Comms Dealer

After three decades in the channel Oak has positioned itself as the prominent provider of call logging and call recording solutions for resellers serving SME customers, but the company is now expanding into the mid-market with what Joint CEO Philip Reynolds describes as 'the big one'.

In October Oak will be unveiling version two of its Evolve solution to resellers across the UK which Reynolds believes represents the zenith of Oak's £1 million software development programme. "This is the biggest software launch in Oak's 30 year history," he said. "We have never been more focused and more excited about any product we've developed, even more than our multi-award winning RecordX.

"I have been writing call management software since 1985, but this one's a bit special. All of my knowledge gained from writing software used by millions of end users across the globe combined with my son David's in depth technical skills has created something that will have an impact on the telecoms world for many years to come. This is the big one."

Reynolds says Evolve is a new real-time product using the latest technologies in all areas. "It has a fully web-based and mobile front-end and a sophisticated back-end that sits on a Windows platform," he explained. "It can process millions of calls instantly with its advanced database indexing and it uses a range of CTI connections for real-time call handling and recording. It's secure and uses a powerful policy system to manage access to all parts of Evolve. Yet it still remains user-friendly due in part to having dedicated user experience designers as part of the Evolve development team. With a team approaching ten developers on Evolve we also see further rapid development to meet all future needs of our reseller partners."

Having served the SME reseller market for so long the 'Evolution' into the mid-market and contact centre business sectors could be seen as risky, but Reynolds says Oak is simply responding to channel change. "It's all been driven by the fact that we sell through resellers and resellers have been predominantly SME which is no longer the case," said Reynolds.

"Switch manufacturers now offer solutions that don't stop at 20, 50 or 100 extensions but expand to 500 to 1,000 extensions and beyond on the same platform. The knowledge and skill set needed to sell and support the 50 extension solution has now become transferable to much larger opportunities. We want to highlight that our solutions are also expandable in the same way, not just that they can record or report on larger or more sophisticated solutions, but that they have been enhanced to cater for the new demands."

Reynolds believes channel partners may still regard Oak and its solutions as SME centric, and while Oak will continue to serve this sector he is keen to widen reseller thinking about his company's solutions. "Of course we want to continue to be perceived as SME because having a large number of small sales every month is a great business model, but we want to highlight that the regular mid-market opportunities can also now be fully addressed by Oak," he stated.

Oak's Evolve solution started life as a complex call centre management solution for the Avaya IP Office. "It's positioning was almost self-determined," commented Reynolds. "We've taken that to the next level by adding not just call centre functionality but more sophisticated options for real-time business functionality. It was initially designed to address the needs of the call centre market, but it quickly became apparent that it could also handle larger more complex real-time business opportunities.

"In version 2.0 we've added advanced real-time call recording functionality, drill down cradle-to-grave reporting, a powerful dashboard, a real-time wallboard and real-time fraud detection. In essence, we've added advanced functionality to address the business market."

Oak is planning a UK-wide roadshow to launch Evolve 2.0 to current partners and, Reynolds hopes, new resellers targeting the contact centre and mid-sized business sectors. "We always aim to upskill our current partners as well as look for other partners who might be vertical market focused," he commented. "We're planning a roadshow across the UK to promote both the Evolve Business Edition as well as the Call Centre Edition. This will give all our reseller partners the chance to see the product first hand. If we can attract a few new resellers along the way that would be great."

Reynolds says individual Oak account managers and specialist technical support people will be on hand to assist both the Oak sales team and its resellers in driving the more complex mid-market opportunities which he believes are growing fast.

"We see a growing demand for larger bespoke call recording solutions which is a perfect fit for Evolve 2.0 and our resellers," he added. "If an end user opportunity needs speech analytics, quality management, multi-platform playback, mobile access, enhanced security, scalability, PCI compliance and a state of the art user experience then Evolve meets these demands and more.

"The call centre and real-time reporting functionality will also present our resellers with high value sales opportunities. End users are looking for solutions that integrate with their business and they are prepared to pay top prices to get them. A fully integrated business solution saves so much time, and allows a business to attract and process more sales and provide a better service to its customers. The return on investment is always assured."

