Comms Dealer

Former Alcatel-Lucent distribution manager Howard Freeman is to run Espion's London Value Added Distribution (VAD) division with a remit to replicate the firm's Scottish and northern England success in the south east.

With more than 20 years sales experience in the technology channel Freeman has worked at senior business development level at Alcatel-Lucent and IBM.

Howard said: "We see enormous opportunities in the emerging area of fabric-based infrastructure (FBI), which is the vertical integration of hardware and software infrastructure with automation on top.

"I am confident that our portfolio will enable us to take on this segment with gusto."

Steve Rathborne has been appointed Field Sales Director for UK SME, BT Business.

His strategy is to take a multi-channel approach that leverages both the internal channels as well as Local Business and Business Partner Sales.

"I will be creating and delivering a strategy to maximise the market opportunity in the SME Business of which Partners and Resellers are key," he said.

Rathborne's responsibility also covers the Field Sales teams for BT's Redcare and Payphones businesses which sell specialised services to a range of customers across Government and business sectors, as well as the ICT services team.

Unify claims to have combined 'art and science' to revolutionise collaboration with the launch of Circuit, previously known as Project Ansible.

First debuted in June 2013 and designed in collaboration with frog, Circuit enables teams to engage in 'rich and meaningful conversations' across virtually any communications channel or device, according to Unify.

Circuit operates from a single-pane-of-glass that brings together voice, video, screen sharing, messaging and file sharing.

The solution leverages WebRTC standards, providing video and voice from a browser, PC, tablet or phone, while using bandwidth resources efficiently.

Dean Douglas (pictured), CEO at Unify, said: "We thought about people first as we set out to study the problems of work today. How do we help people feel good about their work experience? When do they feel most connected, valued and productive?

"We created an experience that mimics the brain, and naturally transforms the collaborative process, and teamwork. Simply put, we've enabled a new way to work that is about putting people first.

"With our focus on making work more enjoyable we know it leads to more productivity, which makes people happier and then enables them to create greater value for our customer - the enterprise."

Stowe Boyd, Research Lead at GigaOm, noted: "Circuit's user experience is based on an understanding of how today's teams want to connect, communicate and work together on a daily basis."

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: An increasing number of B2B clients are beginning to embrace online marketing and are coming around to the idea that social media and video etc are not solely for end user B2C target audiences.

There are several reasons for this. The obvious one being that society as a whole is more confident in engaging with the web and has used social media in personal lives for some time now. Websites are becoming easier for staff to update themselves and so web management is now a less daunting task for office staff.

More interestingly the overall priorities of a business are shifting. Companies in the channel are feeling more confident in their ability to increase their market share but understand that this may now have to be achieved through different means.

While customer relationships are still high on the agenda for business development, and while brand strengthening should always remain a priority, we are beginning to see other creative ideas being embraced. Thought leadership is a more innovative path to improving brand value and we have witnessed more and more telecoms companies approaching us for support.

It is not just a case of having your brand recognised, it is about your brand being meaningful. Thought leadership raises brand awareness in an extremely positive manner and adopting online marketing to achieve this means that positioning yourself as a knowledge base can be realised on a smaller budget.

With the fast pace of technology, B2B clients are looking increasingly to their providers to support them and guide them through the requirements of their business now and in the future.

If a company is successfully positioned as a thought leader in its field of expertise, confidence in its products and services will be excellent and therefore its market share will increase in a sustainable manner.

By Anton Le Saux, Head of Connectivity  and Partner Sales at O2 Telefónica UK: There has been much talk this year about connected homes. Since new devices and appliances like the smart-fridge were unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in the US in January, there have been a flurry of acquisitions by various big market players - Apple acquiring Nest, Samsung acquiring SmartThings to name just two.

Clearly, the market makers and manufacturers see huge potential, but are consumers on board yet? There is a lot of work to do to bring this to market in a compelling and joined up way.

In a recent survey by Gekko 27 per cent of those asked were not interested in any connected device, with the biggest reasons stated as cost (45 per cent) and because they are not considered important to life (44 per cent).

But, as market makers, we shouldn't view this insight as negative, but as an indication of the immaturity of the market and the size of the job we need to do to educate, inform and bring to life the benefits on offer to make it both relevant and attractive to people.

It is the responsibility of those of us involved in connectivity, devices and platforms to bring to market products and solutions that are easy to use and provide clear human benefit.

