Comms Dealer

SIP technology is tops according to delegates at Britannic Technologies' annual Convergence Summit held in London. In a live poll 47% of attendees voted SIP as their most favoured technology, followed by cloud at 36% and CTI 32%.

The end user event was targeted at decision makers from mid-sized and enterprise organisations and the big theme this year was 'business enablement through technology'.

Britannic Technologies Sales and Marketing Director Jonathan Sharp said: "The presentations were delivered over a technology that enabled the audience to view the presentations on their devices and interact with the presenters. And a live poll was conducted among the audience to discover which technology they thought would add the most value to their business."

Incom Business Systems celebrated its 25th birthday this month and the Directors marked the milestone by hosting a employee team-building weekend in Prague.

Colleagues worked in groups to carry out team-building tasks which included escaping from a Mind Maze and completing an Apprentice-style challenge.

The event also marked Incom's growth in the past five years, doubling in size since 2009.

Managing Director David Hughes said: "It was rewarding and an absolute pleasure to see colleagues - some of whom I've worked with for two decades and some for only a few months - working together and having so much fun.

"The way everyone pulled together on the team challenges is testament to the culture of our company, both inside and outside of the office. I will take away many happy memories from our 25th anniversary celebrations in Prague."

Westcon Group's UCC practice awarded its top performing Avaya partners with a day's sailing at the Royal Solent Yacht Club in Lymington.

"The sailing incentive rewards partners that have sold the full stack of Avaya products to their mid-market customers. The results this financial year have been tremendous. The trip demonstrates our thanks to our partners for their constant support and commitment," said Ralph Donohue, General Manager UK & Ireland, Westcon UCC.

Partners spent the day sailing in a fun environment with plenty of teamwork challenges and highly competitive close quarter racing, followed by a prize presentation and dinner.

Paul Sheppard, Sales Manager, Maintel, added: "I had a fantastic day. The competitive sailing was great fun and I am looking forward to next year's already."

tIPicall has launched a new bundle pricing offer exclusively for channel on OnePBX, its proprietary hosted telephony platform.

Available on a monthly rolling contract, resellers can take advantage of bundle pricing including seat license, DDIs, UK landline, UK mobile and either EU landline or USA landline and mobile calls.

On a 36 month term, resellers can also benefit from an included Yealink handset.

tIPicall Managing Director Guy Miller said: "We want to offer our partners a different proposition - while free UK calls are great, the added value to the right opportunity to bundle in European or American calls takes bundles to a different level.

"As we're Channel-only, it's up to our resellers how they want to price and promote this service, they can carry on as they are now with a new zero cost base for the calls or they can pass the savings on to new clients to win more deals. They might even want to migrate existing clients on other platforms and split the savings.

"The pricing of these bundles means resellers will be making a minimum 100% markup on hosted. We want to bring back profit into the Channel and our global reach has allowed us to slash worldwide prices to achieve this."

As well as boosting resellers' coffers a pre-Christmas incentive sales scheme run by Daisy Wholesale will also generate additional funds for charity.

For every new qualifying service taken between now and 23rd December Daisy Wholesale will make a donation to kids charity Action for Children.

"In a normal month, it is estimated that in excess of £6,000 will be generated," said Terry O'Brien (pictured), MD of Daisy Wholesale. "Although an already significant amount, Daisy Wholesale hopes that its partners have a great month of trading and that as much money as possible is raised for the UK-based children's charity.

"After such a great 12 months of business, we were trying to think of a way to thank our resellers for their generous custom. Ideas of different incentives were thrown around, but we really wanted to do something extraordinary this year and really give back to show our appreciation. And, how better to do that than help make Christmas a little more cheerful for the UK's most vulnerable children?"

The services that qualify for the donation span across the provider's portfolio and include WLR, SIP, broadband and Ethernet, HVX and HDS seat licences and mobile connections.

A connection will count once it is brought into service, or in the case of an Ethernet order, when accepted by the relevant carrier.

The fundraising incentive comes just two months after the business raised £7,800 for charity Diversity Role Models with a 40-man trek up Mount Snowdon.

Sennheiser has unwrapped the D 10, an entry-level wireless DECT headset with a customisable single-sided design that offers the single connectivity to either a desk phone or a softphone/PC.

Its two-in-one wearing style can use either a headband or ear hook with full workday talk time of up to 12 hours and fast charging of up to 50% in 20 minutes.
 
The D 10 includes a noise cancelling microphone, wideband sound and ActiveGard technology that offers hearing protection against acoustic shock.

Its Digital Signal Processing technology enables clearer sound by incorporating echo cancelling and audio equalisation and DECT connectivity to avoid interference with nearby Wi-Fi devices.
 
The D 10 is supplied with a base station that has a built-in ringer for USB models with choice of tones and adjustable volume. It also includes built-in cable management.

Up to four headsets per conference call are available and with a wireless range of up to 180m the headset is suitable for large office environments.
 
"We designed the D 10 with the modern office professional in mind, ensuring that everything from design through to operation reflected the no-compromise standards that are demanded by today's users," said Jane Craven, Sales Director at Sennheiser Communications.

"The DECT standard combined with our digital processing technology ensures clarity in typically noisy office environments, and we've made sure that workers can stay mobile and connected throughout the day."