Building sites were once the stomping ground for Darren Boyce, CEO of Proximity Communications, so it's no surprise that he's laid firm foundations for one of the comms industry's highest risers.

Scroll down Boyce' CV and you'll look back to a time when he made a living out of tree surgery, hod carrying and driving a JCB before an opportunity arose to join a cabling company 21 years ago. He soon found his feet and moved into a sales role, and after a run of healthy deal wins he was approached by LANBase to build up its sales operation. More success followed and a place in the management team beckoned ahead of a promotion to Sales Director. "It was during this role that I learnt a lot about managing a mixed but successful team of sales, project management and pre-sales," recalled Boyce. "After growing the business from inception to £25 million in seven years we sold the organisation to a listed company that was later acquired by a leading Tier 1 telco in 2000."

This experience infused Boyce with enough confidence to take the plunge and start his own business. Proximity Communications was created in 2009 following a merger between Applinet and the Unified Group. Boyce was Managing Director of Applinet at the time, and in a joint arrangement with the Managing Director of Unified Group, Michael Lloyd, the pair bought the two companies together. Boyce then took the role of Group CEO while Lloyd assumed the MD position.

"It was unusual at the time for close competitors to merge, but Applinet and Unified Group shared many cultural similarities and both teams were striving towards the same goals, so it made perfect sense," said Boyce. "The merger allowed the company to provide nationwide coverage to more than 200 loyal, growing customers. Combined, the two companies also had a turnover of well over £10 million and a far more comprehensive portfolio."

Through keeping a sharp focus on its core strengths and building an effective team Proximity has gone from strength to strength over the past three years, with EBITDA rising rapidly over this period. The company closed FY2013 with £3.8 million in the bank and forecasts this year point towards 25 per cent growth. This success has resulted in Proximity being listed in the London Stock Exchange: 1,000 Companies to Inspire Britain and the Thames Valley Top 250 Companies.

Proximity caters for small SMEs and enterprises, tailoring solutions as required while not over promising or under delivering. "Our medium and long-term ambition is to keep striving for success as we introduce new skills and services to our client and partner base," added Boyce. "We aim to be seen as an extension of their team and not just another supplier."

A major challenge for the entire industry is the lack of talented resource available, a point on which Proximity has no immunity. "Five to ten years ago the market overflowed with very capable people who were able to make a great living in the IT sector," commented Boyce. "Now, most of those people are either retired, running their own business or have taken some of the industry's most prestigious roles. I believe we've failed in bringing in new talent from the next generation to fill up the positions that have become vacant. We could learn a lot from the Premiership where many of the most successful football teams have a youth programme and academy that allows them to develop and nurture the stars of tomorrow."

Despite the recruitment headache, last year proved to be Proximity's most successful in terms of new business secured, both in contract value and client numbers. The company came out of 2013 debt free with a 21 per cent rise in net profits. And having secured talented people into its management team, Proximity is able to harness their diligence and passion on its organic growth journey. "We're also looking at acquiring, where the skills that we believe are required can maximise the accounts we have today as well as attract new ones tomorrow," added Boyce. "Finding the right skill sets, areas of interest and the size of organisation that we're comfortable with will take some time and won't happen overnight. However, it will be an interesting journey and as the merger has demonstrated, we have the necessary experience to get the best out of bringing organisations into the Group."

To prove the point Boyce cited a milestone deal win that he believes puts Proximity firmly on the map. "In February this year, against all the odds, our team was awarded the contract to help a major LSE business move its premises," he enthused. "This proves Proximity has some of the best people the industry has to offer. When you start a company you have an idea of what it will hopefully become, and this February my vision became a reality. There's something special in that. That was a defining moment for me.

"My biggest achievement was also realising that there are great talents out there who can care about the business as much as I do. Also, me learning to let them get on with it, without getting in their way, is a massive achievement. It's hard to let go when it's been your baby for the last 10 years."

