Comms Dealer

The latest figures released by MZA have shown that PBX/Call Control extensions and licenses (excluding Micro PBX products) grew by 1% year-on-year in the calendar year Q3 2014 (July to Septmber 2014 inclusive), representing the first quarterly growth in the global market since Q4 2011.

In Q3 2014, overall growth was driven by solutions ?100 extensions/licenses which grew by 4% year-on-year, while solutions >100 extensions/licenses fell by 1% year-on-year.

However, volume growth was largely isolated to emerging and developing markets as the Western European and North American SME markets (solutions ?100 extensions/licenses) both fell by 8% year-on year emphasising the increasing impact of hosted multi-tenant solutions.

Global PBX/IP PBX Market - Q3 2014
The global rise in Q3 2014 was primarily driven by growth in Middle East and Africa, Latin America and Asia Pacific. The Middle East and African market witnessed a considerable 20% year-on-year growth, while Latin America achieved a 6% year-on- year growth. The global rise was aided by the Asia Pacific market which grew by 3% year-on-year, driven by some of the developing and emerging markets in the region.

In contrast, there were continued declines in the troubled Western and Eastern European markets, as both markets fell by 4% against Q3 2013. Moreover, North America continued to fall witnessing a 5% year-on-year decline. In Western Europe, the UK and German markets, which traditionally account for around 50% of volume sales in the region, drove the overall decline.
??
Avaya overhauled Cisco due to a resurgent performance in EMEA to gain the global market lead with a 13% market share. Cisco dropped to second position with a 12% share, down one percentage point. Panasonic climbed to third position from fourth in Q3 2013 to enter the global top three with an 11% share, up two percentage points.
NEC were in fourth position with a 10% share and Mitel were in fifth position with a 7% share. Mitel, following the acquisition of Aastra, has surpassed Mitel and Aastra combined for the first three quarters of 2014 against the first three quarters of 2013 in PBX extensions/licenses sold.

Panasonic maintained strong volume sales in SME markets in Q3 2014 and in the global ?100 licenses/extensions market (excluding Micro PBX products) it took an 18% share, up five percentage points year-on-year. Q3 2013 leader, NEC, fell to second position with a 13% share, down one percentage point year-on-year. Avaya outperformed the market and consolidated third position with a 12% share.

There was little change in the >100 extensions/licenses market in the quarter, with Cisco and Avaya posting relatively stable market shares of 22% and 14% respectively. Mitel claimed the global third position for the second consecutive quarter with an 8% share, closely followed by Microsoft in fourth position which matched Mitel's market share, and gained one percentage point year-on-year. NEC repeated its Q3 2013 market share performance in Q3 2014 and took a 7% share in fifth position.

World IP Extensions/Licenses Market
IP extensions/licenses grew by 2% year-on-year, marginally outperforming the total market. This marginal growth was driven by declines in the more IP-centric markets of North America and Western Europe, and as a consequence of these regional market declines and growth in TDM solutions in Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America, the global IP penetration rate (the percentage of IP extensions into total extensions to the desktop) remained at 45% and failed to rise for a second consecutive quarter. The penetration rate minimally fell in Latin America against Q3 2013, although Eastern Europe continued to have the lowest regional IP penetration rate at 29%. Cisco continued to lead the global IP extensions/licenses market with a 22% market share in Q3 2014 followed by Avaya, Mitel and Microsoft.

Global PBX/IP PBX Market - Rolling Year
Excluding Micro PBX products, over the rolling year (October 2013 to September 2014 inclusive) the world PBX/Call Control extensions and licenses market fell by 3% year-on-year, with the SME (solutions ?100 extensions/licenses) market and the enterprise (solutions >100 extensions/licenses) market falling by 2% and 4% year-on-year respectively.

The Q3 2014 figures portrayed a reasonably accurate picture of the long-term trends in the rolling year analysis published by MZA this quarter, as declines in the most developed regional markets of Western Europe and North America scuppered any chance of global growth. Moreover, the strong quarters in Latin America and Middle East and Africa, saw the two emerging regional markets increase their year-on-year growth to 4% and 1% year-on-year, over the rolling year respectively. Likewise developing Asia Pacific country markets drove the regional market into a 1% year-on- year growth over the rolling year, despite a volume decline in Japan.

