Comms Dealer

IT solutions provider Logicalis has embarked on a new Business Intelligence (BI) project for retail consortium Nisa Retail.

The cloud-based solution replaces Nisa's existing on-premise offering, enabling its business users to gain deeper insight, faster, and better inform key business decisions to help shape the company's proposition and support continued growth in the competitive convenience retail sector.

David Morris, Head of IT at Nisa Retail, explained: "Our incumbent Business Intelligence solution gave us a glimpse of what was possible with BI and analytics, but we knew we could do more to leverage the technology. We wanted to adopt a new approach that would pool all data sources from right across the business, to put the right information, in the right users' hands, and quickly."

Logicalis is deploying the latest version of IBM Cognos, hosted on its cloud platform and wrapped with professional services inclusive of training for Nisa's team. Through the Proof of Concept and early implementation, the process by which data is processed and then presented to the business teams for use, has already been transformed, according to Morris.

"Whereas previously it was taking the team days to build data cubes, it's now just a matter of hours with far greater consistency," he said. "As we look to mesh together data from warehousing and logistics, to what customers are buying and where and when, the information garnered will be invaluable.

:It will help us to shape and refine our proposition, such as negotiating better costs with our suppliers, to directly benefit our retailers' bottom line - enabling them to be even more competitive on the high street."

Nisa's business users have also felt the early benefits. With the cloud-based solution providing greater performance, business users from across the trading, finance and customer insight teams have been able to drill down into the analytics instantly, with no delay or latency on the system, providing a far great user experience. "The solution has re-invigorated the use of Business Intelligence in the organisation," explained Morris.

"Our previous solution was viewed as something that simply existed to help Nisa's business users get from A to B in their roles. Now, as they dive deeper than ever before into our data, the solution is regarded as a key tool for delivering tangible business benefits and informing key decisions, focusing the IT department on areas that really help drive the business forward."

Implementation of the BI solution is currently underway, and expected to be fully operational across the retail business in Q4 this year.

Mark Starkey, MD of Logicalis UK, commented, "Business Intelligence is all about the opportunity to engage and act upon the right information, at the right time. Critical data is being captured by organisations like Nisa everyday that, when put to work, can inform better customer engagement, marketing and growth strategies.

"IT departments in retail are coming under increasing pressure to align more closely with business strategy, and now is the time to re-shape the IT function to focus on high-value, strategic initiatives. With this initiative, Nisa's IT team is seizing the opportunity to do just that, enabling its users to exploit IT to make a genuine mark on business performance to the benefit of its members."

Distributor Northamber saw its full-year pretax loss widen slightly due to a decrease in revenue and reduced margins.

In a statement, Northamber said it made a £1.2m pretax loss in the year ended June 30th, compared to £1.0m in the previous year.

Revenue fell to £62.9m from £77.5m but the company cut costs in a move to realign to more profitable areas - costs fell to £2.5m from £3.4m. Margins were also down 6.8% from 7.6%.

Chairman David Phillips said: "This time last year I reported that we were concentrating on the more profitable aspects of the business. That process is an ongoing task.

"There has been a marked change between the first and second halves of this past year. In the first half the results continued the downward trend of previous periods but in the second half we achieved increases in both turnover and margins compared with the first half.

"Costs were contained in the second half even though we increased the quality and quantity of resources put into marketing, selling and liaison with suppliers.

"The result of these cumulative changes was that the operating loss for the second half year was significantly lower than for the first half at £495,000 compared with £730,000."

Knight Corporate Finance has completed its 60th transaction after advising the shareholders of UK-based software and interconnection company Allegro Networks on its sale to California-based IIX Peering Inc.

The acquisition advances IIX's strategy to target enterprises with its global software and network interconnectivity solutions.

Knight Corporate Finance Director Paul Billingham said: "It is a tremendous achievement for Knight to reach its 60th deal as we approach our sixth anniversary.

"The 10 deals that we have completed this year are a good bellwether for how the industry is changing and demonstrates the strength of the UK comms sector and the confidence shown by a new range of acquirers."

Knight's deals this year include the sale of Avenir Telecom UK and CommsXchange, a Vodafone platinum partner, to Chess.

In a sale to another US buyer Knight advised on the acquisition of City Numbers by J2 Global. Knight also advised on the merger and fundraising for Transglobal Telecom and IT player Intralan, as well as five company sales in the fixed line sector this year.