Having learnt these lessons, hindsight demonstrates that there are a number of things Boyce would have done differently. "A big regret is not having enough faith in myself earlier," he explained. "If I could go back I would definitely start my own business much sooner because if you believe in what you're doing and in yourself anything is achievable. Another regret is not employing the calibre of people I now have from the very start of the business. It's a fact that finding a good team and getting them to work as a team are two very different challenges. But now we've ticked both of those boxes."

As well as building a winning team, having a clear view of where Proximity performs best and playing to those strengths is also a priority. "It's not rocket science to understand what you are good at but it is amazing how many successful companies are swayed by the market and diversify significantly, too quickly, only to fail and then revert back to their core competency," commented Boyce. "Like a house, a company must be built on sound foundations and then be erected brick by brick."

Boyce has also adopted a step-by-step approach to developments in the market such as virtualisation, public and private cloud. He believes it is difficult to make money from the cloud unless the infrastructure is owned and funds are available to invest over a long period before getting the returns. "That said, all the typical topics of voice and data infrastructure, be it on-premise or a hybrid of both physical and virtual solutions, are still very much happening," he added. " We are watching with interest the development of some platforms that will complement, not replace, our current business. When we feel it's right for the enterprise client, we will push ahead with gusto to ensure we deliver these requirements for our customers."

Boyce urges his counterparts to continue focusing on client needs and to do so with the right level of structure. "As time moves on, VARs and SIs will be expected to provide services that clients truly recognise," he commented. "It's the value added extras we do as part of a package that the client is really wanting to pay for. I have worked in a number of large organisations and one in particular had its face to the boss and its backside to the client. Needless to say the company never made it through, even though it was successful at the time."

This year Comms Vision explores the impact of the Digital revolution and how it is transforming the comms channel. Such 'Change is Good', writes Content Director John Chapman, who outlines the many ways in which this industry-leading event has tracked change, and helped delegates to chart a new course for their businesses through strategic change management.

In the mid 1980s I attended a week-long intensive management training course delivered by Price Waterhouse, and I remember when completing the course questionnaire about how useful the course had been, writing down 'You allocated only half an hour on Wednesday afternoon to change management. Change Management is all I ever do!'. For anybody in the comms channel, over the last few years this cry has echoed a hundredfold.

But that has not always been the case. When we were debating the idea of Comms Vision and whether the comms channel would be interested in an event that looked to the future and the likely changes afoot, we decided to do some intensive research on the channel and its vendors and service providers. The feedback we got was not encouraging.

The main comment was that little had changed over the last 15 years and that any change would happen over the long-term with a slow evolution. Vendors and service providers however were keen on such an event as they saw massive change coming and felt the channel to be totally unprepared for the level and speed of change. Thus Comms Vision was born.

We were clear from the very start that Comms Vision was not about disseminating tactical product knowledge and providing a shop window for new products as most industry events are. With a target delegate audience of channel CEOs and senior directors we deliberately separated the content into open sessions with a focus on the future and market evolution, with business focused Boardroom style sessions and one-to-one meetings where sponsors and delegates could get down to building relationships at the highest level. The formulae has stood the test of time as we are now in our ninth year and the feedback from delegates and sponsors gets better each year.

Such positive feedback affirmed that the future of Comms Vision was not going to be just about the content and the business networking, it was going to be about helping delegates understand that change is good and by first changing their thinking they could plot a successful future without endangering their existing business.

It was this change in thinking that was going to be the key: 'The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking', said Albert Einstein. This revelation helped us structure the content over the years adding in many external speakers who could stretch the way delegates think and see their challenges among a much broader evolving business world.

Over the years we have covered many technology changes - the evolution from the traditional TDM-based PBX through IP Telephony, virtualised architectures, hosted telephony and cloud-based UC. We have charted the move to a software led world through soft PBXs, integrated CRM applications, mobile and M2M applications, Big Data analytics and social collaboration.