Clear disparities in PBX/Call Control market volume performance have started to emerge between developed and emerging and developing markets. Solutions that require network infrastructure such as faster symmetric fibre optic networks are more readily available in developed markets. However, the greater upload broadband speeds have contributed to declines in developed markets, through hosted multi-tenant solutions and through virtualisation, which has had a secondary affect extending the average lifespan of the call controller through managed software upgrades. In contrast, poorer network infrastructure in emerging and undeveloped markets has inhibited the development of these technologies in the marketplace.

Exacerbating the decline in developed markets, most notably in the eurozone, is the continued economic stagnation in many developed economies. As a result, ICT investment has been affected by lower levels of business confidence in many markets.

Cisco retained its global lead in the PBX extensions/licenses market (excluding Micro PBX products) over the rolling year with a 12% share, down one percentage point year- on-year. Avaya remained in second position with a flat 12% share, while NEC remained third with a stable market share of 10%. Panasonic's continued volume growth in Q3 2014 saw the vendor strengthen in fourth position with a 9% share over the rolling year, up one percentage point. Mitel's merger with Aastra effective from Q1 2014 has enabled the vendor to claim fifth position over the rolling year with a market share of 7%. Moreover, market share for Mitel and Aastra combined was at 8% for the rolling year, with licenses/extensions volume up year-on-year.

Panasonic overhauled NEC to lead in the global ?100 extensions/licenses market (excluding Micro PBX products) over the rolling year, recording 15% market share, up two percentage points. NEC fell to second position with a stable 14% share, while Avaya remained flat over the rolling year repeating an 11% market share.

Over the rolling year, Cisco and Avaya continued to lead the global >100 extensions/licenses market, with market shares of 23% and 13% respectively. Mitel climbed to the number three position in the enterprise market with a 7% share, and accounted for 9% of the market when combined with Aastra shipments prior to the merger. Microsoft Lync increased traction in the enterprise voice market, with Microsoft's market share rising to 7%, up one percentage point.

Comms National Award 'Reseller of the Year' winner IP Solutions has received a £5.74m cash injection following an investment by Living Bridge supported by Oakley Capital Corporate Finance.

Paul Morris, Partner at Living Bridge, will join the IP Solutions Board. Management advice was provided by Paul Billingham and Laura Cockburn of Knight Corporate Finance.

London-based IP Solutions was established in 2001 by Keith Purves and Paul Richards. Revenues in 2014 reached £6.4m.

Richards said: "The investment will enable us to expand and develop our cloud-based service offering while continuing to invest in customer support"

Morris added: "Paul and Keith have built a great business with strong momentum in a rapidly growing market. We will ensure the market opportunity is fully captured."

Organisations are struggling to stay on top of costly technology risks, according to a new report by KPMG.

The Technology Risk Radar, which tracks the major technology incidents faced by businesses and public sector bodies, reveals the cost of IT failures over the last 12 months.

It found that, on average, employers had to pay an unplanned £410,000 for each technology-related problem they faced. The report also reveals that an average of 776,000 individuals were affected - and around 4 million bank and credit card accounts were compromised - by each IT failure.
 
Incidents caused by 'avoidable' problems such as software coding errors or failed IT changes accounted for over 50 percent of the IT incidents reported over the past year.  Of these, 7.3 per cent of reported events were the fault of human error - a figure which shows that basic investments in training are being ignored at the employers' cost.

Further, while data loss related incidents continued to be a major problem for all industries, a significant number of those (16 percent) were unintentional.
 
KPMG's Tech Risk Radar reveals that customer facing organisations are quickly realising the true cost of systems failures if they are left unchecked. 

For instance, a utility company faced a £10 million fine when technical glitches during the transfer to a new billing system meant customers did not receive bills for months and were then sent inaccurate payment demands or refused prompt refunds when errors were eventually acknowledged.
 
Commenting on the findings of the Technology Risk Radar report, Jon Dowie, Partner in KPMG's Technology Risk practice said: "Technology is no longer a function within a business which operates largely in insolation.  It is at the heart of everything a company does and, when it goes wrong it affects an organisation's bottom line, its relationship with customers and its wider reputation.
 