Apps and platforms, devices and networks need to integrate seamlessly with little or no user intervention. Connectivity must be constant and bandwidth big enough to handle Big Data. We must keep our customer at the heart of our innovations to bring to market solutions that work and add value to their lives.

O2 is currently working with over 250 global partners to support and help grow the connected homes market worldwide. To find out more please contact anton.lesaux@telefonica.com 

Comms entrepreneur Mike Harris has successfully built a number of multi-million pound companies including Total Network Solutions, now he's about to do it again with the launch of The Network Selector.

Harris is a serial comms channel entrepreneur who has built a number of multi-million pound companies including Total Network Solutions which was acquired by British Telecom in 2005. He is joint founder of SiFi Networks, a provider of fibre-to-the-home networks, and Chairman of Oswestry-based VoiceComms Warehouse, a distributor of Internet security and network technology. Harris is also Chairman of Welsh Premier League Champions The New Saints FC and he provided the funding for the team's Park Hall stadium which opened in Oswestry in 2007.

Last month Harris launched The Network Selector, a channel only organisation that addresses a number of reseller needs based on their size, capability and level of investment. This is provided through four channels called Talkativo, VCW Voice, Ocean Telecom and Planet Hippo. "Instead of simply acting as a sales agent for telcos where customers are at risk from policy changes, The Network Selector ensures that resellers are at the heart of the business and retain full contractual rights with customers," said Harris. "As well as offering competitive pricing, we enable resellers to solve the geographical reach issues that occur when tied to single network providers."

His career in comms began after leaving school at 16 when he joined BT in 1979. "I worked in local telephone exchanges before moving into data centres and became one of the country's first specialist voice and data engineers," said Harris. "With a background in exchange construction, telephone route planning, data centre layout, point-to-point links and Ethernet connectivity, I had a unique level of experience. I set up Total Network Solutions in 1988 and have not looked back since."

The Network Selector provides a full suite of pre and post sales technical support and a range of administration services including billing, credit checking and debt collection. "This enables resellers to concentrate on building their businesses while demonstrating they have the infrastructure to service even the largest corporate customer," noted Harris. "I also see the wider telecoms market developing along similar lines to the mobile market with bundles incorporating devices, applications and connectivity for a standard monthly charge."

Harris' objective is to become a significant player in the converged communications space and anyone looking back across his career achievements would not disagree with the likelihood of his ambition become reality. He won the Ernst & Young Technology and Communication Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2001 and Total Network Solutions was named as one of the Financial Times' fastest growing companies on three separate occasions.

His on-pitch achievements are just as impressive. "As Chairman, I helped take Llansantfried FC, based in a village of 900 people, from being a mid-table team to Welsh Premier League champions for a record eight times," he added. "Along the way I saved Oswestry Town FC from bankruptcy in 2003 by merging the two teams. The New Saints FC, also known as Total Network Solutions FC until 2005, have dominated the Welsh Premier League and regularly appeared in the Champions League and Europa League group stages. I am particularly proud of the team representing Wales and helping raise the profile of our national league throughout the UK and Europe."

Harris' commitment to the local community in terms of creating employment in the Oswestry region for young people is also a source of pride. "I am proud of the fact that many of the people that started as trainees in my various businesses have gone on to become highly paid and respected employees, both sales and technical, within my own organisation as well as some of the world's leading technology companies," he added. "Some are also now running their own businesses."

Harris has not only influenced the look of Welsh football and the careers of local people, he has helped to shape the way that voice and data networks have evolved. "My current mission is to ensure that resellers remain in control of their customers rather than being sidelined by network providers as commissioned agents," he stated. "Putting resellers at the heart of the customer relationship will protect their businesses from being undermined by any changes in policies by network providers. But it is not just a one-way street. The Network Selector is also set up to help network providers by being easy to deal with, helping to reduce their support costs to the reseller community."

Based on research commissioned by BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions, Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst at Quocirca, discusses how to spread the cost of strategic IT investments without missing out on the value of doing it right.

It appears from a fair amount of macro economic data that the UK is moving into a period of growth after a significant period of downturn since the financial markets crisis in 2008. There may be doubts as to whether this is a sustained or balanced recovery, or even a blip before drifting downwards again, but either way, many organisations are now facing the effects of a significant period of under investment in their IT and communications infrastructures.

Some will have been playing a game of 'wait and see', assuming that things might become clearer. Others may have simply been focused on keeping systems running with limited resources and staff. The reasons are now relatively unimportant, but the consequences do need to be addressed as the evolution of technology products has continued unabated. So, whether preparing to take advantage of new opportunities and markets, or having to cope with further downward pressures, many will be finding their IT and communications systems will require some sort of overhaul.

