Comms Dealer

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."

Westcon Group has been awarded the EMEA Top Distributor of the Year award by Extreme Networks for outstanding revenue growth and recruitment of new partners across EMEA.

The award was presented at the Extreme Partners' Conference in the stunning five star, Corinthia Hotel in Lisbon.

"We are honoured to award Westcon with the 'EMEA Top Distributor for FY'14' award," said Roland Richter, Extreme Networks EMEA VP Sales.

"Throughout the year, Westcon continuously demonstrated a strong dedication to partnership, commitment to growth, and a deep understanding of our business across multiple geographies."

David Grant, Senior Vice President, Westcon Convergence, added: "This award demonstrates our commitment and focus to Extreme - how we work together strategically and deliver support through value added programmes to simplify business for our partners and deliver success."

Nimans has teamed up with testing cable termination and installation company IDEAL Networks and the distributor is to host an introductory open day on November 19th at its Manchester HQ.

Visitors will be able to speak directly to IDEAL and Nimans infrastructure specialists about the importance of testing cable termination and installation - and understanding the different methods available.

They will be able to demo the latest test equipment, including the LanTEK II LAN cable certifiers, SignalTEK CT Data Cable transmission testers and VDV II Data Voice and Video verifiers......testing parameters for Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6A installations.

A prize draw, free gifts with selected purchases and special offers and discounts will all be available. In addition resellers can also learn about a range of finance options available from Nimans' leasing team.

Wakefield-based telecoms company NGC Networks has been appointed the UK's first partner for the distribution of a new mobile app called BLAP.

The BLAP mobile conference call App has recently been launched by developers VENNCOMM with NGC Networks acting as its Yorkshire distributor.

VENNCOMM also has a strategic global partnership with Salesforce.com

The new mobile App enables users to create instant or scheduled conference calls to any number of contacts in their smartphone. Call participants can be anywhere in the world and at the designated time their phones will all ring for the call.

No PIN is required, so calling a group is simple with no time wasted waiting for people to join the call. Call quality isn't compromised either as the App creates a genuinely mobile conference call - it doesn't use VOIP.

BLAP is free to download and users connect to calls using their contract bundled minutes on a local geographic phone number ensuring call costs are kept to a minimum - even for international group calls.

NGC Networks director Nikki Guest said: "BLAP is so easy to use and takes the headache out of the usual method of conference calling where everyone has to dial in, enter a pin number and then wait for all the participants to join in.

"The new App is particularly beneficial to people who take part in telephone conference calls on a regular basis."

The telecommunications sector must engage better with customers according to a new report from the Institute of Customer Service.

The study found that more customers experience a problem with their telecoms provider than any other, while customer satisfaction in the telecoms sector continues to decline at a faster rate than the UK average.

The UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) reveals the average score for the Telecoms sector now stands at 72.2, down 1.1 points since January 2014 compared to the all-sector average fall of 0.8 over the same period. The sector is now 4.1 points lower than the all-sector average of 76.3.

More people experience a problem with their telecoms provider (23 per cent) than with any of the 12 other sectors surveyed in the UKCSI. 80% of customers who experience a problem report it to organisations, considerably higher than the UK average across all sectors (72.7%).

There is a significant range of scores of customer satisfaction scores in this sector. The top rated telecommunications organisation, Tesco Mobile, received a score of 85.8 (out of 100), an increase of more than three points since July 2013, and was placed fourth in the overall index of all UK companies.

Giff Gaff was the only other Telecomms organisation which scored higher than the UK all sector average for customer satisfaction. Six organisations registered a drop in satisfaction of more than one point.

It is clear from the results of UKCSI that customers want a balance of cost and good service with 65 per cent of respondents favouring this option. More customers would be happy paying more for the highest levels of service - 20 per cent favoured this option while only 15 per cent of respondents were prepared to compromise service to pay less.

Unsurprisingly, the most common method for reporting a problem is the telephone with 78 per cent of customers using this channel. There is also an increasing number of customers using social media to contact organisations about a problem; since January 2014 this has increased from 3.5 per cent to 5.1 per cent of customers. 45% of customers who made a complaint said they had to escalate it and 9% of those did so using social media.

Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service commented: "The results of the latest UKCSI demonstrate the close link between customer service and business performance; organisations with higher customer satisfaction also benefit from stronger ratings for trust, reputation, recommendation and likelihood to remain a customer.

"Organisations that deliver poor levels of customer service put these at risk, underlining the importance of customer service as a driver of business performance."