"Investment in technology will continue to rise as businesses embrace digital and other opportunities, but this needs to be matched by investments in assessing, managing and monitoring the associated risks.   At a time when even our regulators have shown themselves to be vulnerable to technology risk, no one can afford to be complacent."
 
With financial services under pressure to maintain highly secure technology infrastructure, KPMG predicts IT complexity will continue to be the single biggest risk to financial services organisations in the coming year.  This is closely followed by ineffective governance, risk and non-compliance with regulations.  Security risks - such as cyber-crime and unauthorised access - are rated fifth.
 
Dowie added: "With ever greater complexity in IT systems - not to mention the challenge of implementing IT transformational change - companies are running to stand still in managing their IT risks.  The cost of failure is all too clear.  It is crucial for both public and private sector organisations to understand the risks associated with IT and how they can be managed, mitigated and avoided."

Booking.com, a prime mover in booking accommodation online, has chosen Red Box Recorders to deliver a voice and data recording solution at its centres in 16 countries across Europe, APAC and the US.

A competitive tender process resulted in Red Box Recorders securing the deal to record over two million telephone calls per month, one of the largest of its kind.

Booking.com chose Red Box Quantify Recording Suite for its ability to capture and replay telephone recordings for fact verification, dispute resolution, quality monitoring and assessment of employee training needs.

The solution works seamlessly with the company's Cisco platform and is also scaleable to help facilitate further planned expansion.

Support for Zero Touch Provisioning was an important requisite for Booking.com as the company employs thousands of agents worldwide and saves time and money by creating and managing user account access through one automated central platform.

Through its application integration interface (API), Quantify has been successfully adapted by Red Box to work with Booking.com's provisioning systems.

Lee Jones, CEO at Red Box Recorders, said: "This partnership is a perfect example of how our solution meets the diverse needs of organisations and is testament to the strength of our technology, people and infrastructure."

Voice and data recording specialist Red Box Recorders has partnered with TeleWare to provide a mobile phone recording solution designed to meet the ongoing challenges of regulatory compliance faced by the financial sector.

This technology partnership means that TeleWare's sim-based recording system, which works on any mobile device, is now fully integrated with Red Box's Quantify Recording Suite.

This enables financial institutions to store mobile communications on-premise alongside all other voice and data recordings captured by Quantify, making it quick and easy to retrieve and supply information for compliance purposes.

Recording all telephone calls, including ones spoken on mobile devices, is a key requirement of financial regulators worldwide. In the UK, mobile recording is a requirement of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and is enforced by the Dodd-Frank Act in the US. Mobile recording is also expected to form a key part of MiFiD II when introduced across the EU in 2017.

By capturing all calls and communications across an organisation, Red Box helps financial institutions around the world to validate trades and other business activity, accurately reconstruct events for auditors, rapidly resolve disputes and investigate fraud.

Alan Arnfeld, Product Director at Red Box Recorders said: "We are committed to delivering recording solutions to help financial institutions around the world meet and exceed increasing regulatory demands.

"By partnering with TeleWare we have a highly flexible, scalable and device agnostic mobile recording solution to add to our portfolio which helps financial organisations achieve compliance with regulations."

Danny Hensby, Head of Product Management at TeleWare, added: "TeleWare and Red Box share a number of customers in the finance sector so the successful integration of both recordings solutions is great news for them, as well as other financial institutions that have a need to record mobile calls."

Tom Corrigan is to join the Avnet Technology Solutions UK leadership team as Sales Director as of 1st January 2015.

This promotion follows five years at Avnet UK during which time Corrigan has held management positions within the organisation's IBM and NetApp businesses. 

For the last two years he has been business unit leader, open storage and Cisco, responsible for developing and executing growth strategies for suppliers such as EMC, Cisco and VCE.

In his new role Corrigan will report directly to Miriam Murphy, senior vice president, North region, Avnet Technology Solutions, EMEA. She said: "Tom's talent for planning and executing innovative business development strategies will help us accelerate growth and drive opportunities for our customers and suppliers. 

"His experience and enthusiasm will guarantee a smooth transition into the new position with colleagues and business partners."
 
