gong.

Channel Telecom MD Clifford Norton said: "We value our suppliers and partners tremendously and these awards evenings give us a chance to recognise their phenomenal success over the course of the last year."

Pictured: Virtual1 receives the Supplier of the Year award from Clifford Norton.

Hats off to Chess for bagging the dual titles of Best Company to Work
For and Excellence in Customer Service at The North East Cheshire
Business Awards.

Formed in 1993 Chess now has a £75 million turnover and over 400 employees.

David Pollock, Chief Executive of Chess, commented: "We firmly believe that happy people make happy customers. These prestigious awards go hand in hand, by being an energetic, hard working, success driven, fun and exciting place to work we are able to attract and retain great people.

"Having great people who care, support and help each other to achieve work and personal goals enables us to deliver great service for our customers."

The judges applauded initiatives that reflected the Chess core values of 'quality and spirit', from inspiring people to play their part in the wider community to investing £500k developing an engagement strategy called PPP 'Personal Performance Program' to develop staff skills.

Six Degrees Group has embarked on an ambitious phase of expansion following the creation of two new senior management roles.

Former Geo Networks CFO Adrian Howe joins as Corporate Finance Director while Mike Ing has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer.

Howe is tasked with reviewing corporate development opportunities and building internal structures that facilitate the speedy completion and integration of acquisition targets, while Ing's remit is to enhance the customer experience to a point where cross-selling opportunities reach their maximum potential.

Ing, a member of the senior management team for almost three years, also takes full responsibility for sales, service implementation, support and technical operations.

Alastair Mills, CEO at Six Degrees, said: "These appointments are testament to our desire to continue with both organic and acquisitive growth.

"Adrian's corporate finance and M&A experience in our industry will be invaluable as we look to take our growth plans to the next level.

"At the same time, having Mike assume the COO post will provide more ownership and accountability for our customer experience through a simplified management structure that improves our ability to execute those plans."

Ing stated: "I am passionate about delivering a rich customer experience and helping the company to cross-sell its converged portfolio to our mid-market client base."

Howe commented: "I look forward to working with Alastair and the rest of the senior team as we build a capital structure suitable for rapid expansion." 

Pictured above (l-r): Mike Ing and Adrian Howe

Unify's Fastest Growing Reseller for two years in a row, NIX Communications, has been crowned Unify Reseller of the Year 2014.

The company is one of five Unify Premier Partners in the UK. Its MD, Nick Zammit, said: "We are building a strong base of loyal customers, and many of them are becoming a rich source of new business through referrals. This is the best tribute we can have. Customer service is at the heart of our business, and this is also paying dividends."

Pictured: Tony Smith, Sales Director of Unify, presents the Unify Reseller of the Year 2014 award to Nick Zammit.

There were some big knits at Rainbow Global Network Services on Friday December 12th!

To coincide with Save the Children's Christmas Jumper Day, the Kent based reseller held a Christmas fun day and raised over £900 for two very worthy causes, including local seven-year old Frankie Rose whose family have been campaigning to get her to the USA for life saving cancer treatment.

Managing director Dave Corgat said: "Massive thanks to all who donated and a big well done to everyone who took part. The work effort was terrific. I hope this gesture will go some way towards helping young Frankie and her family together with Save the Children."

BT Group has entered into an exclusivity agreement with Deutsche Telekom and Orange in relation to BT's possible acquisition of all of their UK mobile business, EE, in a £12.5bn deal. EE has 24.5m direct mobile customers and reported Adjusted EBITDA of £1,588m for the 12 months to 30 June 2014.

The period of exclusivity will last several weeks allowing BT to complete its due diligence and for negotiations on a definitive agreement to be concluded.

The proposed acquisition would enable BT to accelerate its existing mobility strategy with seamless services that combine fibre broadband, Wi-Fi and 4G.

While continuing these exclusive discussions, BT will progress its own plans for providing enhanced fixed-mobile converged services for businesses and consumers, in line with previous announcements.

The key headline terms, which are non-binding, include a purchase price of £12.5bn for EE on a debt/cash free basis.

The consideration for EE will be payable as a combination of cash and new BT ordinary shares issued to both Deutsche Telekom and Orange. Following the transaction, Deutsche Telekom would hold a 12% stake in BT and would be entitled to appoint one member of the BT Board of Directors.

