Comms Dealer

Abica Telecoms Group has expanded its business into the IT services sector with the acquisition of a significant stake in IT service provider PCR.

Abica, established in 2000 by David Munro and Gregory Barnett, is headquartered in Glasgow and currently delivers full service telecoms solutions including mobile, telephone systems and connectivity services to mid-enterprise businesses across the UK.

This acquisition is part of an aggressive growth strategy by the company as the combined telecoms and IT market continues to grow throughout the UK. The Group expects revenues to exceed £5m in the current financial year.

David Munro, Abica co-founder and Director, said: "We have seen a rising demand from our client base to provide IT and cloud services alongside our current telecoms offering.

"We had been looking for the right IT company for some time and PCR seemed the perfect fit for our growth plans, particularly as both businesses are focussed on delivering only the best in customer service.

"By acquiring this stake in PCR, we have significantly augmented our service offering, allowing us to seamlessly manage all telecoms and IT services for clients."

Gregory Barnett, Abica co-founder and Director, added: "Currently, Abica is looking at considerable expansion in the coming months as the demand for combined telecoms and IT services continues to grow at a rapid rate.

"We are looking to acquire other businesses in this sector as part of our buy and build strategy."

PCR was established in 2004 by Nick Cohen when he was just 13 years old. The company has grown from a small PC repair business to an IT service provider operating in the UK market. Cohen will remain a part of the business which will operate as part of the Abica Telcoms Group.

Pictured (l-r) David Munro, Gregory Barnett and Nick Cohen
 

BT could fold its Wholesale business into Openreach if the plan is approved by Ofcom.

The Telegraph has reported that BT Group has appealed to comms regulator Ofcom for permission for BT Wholesale, which recorded sales of £2.4bn last year, to become part of Openreach.

If the move is approved the enlarged Openreach would become BT’s biggest business with a turnover of approximately £7.5bn.

The move would bring the Group substantial savings through the removal of administration functions set-up to facilitate the operation of two separate entities.

The Wholesale business has declined from £4bn three years ago with shrinkage attributed in part to price controls set by Ofcom.

Adept Chief Executive Ian Fishwick commented: "I can see how BT would save money by merging Openreach and BT Wholesale, but we need to recognise that BTW also sell non-regulated products and this would need careful consideration when regulatory cost calculations are being done.

"Any proposal to merge the two would need to be very carefully scrutinised as the devil is very much in the boring detail. We should also keep in mind that Openreach still hasn't fixed its service quality issues and a merger could be a huge distraction."

Tollring has partnered with OrecX to deliver call recording playback and analytics within the iCS online application.

OrecX provides contact centres and business VoIP providers with call recording software that installs remotely in just 30 minutes.

iCS online, the latest mobile-ready call data visualisation application from Tollring, integrates with OrecX hosted call recording by utilising the latest web technologies.

OrecX call recording data is accessed via dashboards and wallboards within the iCS online application.

The call recording module enables recordings to be played, flagged, tagged and evaluated to provide users with a single analytics portal for a unified user experience.

Tony Martino, MD of Tollring, said: "The partnership enables OrecX customers to leverage best of breed features and functionality when it comes to both inbound and outbound call analytics, call quality monitoring and evaluation coupled with the resilience and reliability of the OrecX recording engine.

"For businesses looking for hosted call analytics and call recording, they can now access the complete package through just one interface."

Adept has announced to the Stock Exchange that it is hiking its dividend by 50%.

"There can be no greater sign of confidence in our business model," said Chief Executive Ian Fishwick.

"Historically, we have always announced half of our dividend at the Half Year, so by announcing 2.25p per share for the half year we are flagging our intention to pay 4.5p per share for the full year to March 2015.

"We have also given guidance that we intend to increase our dividends further over the next two years to 5.5p and then 6.5p.

"Revenue is up 11.3% and EBITDA up 12.7% thus demonstrating clear economies of scale. Our Free Cash Flow conversion in the Half Year was an impressive 92%."

Cobweb Solutions has opened its new London office at Canary Wharf. One Canada Square houses Europe's largest accelerator space, called Level 39. This was set up last year to encourage growth in the technology sector.

Cobweb is located on Level 42, the high growth space for larger companies where it will help to mentor and provide services to fledgling tech leaders.

The move is a logical progression for the UK-based company, according to Cobweb's Chief Technology Officer Julian Dyer.

He said: "Cobweb has always considered itself to be a London business as it already has a data centre in the heart of Docklands. This is now joined by our new London office in the heart of Canary Wharf.

"Our new office location will bring us even closer to our customers and partners. We want everyone to benefit from the personal approach we offer which will now be enhanced by the facilities and advanced technology provided by One Canada Square."

The new office includes a suite of offices, presentation and meeting rooms available for customers.

Coverage of Comms Dealer's annual awards extravaganza the Comms National Awards is available in video format with award winners interviewed by TV news presenter Bridgid Nzekwu just seconds after collecting their prizes.

The Comms National Awards (October 16th, London Hilton on Park Lane, London) are the most coveted and celebrated awards for the ICT channel, and to find out what put this year's winners on the road to success - click here

Node4 is hosting an educational event titled Cloud Clarity which will bring together industry experts and early adopters to help businesses understand how they can make the most of cloud services.

Cloud Clarity will provide an overview of cloud technology as well as compliance in the cloud for businesses not currently engaged with, or contemplating making use of cloud services.