Tight budgets might have acclimatised many to trying to make incremental or tactical improvements to existing systems, architectures and business processes. This approach can work for a time, especially when IT innovations fall into the well-worn categories of small, faster or cheaper. However, many recent trends have been far more disruptive, bringing consumer attitudes into the working environment, blurring the boundaries between work and home, and connecting just about anything, anywhere to the Internet.

Many now require organisations to make a step change in their use of IT which extends beyond simply 'buying it', to become 'buying into it'. Changes have to be made at a people and process as well as a technology level. This means making a strategic investment and a serious commitment. In this case it is highly likely that incremental spending will no longer be sufficient or effective.

These disruptive trends have also brought increased complexity to IT solutions that have a wider impact on the working environment. No longer is it a simple matter of buying discrete items of hardware or software. Technology choices have become virtualised and need to be integrated. Effective solutions now require investment in the right blend of hardware, software and services. Delaying or trying to avoid purchasing one element that might once have been considered secondary now becomes a false economy.

The skills required to support this blended solution of IT products and services are typically well at home in the reseller channel, where a mix of different technical skills and the ability to integrate them have often been in demand. However, the scale of sudden investment required by a reseller's prospective customers to allow them to architect the right sort of solution may pose a challenge.

Smoothing out any sudden step change in spending to help the end customer meet its strategic objectives would be valuable and minimise risk for both reseller and the end customer. It also avoids any lengthy delays or uncertainty, both of which have significant impacts on any IT project.

Cutting the upfront cost of strategic infrastructure investment is something that can be provided by alternative solutions such as managed services. Where the technology is well defined or a discrete set of services, this can be accomplished relatively easily. Entire systems can be hosted and managed or individual elements could be delivered in a public cloud-based 'as a service' type proposition.

This might make it easier to spread the impact of IT costs through recurring monthly subscription based on usage, although moving an entire system architecture into a public cloud-based approach would not only be challenging but potentially undesirable. Making the transition is something that will require effort and predictable cost management.

System architectural and strategic decisions should in any event be based on business requirements not on financial constraints, and so the best approach would be to ensure the financing options support the right technology decision. This not only means that the customer gets the right and complete IT infrastructure in place, but that they can have it when they need it, rather than trying to make do and mend. This gives them flexibility to then support business moves to grow, or to manage costs or risk.

Those involved in selling and supply can be confident that they can offer the optimum solution to keep their end customer happy and strength the customer relationship. They should also be assured that they have won the entire piece of business and can be rewarded up front, rather than risking losing out or being undercut as customer circumstances change over time.

With the right financial package the entire infrastructural solution - hardware, software and professional services - can be incorporated. This ensures that even the most complex and strategic integration projects can be delivered without having to hunt around for pockets of funding or under spent budgets.

Getting off on the right footing with any IT project by delivering a system architecture that is based on the entire business need provides a firm foundation for future innovation, and is the best way for IT departments and their supplier to be recognisably acknowledged as supporting commercial goals.

BT Wholesale's new Business Zone portal is a derivative of the overall drive towards digitalisation within an environment where service and support matters more than ever, according to Josh Pert, Director of Multichannel Customer Experience, BT Wholesale.

Pert is right, dinosaur practices must be stamped out and new ways of doing things founded. Digital is now the preferred transaction method for many of BT Wholesale's customers and Pert has played a blinder to drive a transformation programme with the strategic momentum to differentiate through the service it offers to partners. "The transformation programme aims to provide a customer experience that makes it easier to do business with BT Wholesale," said Pert. "That means finding ways to allow our partners to spend more time engaging with their customers and less time and effort getting what they need from us."

The Business Zone portal is only the start of what will be a long-term transformational programme with process and automation at its heart. "Process is fundamental to this programme," he said. "Creating recognisable, componentised processes that work across the portfolio means we can quickly apply capabilities to new products or services. When onboarding and training resellers we can reduce the time for them to adopt new parts of the portfolio as all interactions and applications have a familiar functionality and flow. That means our partners can focus on their knowledge of the product rather than the systems that support them."

The transformation programme proves that automation is a benefit for everyone operating in the value chain, believes Pert. "As an industry we are all being driven to find new ways of delivering better returns in the face of fierce competition," he explained. "We believe that creating capabilities that drive convenience adds value, and that belief is underpinned by the partners who are working with us on trials of new functionality like Business Zone. A collaborative creation of tools means we have more confidence that we are delivering where it matters most for the customer."