Venus Business Communications has moved into bespoke premises in Oxford Street, a move that marks the beginning of a five year growth strategy.

"The new premises provides the space we need to house our growing reseller team and integrate our technical teams," said Brian Iddon, Venus Business Communications' Director.

Venus began adopting a partnership approach with resellers two years ago while growing its network. It now has 28 points of presence across London, passes hundreds of thousands of London postcodes, covers 19 exchange areas where fibre can be offered to premises, and passes through every main London data centre.

"The move to fibre is being driven by more connected devices and smaller businesses taking their IT infrastructure into the cloud," added Iddon.

"This requires better communications to access the cloud and therefore a powerful network is needed. This provides real opportunities for resellers that we are helping them capitalise upon and as a result growing in partnership with them."

Next Generation Data (NGD) is offering customers multiple rack data hall environments with contractual power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratios of just 1.0 - the most energy efficient rating on the scale prescribed by the Green Grid.

NGD's PUE 1.0 will be available to customers at its NGD Europe data centre in south Wales from the first quarter of 2015 and will be achieved by harnessing the latest solar power and free cooling technologies combined with a 100 % renewably sourced mains supply.

"The solar power generated will offset all essential facilities energy consumed when operating customer IT racks and storage equipment to deliver zero cooling costs and enable carbon emissions savings of 505,718 Kgs per year.

NGD's planned solar capability will make its 750,000 square feet NGD Europe facility one of the largest data centre rooftop solar deployments in the world. Following the final go ahead from NGD's Welsh Government landlord the 4,000 photovoltaic (PV) solar panel 'megawatt array' installation will be capable of generating one million kilowatt hours (KWh) of free 'green' electricity per year - the equivalent usage of up to 240 homes.

NGD is also deploying the latest Stultz GE cooling system technology which intelligently determines the best mode of operation according to ambient conditions and data hall requirements. It allows the system to operate in free cooling mode for the majority of the year, only providing supplementary cooling in times of elevated external ambient conditions.

Nick Razey, CEO, NGD, said: "We will ensure the highest level of resilience and stability is maintained thanks to our abundant 100% renewable energy direct-from-grid mains power supply and deployment of real-time energy management systems."

NGD's power transmission and energy optimisation initiatives have resulted in the total exemption from carbon taxation (CRC and CCL). The BREEAM rated NGD data centre building was sustainably constructed on the site of a former semi-conductor factory and has attained ISO 14001 environmental accreditation.

A scalable data-driven platform for UC management has been rolled out by Dell Software, offering analytics and diagnostics across Microsoft Exchange and Lync platforms.

Called Dell Unified Communications Command Suite (UCCS), the solution streamlines the management of multiple communication platforms and incorporates a reporting and diagnostic capability for workforce activity, communication consumption and system performance.

"Businesses lack a single source of truth across their UC platforms to compare usage patterns and trends, gain business insights on workforce activities, encourage adoption, speed migrations or increase ROI," said Curtis Johnstone (pictured), Senior UC product architect, Dell Software, and Lync MVP.

"This level of analytics gives each department within the organisation insight on how they gain the most value from the UC platform, turning data trapped in a business' communications systems into understandable, usable and actionable insights."

Curtis claimed that UCCS also plugs a gap in the Lync ecosystem in which 80% of organisations lack the reporting capabilities to ascertain whether their cost reduction goals are being met, according to a survey.

Just 17% of respondents have a dedicated Lync administrator, leaving the full UC management to IT administrators focused on other platforms.

"These statistics reinforce a gap in knowledge within organisations in terms of who is responsible for managing, communicating and educating employees on the adopted UC platform," added Curtis. "The Dell UCCS helps organisations take command of their UC platforms."

Shadow IT continues to drive a wedge between IT departments and the wider business, a trend that is likely to create uncoordinated and siloed IT set-ups with duplicated services and uncontrolled costs across the organisation.

That's the view of Andy Wilton, Claranet's CIO, who said: "Large numbers of IT leaders have more work to do to align their IT departments with the needs of the wider business."

He commented on new research by Vanson Bourne that found 67% of businesses had been commissioning and sourcing IT products from outside the IT department for two years or more, and over half of those surveyed felt that shadow IT activity would increase in their organisation over the next two years.

The rise of shadow IT is attributed to a speedier procurement process and a belief that non-IT people better understand the needs of the business and are therefore more likely to source the most relevant products

"Many CIOs feel tied down to just keeping the lights on, and while understandable, the knock-on effect of this approach is that more business leaders are taking it upon themselves to source their own IT," added Wilton.

"The risk is not that people outside the IT department are having a large role in procuring IT. Indeed, individual units within an organisation have a role to play because they bring specific knowledge of their requirements.

"But CIOs need to move beyond the gatekeeper function and embrace a new world in which they are able to provide the tools and support that business unit heads need to make effective, coordinated IT decisions."
The research follows a study by Deloitte that found that CIOs are twice as likely to prioritise the delivery of IT services over increasing profits, growth, and driving innovation.

Wilton added: "CIOs' budgets have been put under pressure since the recession so it is not surprising that many have had to focus on the basics. The problem is that businesses do not stand still and the consumerisation of IT has put more power into the hands of users than ever before.

"The good news is that IT budgets are, overall, on the increase. This will give space for IT leaders to find a new balance in their collaboration with their colleagues to innovate new solutions."