Comms Dealer

Pan-European cloud managed services firm Claranet has received an £80m investment from French asset management firm Tikehau Capital in return for a minority stake in the expanding company.

Claranet has 1,300 employees and operates in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Netherlands. It also recently entered the Brazilian market.

The investment follows the firm's move in February to set up Claranet Italy in response to growing demand for managed public cloud solutions in the Italian market.

The new entity based in Milan focuses solely on public cloud services working with partners including Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Also in February, Claranet acquired Dutch IT services provider Rely which has a leading position within the Dutch notarial sector, offering its clients a range of IT infrastructure services, including public and private cloud solutions and application management services.

SSE Enterprise Telecoms is to extend its network footprint by unbundling an additional 40 BT exchanges in 'prime' business areas around the UK with high performance Ethernet services.

SSE Enterprise Telecoms has also been confirmed as one of a small number of service providers in BT Openreach's recently announced Dark Fibre Access trial.

Subject to the satisfactory outcome of this trial, SSE Enterprise Telecoms will use the newly regulated dark fibre services to provide connectivity to the 40 new exchanges.

This will be the third phase of the network expansion programme SSE Enterprise Telecoms dubbed Project Edge and will bring the total number of exchanges served by its national fibre optic network to 140.

The total number of postcodes in prime business areas that are served by the full Edge service will now increase to more than 300,000.

The Project Edge footprint is further extended by SSE Enterprise Telecoms' Edge Plus service, which provides its customers with access to the Ethernet services of six other suppliers across the breadth of the UK.

The 40 new exchanges, as well as all of the existing Edge 1, Edge 2 and Edge Plus sites, will be available to quote and order via SSE Enterprise Telecoms' online price comparison engine, LIVEQUOTE.

The 40 exchanges will be unbundled during the course of the next nine months and will be named in batches as they come on-net.

Colin Sempill, Managing Director of SSE Enterprise Telecoms, said: "We understand that to function in today's economy businesses need reliable, high capacity connectivity in all corners of the UK. It is through detailed analysis of LIVEQUOTE data as well as ongoing dialogue with direct customers and service providers,that we have selected these additional exchanges to which we will expand our network."

Vodafone's annual loss of 6.1bn euros (£5.2bn) is largely down to the sliding value of its Indian business, with the operator writing down the value of its Indian unit by 3.7bn euros following a price war.

Matthew Kendall, Telecoms Analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, observed: "Vodafone's results are a measure of just how cut-throat the Indian mobile market is at the moment.

"The low-price offers from new market entrant Reliance Jio have completely shaken the market and operators are struggling to compete."

In the UK last year Vodafone was hit by a £4.6m fine for misselling and poor handling of complaints.

A new report by CompTIA has re-confirmed the influence of cross-company execs in the ICT buying process.

"CIOs and information technology (IT) teams remain involved in the process, as their expertise and experience is valued," said Carolyn April, senior director, industry analysis, CompTIA.

"But business lines are clearly flexing their muscles. It's another strong signal that technology has shifted from a supporting function for business to a strategic asset."

Among the organisations surveyed for the CompTIA report 45% said that ideas about technology come from different areas of the organisation; and 36% said more executives are involved in the decision making.

More than half of respondents used business unit budget to pay for technology purchases in the last year.

Lines of business are also staffing their departments with technology-oriented job roles, from data scientists and business analysts to software developers and social media managers.

CompTIA says this shift is impacting the IT channel - vendors, distributors and solution providers.

"The amount of greenfield, untapped space for business is huge," added April. "But lines of business have little knowledge or interaction with the channel. It's incumbent on the channel to get their faces in front of line of business leaders."

"They need to speak the language of business because this new generation of buyers doesn't want to hear about the technical implications of their purchases.

"Channel partners need to position themselves as consultants and service providers who can help customers make informed decisions about what they buy."

ScanSource Imago has signed a distribution agreement with Vaddio, a pan-tilt-zoom camera, AV and VC manufacturer.

The new deal will enable ScanSource Imago to meet increasing demands from the reseller channel for flexible 'huddle room' solutions supported by Vaddio's video conferencing products.

ScanSource Imago will be providing resellers with Vaddio's PTZ cameras for conferencing, lecture capture and general AV, as well as its enterprise video collaboration and bridging systems.

ScanSource Imago will also deliver services and support including education and training, technical and marketing support.