Pert has a strong background in digital transformation and customer experience. Prior to joining BT he ran online transformation and multichannel projects for one of the big supermarkets and also for a global education business. "The role in BT Wholesale was interesting for me as it was my first real foray into a B2B business, and brought a host of new challenges when thinking about how to present an experience via digital tools," added Pert. "I hope one of the perspectives that I and the rest of the team bring to the business is insight into how we all use the web in our daily lives, and an ambition to translate some of those familiar experiences into a business environment to deliver simplicity.

"Understanding the complexity of the services that we support in telecoms is critical, but it's also vital to be able to step away from that detail at times and ask what the ideal customer or user experience would be, and then drive the necessary process change to achieve that. This is what we've done with Business Zone by taking literally hundreds of data points about service and presenting them in a way that is easy to digest at a summary level, and also easy to drill down into the detail where needed."

On taking his new role last summer Pert was impressed by the sheer breadth of the sector covering legacy through to next generation products, but the opportunity to deliver better service across the piece was obvious. "Given that many of the more technical aspects of delivery were never going to be fixed overnight we focused our efforts initially on areas like content quality to ensure that we were auditing and updating on a more regular basis," he said. "This is particularly challenging in a regulated environment where presentation and availability of certain information is an absolute necessity.

"We're now helping resellers by focusing on the integrated services at the forefront of our programme. The new ordering experience we've built for the Centrex product launched this quarter was developed in parallel with the service design. This approach ensures that we provide a highly intuitive experience for a complex set of services spanning connectivity, sites, users and software access right through to hardware.

"Whereas previously all of the elements of the service would have been procured separately they are now integrated into a single experience, removing long lead times and multiple touches to place an order. The increasing use of machine-to-machine transactions also offers resellers the opportunity to group services together on their own portal and place requests back in to us without any manual intervention."

Pert expects to see greater demand for more complex bundled solutions providing connectivity and over-the-top services that manifest themselves quite differently from a customer perspective, versus stand-alone services when it comes to experiences like billing, diagnostics, configuration and management. "The increasing availability of data and analytics will also allow us to give better, more proactive insights into how networks are operating and better information on service issues," he added.

The most significant trends on a market level are the move to the next generation of products that offer the ability to manage and configure continuously throughout the contract, believes Pert. "Now we have the opportunity to interact more frequently we should look at where that allows us to add value," he commented. "Our watchwords are 'simplicity, speed and engagement'. Get those three things right and you have an experience and a business that is not only dependable as a partner but also more valuable.

"As an industry we need to find ways to put the customer first in processes like switching, but that's often contradictory to commercial interests. Having said that, switching is just a symptom of not making a customer proposition compelling enough to be really sticky which doesn't always mean price. Service and support are increasingly the factors that will bind customers to you."

But the speed of change could threaten an organisation's ability to deliver impeccable service over the long-term unless real reform is undertaken with both eyes fixed beyond the horizon. So Pert has defined a proper balance of foresight and strategy to ensure that BT Wholesale remains ahead of the game. "The demand and needs of customers are changing so fast through our experience of software defined networks and cloud services that we need to be aiming far in front of the target in order to keep up," he said.

"In the short-term we'll continue to roll out Business Zone to more customers and also increase the breadth of products that are available through the portal. I also want to focus on some of the non-transactional aspects of our online presence to provide more insight and inspiration, and even the opportunity to collaborate across the industry."

There was a time when SAS Global Communications CEO Charles Davis planned the construction of buildings. Now he is the architect of a channel growth story built on the principles of strategic draftsmanship aligned to a clear vision of what the market really wants.

Things go to plan due to good planning, a policy that Davis has stuck to throughout his career. Perhaps this discipline was instilled during his early days operating as an architect. He then became an IT systems manager, which in turn led to the post of EMEA IT Manager for an international design firm. "Back in the early 90s we were at the vanguard of 3D modelling with live building databases and global team collaboration, all over an international network of 64k kilostream circuits using Bay Networks routers," said Davis. "SAS was my supplier when we moved to Novell servers and Microsoft servers and desktops, and it seemed to be the right time to change career."