The all day event will be taking place on Thursday 20th November 2014 at The Gherkin,London.

The event will also feature talks from guest speakers Simon Hazlitt, author of Running on Air, and Neil Cattermull, Director of Cloud Practice at Compare the Cloud.

Steve Denby, Head of Sales South, Node4, said: "Although cloud adoption is increasing all the time, we know that some businesses still don't fully understand the benefits that Cloud services can provide.

"By bringing together industry experts and our own team of cloud specialists at Cloud Clarity, we want to remove some of the confusion that surrounds the cloud and clearly demonstrate the level of flexibility businesses can achieve by hosting their IT solutions in a Cloud framework."

Neil Cattermull of Compare The Cloud added: "Choosing the right cloud solution can often be a daunting one, but it doesn't need to be a leap of faith. Businesses don't need to be cloud experts, but by increasing their basic understanding they can deliver significant value to their operations.

"Node4's Cloud Clarity will be a great forum for business leaders to develop the understanding they need."

Ingram Micro UK has added the SkyKick Migration Suite to its cloud portfolio, a solution that automates the Office 365 migration project, including the sales, planning, migration, management and on-site phases of a customer's move.

"Migrating a customer from a hosted or on-premise environment to one that is cloud-based can be a major undertaking for channel partners for the simple reason that it takes time, expertise and resources," noted Apay Obang-Oyway, General Manager, Ingram Micro Cloud.

"SkyKick will help our partners by simplifying this entire process while providing the opportunity to deliver great value by reducing the time, risk and complexity of migration projects."

Eric Jewett, VP International, SkyKick, added: "In just over half a year working with Ingram in the United States, the SkyKick Migration Suite has helped many partners accelerate their Office 365 deployments. We look forward to replicating this success with Ingram Micro Cloud in the UK."

Cisco's Q1 was hit by weak US carrier spending and falling emerging market growth, but it still managed a record and was lifted by good figures in Europe. Total product orders rose 1% yr/yr in FQ1: Americas +2%, EMEA +6%, Asia-Pac/Japan -12%.

"We are pleased with our results and are comfortable in our strategy to deliver innovative solutions that enable the next generation of IT and the Internet of Everything," said Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers. "This was our strongest Q1 ever in terms of revenue, non-GAAP operating income, and non-GAAP EPS.

"We are still in a tough environment, but seeing encouraging trends as cities, businesses, governments and schools are becoming more digitised.

"EMEA was a highlight with growth of 6%. We saw strong performance in the UK, up 20% and strength in Germany, up 6%. Southern Europe grew approximately 20%. We saw some stabilisation in the emerging countries within an EMEA with growth of 2% in the emerging segment.

"Based on the role we play in the digitisation of countries and companies including our ability to bring innovation in job creation, we're more positive on the future business in Europe than perhaps some of our peers are."

Cisco saw a reduction in spend at several large US service providers, and the cloud is changing a lot of its business. "We are frequently asked what Cisco is doing differently in the crowded cloud markets," added Chambers. "Simply put, we see the same problem in cloud that we saw 20 years ago in networking, where numerous networks operated on different technologies that didn't talk to one another.

"As we blow down the silos with Ethernet we made the Internet pervasive. We are running the same play in cloud as only we can, unifying private, public and hybrid clouds.

"We will place this market as a solutions play, meeting the network requirements of enterprise class applications and providing the platform to deliver Cisco's growing portfolio of software-as-a-service offers. This would drive our strategic role with customers and over time our recurring revenue."

Security is the number one issue facing many customers. "Security revenues grew this quarter by 25%. We combined our security products more closely with the Sourcefire products and delivered a highly anticipated Cisco ASA with Firepower services, which combined Cisco's ASA firewall with Sourcefire into one platform.

"Customer receptivity has been positive. Our innovation and security is very strong. Security continues to be our customers' number one business priority at the CIO level, but perhaps even more important at the CEO level. And we are doing very well in this market. Nearly every initiative we have at Cisco has security as a key component."

Daisy Wholesale has been chosen by Phoenix Managed Networks to provide a range of services for its Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) Level One certified cloud-based network security and management solution.

PhoeniXSentry offers security for the processes and data carried through transactional networks, to which Daisy Wholesale will be providing telephone line, internet connectivity, a managed installation service and the option of 3G failover.

As well as supporting PCI compliance, PhoeniXSentry is an independently certified ICSA Labs security appliance and boasts features such as included WiFi, 3G failover, usage reporting, content filtering, real-time proactive status alerts and Virtual Private Network (VPN) capabilities.

As part of the partnership, PhoeniXSentry will be made available to Daisy Wholesale's reseller partners.

Mark Hickey, Director at Daisy Wholesale commented: "There is already a high level of interest among the reseller community for this service.

"For the SME market, the PhoeniXSentry solution provides those businesses that may not have much in-house capability with the reassurance that they are being diligent with their network security and complying with their PCI regulations, allowing them to focus on the growth of their business."

The launch of PhoeniXSentry comes at a pivotal time for the transactional networking market, as new PCI regulations come into fruition, and as banks and card issuers start to crack down on non-compliant businesses.

Alan Stephenson-Brown, Senior Vice President of International Sales and Business Development at Phoenix Managed Networks, said: "Daisy's partnerships with all of the major UK networks is an important resource, saving us valuable time which would otherwise have been spent managing the relationships with multiple suppliers."