"Vaddio's solutions present additional opportunities for our reseller partners," said Phil Boyd, VP of Merchandising, ScanSource Imago. "There is particular interest in huddle space technology."

Volume sales of PCs (desktops, notebooks, workstations) through Western Europe's largest distributors continued to decline at -2.4% in Q1 2017 compared to the same period one year ago.

Revenues, however, increased +8.3% due to a shift in sales to higher value products, according to latest data published by Context, the market research company.

This was most noticeable in the UK where a 10% drop in sales was translated into a 14.6% rise in revenue in local currency.

"Revenue growth was driven by a significant rise in distributors' average sell prices for the quarter", said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at Context. "Across the entire Western European region, average selling prices were up by +11% to €553 compared to Q1 2016. Across just the eurozone countries, ASPs for the quarter rose +7.3% to €535. "

Context says that average selling prices in the PC segment have been on the rise since Q3 2016, driven by currency fluctuations, the effects of recent component shortages on pricing, and by a unit-mix shift to higher value products such as gaming systems in the consumer segment and powerful high-end notebooks in the commercial sector.

Pennine has achieved Elite Specialist and Platinum Partner status under Motorola Solution's new PartnerEmpower programme.

The accreditations are the highest achievable under the global two-way radio and communication solutions manufacturer's reseller programme.

"That we have secured top tier status on both revenue and expertise parameters speaks volumes about our standing in the market," said Pennine's Sales Director, Steve Watts.

"Crucially, these accreditations give Pennine Radio staff access to the widest range of Motorola sales, technical and training awards. Being an Elite Specialist also secures higher profile positioning in the Partner Finder tool Motorola promotes to organisations seeking its solutions."

Cloud security company Zscaler has appointed Jamie Farrelly as EMEA Channel Director. He brings over 15 years experience in building channel partnerships.

"Jamie's expertise and experience is exactly what we need to accelerate our channel growth and expand awareness around our Zscaler cloud security platform," said Matt Piercy, VP and GM EMEA at Zscaler.

"The old way of stacking up security appliances in the data centre and creating a moat is no longer effective to protect today's agile business. Digital transformation has security at the very heart of it."

Exclusive Group's Cloud First strategy has a new man at the helm, Patrick van Arendonk, who brings almost 30 years experience and joins from Exclusive Networks Netherlands where he held positions including General Manager and Director of Business Development.

Prior to this he was founder of VADition Benelux (acquired by Exclusive Group in 2011) and has also worked in senior sales roles at Juniper, F5 and Cisco, among others.

"It's time for some blue sky thinking now that the cloud consumption model is beginning to become more relevant," said Barrie Desmond, COO of Exclusive Group.

"The Cloud First initiative is our way of helping us, our vendors and reseller partners understand their relevance in this journey and get them to put cloud at the forefront of their proposals and strategic mindset.

"Cloud First means always thinking cloud, something we've done ever since the launch of BigTec four years ago. And to underline the significance we have appointed Patrick as our envoy to spread the message and activate new, practical programmes across all divisions of Exclusive Group."

Arendonk, Director of Cloud First, commented: "The traditional on-premise hardware-based markets for cybersecurity and infrastructure are still growing. But the private, public and hybrid cloud alternatives are growing 10 times faster. The opportunities for partners are huge but only if they take some steps to evolve."

Excell Group has acquired IT and Apple support company MacSeven Consultants adding over £2m turnover to the bottom line.

MacSeven's main service offering is Apple Mac computer support. It also offers PC support and project work.

MacSeven's team of seven is led by directors Michael Humphreys and Naveen Nahar. Their operational activities will remain autonomous post-acquisition and they will continue to be the point of contact for their existing customer support.

The acquisition follows last year's purchase of City Audio Visual Services which strengthened Excell's strategy of horizontal and vertical integration.

Excel said this latest acquisition is particularly relevant for the 6,000-plus customers in Excell-enabled business centres, many of whom use the Apple Mac OS and devices.

Finance Director Edward Pettit said: "There are multiple benefits here: Excell's customers can access expert Mac services and support, and MacSeven's customers can now take advantage of a range of telephony, network, comms and business resilience services. It's diversified our product suite further."

Naveen Nahar, co-Director of MacSeven, added: "Becoming part of Excell Group marks the beginning of an exciting time for both teams. With a 25 year pedigree and consistent growth, Excell will allow us to continue refining our expertise and resource, while significantly growing our offering."

Excell Group celebrates 25 years in business this year and is intensifying its activity with an acquisition fund of millions.