SAS is in its 25th year of trading and employs over 145 people with less than two per cent staff turnover. Revenues of £18 million are for the most part attributed to professional and managed services. By design, the firm has limited hardware and software revenues, with 85 per cent of revenues recurring while 70 per cent comes from contracted multi-year managed service contracts. SAS operates to a five year business plan and is currently in the second year of its third planning phase. "The ultimate goal is to move from £15 million to £30 million in revenue of professional and managed services," added Davis. "By that time SAS should be influencing over £200 million of voice, data and hardware sales."

SAS designs, builds, manages and supports converged IP networks and applications for on-premises and cloud-based computing. Its target markets cover all verticals and the high end SME market (what SAS calls corporate mid-market) as well as low end enterprise. The business is split 50 per cent direct and 50 per cent via partners. SAS has helped its partners sell over £120 million of voice, data and hardware revenues with a high level of customer satisfaction that ensures long-term revenues.

The company has been solution centric since 2001 (rather than product focused) and has no product silos to break down and rebuild. It monitors and manages more than 210 customer networks, including 16,000 devices and 10,000 data circuits across 52 countries. Perhaps the biggest changes the company has undertaken is its transition to managing the application path from end user to data centre. To do this SAS has broadened its managed network services capability by adding managed platform and managed application services to name but two. "The strategy is to bridge the gap between the application and network and ensure that all the interdependencies - which are usually overlooked - are monitored and addressed so that our clients' operations run optimally around the clock," said Davis.

"Put another way, we aim to help optimise the end user experience of business critical applications by drilling into the three overlapping areas of network, platform and application performance. We believe it's too easy to blame the network for poor user experience, and that's been the de facto tendency for too long. Our aim is to pinpoint performance issues across the full application path rather than engage in a guessing game or defaulting to a soft target."

Alongside this, SAS has also extended its managed network service to include hybrid networking that includes fixed line public and private networking, as well as medium-to-high bandwidth mobile and satellite networking. This has been a well received service. "Hybrid networking is really taking a hold with clients as they start to adopt cloud services in greater volumes," said Davis. "The growth is predominantly MS Office 365 and MS Azure, as well as VDI from Colt. Clients have started to review their business application strategies and the IP infrastructure to deliver a wide range of applications, so we have to be even more technically, geographically and commercially flexible while keeping access and data secure.

"We are also seeing a greater demand for 10Mb plus mobile data services outside the footprint of the major fixed line networks, as well as a growing requirement for vehicular solutions especially in construction, utilities, highways and transportation sectors. Although vehicular connectivity solutions are still evolving, we're engaged with some fantastic trials and have had some great success already deploying solutions in ambulances, buses through to ubiquitous white vans supporting engineering and public sector services."

There have been three major turning points for SAS. The first was partnering with BT Business back in 1998 when ISDN data networking was the WAN of choice and ISDN dial up Internet access was all the rage. The second was the strategic decision to leave hardware and software sales behind in 2001 and focus on professional and managed services. The third, in 2005, was investing over £10 million in its 24x7 network operations centre over the last few years. "The transition has been a hard slog but has proven a far more resilient business model," commented Davis. "Recurring revenues are now at 85 per cent per annum."

He sees a huge £50 billion-plus opportunity in SME IT services, especially the upper middle market of 500-1,000 staff. This represents around 8,000 prospective clients. "Managed IT services is the high growth area of

the market," added Davis. "There are no major market players, even BT has only a two per cent share. Unlike many of our competitors, we have not taken a 'build it and they will come' type approach. We don't own our own nationwide network ring, we don't own our own data centres, we don't own a plethora of application platforms. What we do is work strategically with industry leaders and build best in class solutions which we then monitor end-to-end (the full application path) 24 hours a day, every day."

Another key point in SAS's strategy is to leverage its agility and technical expertise. "We already have a strong leaning towards predictive (as opposed to proactive) monitoring and reporting and we will be investing further in our systems and resource to support this differentiator," said Davis. "SAS is an insurgent, delivering the right service at the right cost. Enterprise players cannot scale down to this model and SME players are hard pushed to find the investment needed to build this capability."

A current priority is to continue growing profitably at 15 per cent per annum while remaining focused on high annuity revenues afforded by the managed service revenue model. "We are looking for complementary managed IT services businesses to add to the SAS portfolio, but avoiding the me-too plays of managed voice, UC and IAAS," commented Davis. "These are areas where competition is high and are moving to a low margin commodity play. The main factor is to always be customer centric with the ability to understand how we can add real value to a customer and ensure that we do not stray into areas that add little value. SAS will only sell a client a service where our professional and managed services add value, otherwise you are just participating in a price conversation."