Knight Director Adam Zoldan added: "Many of our deals are strategic rather than base sales. This drives higher values as the buyer is not just acquiring customers, but also skills, expertise and increasing the depth of their customer proposition.

"This also ensures that jobs are saved as good people drive value rather than become cost savings.

"The Avenir sale to Chess was a great example of this. Had we sold the business to an existing distributor we were sure that most if not all of the workforce would have been axed. However, with Chess we knew the jobs were secure and staff would have a great opportunity to enhance their career.

"This was important to the French parent company and also introduced a strong new player to the mobile channel."

Billingham also noted: "The way the acquisitions were funded is a testament to the confidence financial institutions place on the sector.

"Two deals were funded by US private equity. The Actimax deal by Coms was funded by an equity fund raise on the AIM. GCI had raised money from private equity to fund the Comms Xchange deal with rest funded by Bank finance.

"But even here we are seeing the banks offering flexible products that recognise that positive cash flow from acquisitions takes time to be realised rather than day one after the deal.

Knight has a few more deals on the go and we expect the M&A trend to continue into 2015. This really is a very positive time for the comms sector and whether companies are looking to grow, acquire, raise funds or are considering their exit options, there is a real choice in the market to find a deal that suits their requirements."

Node4 has established a firm foothold in the south with a new office in London.

Node4's recent acquisition of LETN Solutions has also given it a new office in Reading and expanded its dedicated regional sales team serving customers in this region.

Paul Bryce, Business Development Director at Node4, commented: "The opening of a London office is another example of Node4's commitment to building a truly national presence.

"London-based businesses will benefit from localised customer support and technical expertise across the region. This ensures that we can serve customers in the south in the best possible way as well as attract new ones."

Annodata has boosted its hosting capabilities and furthered its move into the cloud with the acquisition of IT infrastructure provider Keltec which has annual revenues in the region of £15m. The deal sees Annodata become a £78m-plus business with 380 employees.

The acquisition is the first expansion move by the company following its appointment of Martin St Quinton as Chairman, who has led a number of successful enterprises in the technology sector.

The trading entities will be maintained and will become wholly owned by Annodata.

Annodata's MD Andrew Harman stated: "The acquisition is the first example of our new growth plans in the UK. The mass adoption across all industries of IT-as-a-service is leading to wholesale transformation in the technology sector and Annodata has always moved in step with its customers.

"We see cloud computing as a key opportunity for us to expand beyond our traditional business boundaries. Keltec will complement our existing service portfolio, which includes unified communications, managed print and document services, cloud and mobile device management.

"Over the coming months we intend to integrate the company in full and Keltec's staff will play a pivotal role in this process. Their skills and experience will be invaluable as we continue to grow the business."

Bracknell-based Keltec was founded in 1998 and provides end-to-end IT solutions to customers of all sizes nationwide. The company holds a range of industry accreditations, including HP Gold Partner, VMware Enterprise Solution Provider and Veeam Gold Pro Partner status, and stands as one of HP's top 30 partners in the UK.

Nimans' Manchester HQ resembled a house of horrors with staff roaming the corridors dressed up for Halloween.

"Ghoulish games, themed cakes and a trick or treat pass the parcel proved popular as staff from across the business entered into the spirit of the day, arriving for work as witches, monsters, scary film characters, zombies and skeletons - with Chairman Julian Niman also joining in the fun," said PR Manager Chris Widocks.

BT has reported what is described as a 'solid quarter', with results slightly ahead of market expectations.

At a Group level, BT reduced costs whilst growing EBITDA (up 1%) and its key revenue measure (up 0.2%) during the quarter. Profit before tax was up 13 per cent.

The company increased its interim dividend by 15% to 3.9p and its outlook remains unchanged.

Revenues were down 2% at £4,383m in Q2 (but up 0.2% on an underlying basis). EBITDA is reported as £1,450m in Q2 - up 1% (against £1,434m last year). Q2 rofit before tax came in at £690m, up 13% (£609m) on last year.

Revenue was up 7% at BT Consumer, thanks to 17 per cent growth in broadband and TV revenues. It's the third successive quarter BT Consumer has seen top and bottom line growth, a key metric when measuring the success of BT Sport, says the firm.

One in three of BT's retail broadband customers - more than 2.5m premises - are now using fibre.

Fibre revenues were up 38% at Openreach and 344k new fibre customers were added in the quarter - a new fibre customer every 22 seconds, 24/7.