Corrigan added: "Success in the channel depends on the ability to build and organise high performance teams. An integral part of my new responsibilities will be to ensure close teamwork between Avnet and its business partners, including systems integrators and managed service providers. 

"During my time with Avnet I have witnessed a transition from selling technology to the delivery of innovative business solutions and my goal will be to further enable that change while meeting our customers' needs."   

A social media measurement and ranking service deigned to help technology vendors score the online influence of their partners has been rolled out by Prompt Communications.

The service, called Channel Social Influence (CSI), uses Prompt's social media listening capability to help vendors determine the performance of partners across relevant online platforms.

Social media insights are broken down into digestible categories, ranks, tables and charts, giving vendors visibility of the social media status of their partners in the context of specific projects, market trends and product segments, ranking individual partners.

Prompt CEO Hazel Butters said: "There are technology vendors spending substantial marketing budget on channel marketing programmes, but when it comes to understanding the social media influence of their partner base they are flying blind.

"Our CSI analysis gives vendors the opportunity to understand the social influence and reach of partners and harness those partners with the greatest reach and assist those that have room to increase their social media activity." 

Prompt CSI uses algorithm-based analysis alongside opinion and sentiment analysis on business-relevant social media channels including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

ICT services provider PSU Technology Group (PSU) is set to raise funds for its local animal shelter while offering fans of the X-Factor the chance to win tickets to this year's final.
 
The Cheltenham-based company has organised a raffle with tickets to the live TV talent show final at the SSE Wembley Arena on Saturday, 13th December up for grabs. The raffle will raise money for the Cheltenham Animal Shelter which works to rehouse unwanted pets.
 
Everyone that makes a minimum donation of £5 to the Gloucestershire Animal Welfare Association (GAWA) will be automatically entered into the raffle for the chance to win the two X-Factor final tickets. Entries will close at 12.00 lunchtime on Monday 8th December.
 
PSU will also contribute £200 towards the cost of overnight accommodation for the ticket winners.
 
PSU Technology Group's MD Michael Lounton said: "We're delighted to raise funds for the Cheltenham Animal Shelter and will be making a £1,000 donation to get things started. 

"This is part of our 12 Dogs of Christmas campaign to raise awareness about some of the animals in the shelter waiting to be re-homed. We would like to encourage as many people as possible to foster or adopt a dog."

Virtual1 has ring-fenced the IP and assets of its partner portal with the acquisition of Upshot's Trinity Portal division for an undisclosed sum. Upshot is a developer of telecoms portals including Virtual1's 1Portal and the acquisition, Virtual1's first strategic buy, also provides the company with a dedicated resource of developers to focus on planned enhancements for 1Portal.

Virtual1 CEO Tom O'Hagan said: "Our ambitions have always been to differentiate from our competitors by providing the fastest quote-to-order process and 1Portal is key to achieving that."

As part of the investment, Peter Francis, CEO of Upshot, will act as an advisor to Virtual1.

He said: "The team at Virtual1 were as passionate about the capability and potential of the Trinity assets as I am. Over the years they have contributed to the feature rich capability of Trinity and this is a great move for Virtual1 in securing the IP and assets.

"We've worked closely with Virtual1 to ensure a smooth transition of both assets and resource with our development team being introduced to Virtual1 during the early stages of negotiations."

1Portal serves over 1,500 portal users and the number of placed quotes exceeds 100,000.

Calyx has added back-up and DR capabilities to its Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution.

Steve Clark, CEO, said: "We've seen exceptional growth in demand for our standard IaaS offering because it delivers a solid, stable infrastructure that offers long -term return on investment.

"But data security and protection are also important. That is why we have invested in these new and enhanced services. We now have infrastructure replicated in data centres in both the north and south of the UK and a solution that brings with it a guaranteed availability supported by SLAs."

The solutions form part of Calyx' Hybrid Cloud portfolio which enables customers to bring a variety of infrastructures - physical, virtual, public and private cloud - into a single secure and scalable environment.

The portfolio is backed by Calyx' 24/7/365 service desk which offers in-house 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support and is based at the company's headquarters in Manchester.

Clark added: "Gartner predicts that IaaS will achieve a CAGR of 41.3% through to 2016, so it's clear that this is a growth area."