According to Davis it is time to change the industry's lack lustre reputation and stop carriers competing to be the 'best of a bad bunch' via proper long-term planning. "There is so much focus on purely 12 month business plans that no one has the time nor stomach to make the required transformation," stated Davis. "At present the telecoms industry is in a continued slow and painful decline that takes customer service to new unprecedented lows.

"There is too much hype in our industry about new technologies which go on to deliver a fraction of the benefits originally put forward. Manufacturers and carriers, through commoditisation of their services, have lost their customer focus and what they want to say does not resonate with their intended customers. The big medium term risk for telecoms is the rise of knowledge workers and the demand for management information. Big data is moving decision making power away from the IT department and moving it to the business analysts. IT staff may lose their decision making power as their role will solely be to provide the correct infrastructure."

Although network service provider ICUK has doubled in size over the past two years the business still remains lean and profitable due to efficiencies delivered by a Back to Basics philosophy employed by Managing Director Paul Barnett.

Back to Basics is the internal programme ICUK has adopted this year to understand and implement the changes its customers want from the company's existing systems before it focuses on new projects. The strategy emerged from the complications ICUK once experienced as a reseller, as Barnett explained. "We used to be a channel reseller and many of our suppliers are now our competition. The experiences we had using their platforms and processes led us quite early on to make the decision that to create what we wanted, to correct the issues we witnessed, we needed to develop our own.

"In going it alone it would have been very easy for us to buy off-the-shelf software solutions for our entire product range, but with each choice will come limitations and a roadmap that you can't influence. Our choice to develop in-house has never been regretted and increasingly has become the biggest strength of ICUK that allows us to stand out in the channel. It's never easy, especially with a portfolio covering web hosting, broadband and telephony."

Under the edict, Barnett has ordered a complete refresh of the company's current systems and solutions before contemplating new product launches. This has involved clearing down bug lists, reviewing customer suggestions and implementing change for a better and more automated platform across all three core parts of ICUK's business.

"With in excess of 600 channel resellers it's all too easy for us to take a view that we should rally to extend our portfolio, even if it means products sit outside our direct influence," added Barnett. "This could see ICUK add mobile solutions, cloud hosting, payments, VoIP and even hardware services. However, in diversifying without clearing down to-do-lists on the existing platform we run the risk of falling foul of what so many of our former channel suppliers did in the past when we were reselling, and not actually delivering what the customer wanted. You race ahead onto a distraction without ultimately finishing off what you started.

"We are looking to perfect our existing portfolio. If we succeed, we not only have a strong marketing case with a plateau of features, but we have an existing channel that is satisfied they have picked wisely and have even greater confidence in their sales and support approaches with clients."

Barnett believes resellers will appreciate ICUK's ethos that dispenses with glory hunting sales people and account managers and focuses on technologically driven support with 'Formula 1' race team standards. "By returning to basics and analysing how we and resellers operate we have been keen to hand over more control, build-in greater levels of automation and streamline processes as much as possible," he added. "Repeat issues need better and slicker responses from us by building on the inherent experience we have internally. In doing so we can better serve our channel partners and their clients.

"If you look at a Formula 1 team and compare their pit stop times from the 90s to the modern era, little-by-little processes have evolved and what may have been a problem in the past aren't an issue now. Evolution comes from the procedures undertaken and in the methodology of tools used.

"We have always prided ourselves on the simplicity of our software creations. In addition, we have a front line support team trained and empowered to easily complete the task of sales and account management. If we can ensure that the software works how our clients want to operate, empowers them to act without our influence - and should human interaction be required and the response is educated and polished - we have evolved for the better."

Barnett is convinced channel partners will appreciate ICUK's no nonsense, less than flamboyant approach and if he is given a geek badge he'll wear it with pride. "When was the last time you heard a network provider promote how exceptional their support processes are, and back it up, or their latest control panel developments? Think of us as geeks if you like, but we're in a technologically driven industry and isn't that the home of the geek? We like to focus on support and development to deliver a premium service.

"Back to Basics is designed to give resellers confidence. Confidence in what they are selling, belief in who they are partnering with, and knowing what to do should the worst occur are just as important as competitive pricing. In this current channel environment that can often be forgotten or diluted.

"We suggest resellers ask themselves a simple question: Does their channel provider have a larger sales force than their support and development operation? The answer to this can be very telling. We trust our partners, we empower them, and in return even the smallest partners on our books are turning up some fantastic contracts with some of the world's largest companies."