Orange would hold a 4% stake in BT. In considering the financing of the cash element, BT has a range of options and is mindful of the importance of maintaining a conservative financial profile.

BT expects significant synergies mainly through network and IT rationalisation, back-office consolidation and savings on procurement, marketing and sales costs. In addition, BT expects to generate revenue synergies through selling fixed-line services to those EE customers who do not currently take a service from BT, and by accelerating the sale of converged fixed-mobile services to BT's existing consumer and business customers.

If a transaction is agreed, approval by BT's shareholders will be required as a condition of the purchase.

JMC IT has secured a new system and support contract with Michelin starred hospitality group Northcote.

The five-year deal will see JMC provide its round-the-clock SupportCare service to Northcote for business critical equipment and applications. The deal also includes a new IT platform, moving the group from a cloud system to an on-premise solution.

Implemented at Northcote Leisure Group's head office and the Northcote luxury hotel and fine dining restaurant in Lancashire, the project is part of the company's wider multi-million pound redevelopment of its hospitality services.

The system and 24/7 support from JMC will ensure business continuity and provide extra flexibility for Northcote's bookings and on-site customer services.

JMC's managing director Andrew Burgess said: "The scalable on-premise network platform that we have delivered provides Northcote with the flexibility and autonomy they were looking for to support evolving business and redevelopment needs."

Northcote's finance director Julie Leigh added: "With the group's ambitious plans, it's crucial we have a flexible IT solution in place that connects us to our suppliers and customers and allows us to realise these aims."

Nimans has added the Teledex and TeleMatrix range of telephones to its hospitality portfolio following a link-up with handset manufacturer Cetis.

The partnership also signals Nimans' plans to extend its reach in the hospitality market across the UK, Ireland, Europe and beyond.

Andy Winfield, Purchasing Director at Nimans, said: "This strategic partnership will greatly enhance our 'everything connected' strategy as part of our dedicated hospitality division.

"We are now able to provide reseller partners with a range of hospitality products, from guest room telephony, Wi-Fi, audio and video conferencing, through to all their hotel infrastructure product requirements."

The global network security appliance and software market is on track to end 2014 with strong growth - up 7% in 3Q14 from 2Q14 to $1.76bn, calculates research house Infonetics.

On a year-over-year basis network security revenue increased 10% in 3Q14 over 3Q13 - the market's best year-over-year growth in the last two years, according to Infonetics.

"The network security appliance and software market is heading into the last quarter on something of a roll, though we look for quarterly revenue growth to slow by next year," stated Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research.

"Some large data centre and cloud projects are starting to wind down, and we're beginning a transition in earnest to the world of virtualised security.

"That said, there will be pockets of high growth over the next five years for traditional network security appliances. Many mobile providers are making large purchases for their Gi/SGi footprints, and we're entering an era of delivering traditional network security solutions for industrial environments and the Internet of Things."

Integrated security (appliances, software, and SSL VPN products) makes up the majority of network security revenue, with the bulk coming from appliances.

The year-over-year (3Q14 vs. 3Q13) performance of the top four network security vendors provides a good indication of who has the strongest momentum right now, with Palo Alto Networks increasing the most, followed by Fortinet, Cisco, and Check Point.

Australia-based developer of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) devices and solutions NetComm Wireless has signed a Pan-European distie deal with SPHINX Computer Vertriebs to expand its European reach across the energy, health care, manufacturing, security, traffic systems, railway and marine sectors.

Under the deal, SPHINX will deliver a range of wireless M2M products.

According to NetComm Wireless the European cellular M2M market is expected to grow from 6.8% to 20.4% by 2020.

"Partnering with SPHINX presents an exciting opportunity for NetComm Wireless to expand its reach and to play a key role in the mass uptake of M2M across Europe," said David Stewart, CEO and Managing Director, NetComm Wireless.

Chris Hardy, S-Connect UK Sales Manager, responsible for the NetComm brand inside the SPHINX Group, added: "NetComm Wireless' M2M devices will unlock the market opportunity in areas such as energy, health care, public infrastructure, retail and manufacturing."