More than 40% of Openreach's net fibre broadband connections were generated by external Communications Provider customers during the quarter.

BT also stated that its is recruiting a further 500 engineers at Openreach taking the total of new jobs announced at that business since April to 2,400.

NelsonHall's quarterly IT outsourcing (ITO) Index webcast found IT services spending in Q3 2014 was up 1.5%, driven by spending in professional services (+3%).

According to Dominique Raviart Director ITO Research, Q3 2014 was a landmark quarter for ITO.

"This is the first time since Q4 2012 that spending is not negative. Quarter after quarter, corporate clients are back into investment mode, awarding slightly higher scope ITO contracts as well as increasing somewhat their discretionary spending embedded into long-term contracts," said Raviart.

ITO bookings were down 20% both in Q3 and during the Q1-Q3 2014 period. Decline was driven by North America (-10% in Q1, -30% in Q1-Q3 2014).

Europe also declined significantly (-30% in Q3) but less so during the first 3 quarters of 2014 (-10%). During Q1-Q3 2014, the commercial sector was down 10% while the public sector was up 20% on low levels.

An important KPI is the level of new scope contracts (as opposed to existing scope contracts) and was an estimated 40% for the Q1-Q3 2014 period. This level is at the higher end of the traditional range and is good news. Europe is slightly higher than North America on this KPI.

Looking ahead to full-year 2014, NelsonHall forecasts short-term growth in worldwide IT services spending of 2%, with flat growth for ITO.

Looking to 2015, the outlook for IT services remains mixed, with the improving economic conditions driving some spending. However offshoring will continue to further drive prices down, resulting in lower spending.

NelsonHall's forecast for IT services spending in 2015 is +3%. ITO spending is to remain flat in 2015, largely because of the low level of ITO bookings in late 2013 and during full-year 2014, it says.

Outsourcery's O-Cloud platform has been certified to run government classified information at OFFICIAL and OFFICAL SENSITIVE over the Internet.

This gives Outsourcery CESG Pan Government Accreditation (PGA) (formerly IL2) to meet data sovereignty and security specifications for the public sector.

Public sector organisations, such as local authorities, government bodies and 'blue-light' and emergency services, shopping on the government's Digital Marketplace will now be able to procure Outsourcery's cloud services, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and a full suite of hosted Microsoft applications delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), including Exchange, Lync and Dynamics CRM.

Outsourcery will be the first Microsoft-focused CSP capable of offering enterprise grade cloud-based Lync with full native enterprise voice from a PGA accredited platform - a platform which is already used by several FTSE-100 companies.

Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery, commented: "The recent techUK manifesto for growth and jobs 2015-2020 highlighted the importance of the IT industry's role in increasing productivity and boosting the economic success of the UK, and the digitisation of the public sector is a key part of this. To achieve this, public sector organisations need access to services that are reliable, familiar, but most importantly, meet data sovereignty specifications.

"By taking the necessary steps to obtain the Pan Government Accredited (PGA) classification, we are aiming to support this - we offer a full suite of IaaS and SaaS solutions built on Microsoft technology and delivered from our O-Cloud platform, which is housed in datacenters based in the UK. We are the only supplier of cloud-based voice-enabled enterprise Lync that is PGA accredited for OFFICIAL and OFFICIAL SENSITIVE."

Comms-care has achieved ISO Standard 22301, which provides a clear framework for coping during major incidents and ensures that a recovery plan is always in place to support clients.

Undertaken by Lloyds Register Quality Assurance (LRQA), the assessment leading to Comms-care's certification was designed to check 'the management of Business Continuity arrangements in relation to the delivery of operational services and supporting systems at Comms-care Headquarters'.

This latest certification builds on Comms-care's previous achievements in securing ISO standards within its business, including ISO 27001, which covers security management and ISO 14001, which outlines important environmental standards.

Comms-care has also incorporated the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) into its operational processes. ITIL is an industry recognised set of best practices, focused on efficiency and service delivery.

Mark Forster, Operations Director at Comms-care, said: "Most organisations implement ISO 9001 and stop there, but we have gone the extra mile by implementing ISO 27001, 20000 and 14001 as well as ITIL-based processes and now ISO 22301.

"We believe that quality standards have helped us build a strong reputation for client service and quality delivery.

"ISO 22301 is all about continuing to provide excellent services to our channel partners in a planned and well thought-out manner with appropriate support in place, even when the unexpected happens."