Most importantly through presentations and debate we addressed how the channel needed to evolve their businesses not only to survive but to grow and develop to be leaders of the future. Through sessions on managed services, creating a value chain and competitive advantage to understanding business transformation and true customer satisfaction and experience, Comms Vision has helped change the thinking of some of the UK's finest business minds. The results of which can be seen by the make-up of delegates over the last few years.

Quite a few of the delegates from the first few years are no longer in the business having chosen to sell their company or their customer bases, preferring to take early retirement rather than tackle the enormous changes they could see coming. We have also seen many mergers and acquisitions as delegates got together over Comms Vision and decided to combine their skills and knowledge to give themselves a better fighting chance in this new comms world.

Most intriguing have been those organisations who have changed and evolved to meet the challenge. Some have done this through their own resources, taking time to develop new skills and expertise, others have gone with a big bang approach raising funds to create scale by acquiring skills and organisations and accelerating the pace of change.

For all these organisations the challenge has been huge not only in acquiring new technical and software skills but most importantly in developing sales organisations capable of talking to the new types of customers about business topics rather than just features and benefits.

Tony Parish, CEO of G3 Comms, offers an insight into the scale of this challenge: "In my years in comms, there have been in my view two or three waves of change in our industry - analogue to digital, digital to IP, now IP to SIP. The changes are becoming more complex and challenging to traditional comms businesses. In the past we have had to retain our people for the changes, this time I believe that we need to re-engineer our businesses altogether. On the back of a global financial crisis that has challenged our industry, we have had this radical change in the technology that we sell. These are testing times!"

Comms Vision may not be able to take the credit for the incredible change and prosperity of today's comms channel because what is needed to drive through change in any business is down to the bravery, enthusiasm and skill of the directors. However, I am confident that Comms Vision has had a great influence in changing the way business leaders now think about how to develop their businesses.

Stephen Dracup, Managing Director of Chess Telecom, commented: "Attendance at Comms Vision has always been valuable as it allows me to get to meet many of the key people and vendors in our space without having to visit them all separately. We have also found the guest speakers especially useful. Implementing some of the ideas discussed at Comms Vision has added value to our business.

"In particular, in 2012 we implemented energy and attitude scoring for all our people, revolutionising our recruitment and 121 processes. Last year, after the sessions on social communications, we rolled Yammer out to all our businesses significantly improving both internal communication and engagement."

Brendon Cross, Managing Director of Oxon-based STL Communications, is also an enthusiastic supporter of Comms Vision. "STL is a progressive, innovative and forward thinking communications services provider and over the years Comms Vision has had a major influence on many of the decisions we have made in the business," Cross commented. "Comms Vision has also provided confirmation that we are on the right track at STL, most notably with regard to SIP-ISDN replacement and hosted telephony, both of which are now the strongest growing areas of our business.

"STL enjoys long-term and mutually beneficial partnerships with all of our suppliers and some of these have come as a direct result of one-to-one or boardroom sessions at Gleneagles. Where there was already an existing relationship it will have been enhanced through interaction at Comms Vision."

Steve Niven, Director at Networks First, commented on what makes Comms Vision special for him. "I have always enjoyed the opportunity to attend Comms Vision as I know that I will have the opportunity to meet with likeminded people who share the same business interests," Niven explained. "I've found the key differentiator with this event is that developments within the channel are debated at a business level. The technology is still a part of this, but how the channel can address the needs of organisations at an operational level is key.

"With a 25 year history of working with the channel, Networks First has witnessed a changing scenery across both partners and vendors. With the rapid pace of adoption of new technologies being bi-directional, whereby those in the IT world need to keep pace, no longer does technology only infiltrate from the enterprise down. Employees are demanding working practices which reflect their use of technology outside the business arena. I'm looking forward to this year's event and the focus on the way UC&C is changing."

Moving forward, Comms Vision will keep to its 'Change is Good' mantra particularly this year as we explore how the confluence of new market forces and technologies are creating a whole new era of IT which will in turn bring new challenges and opportunities for the comms channel.

Under the theme of 'Digitalisation - driving new enterprise and industry business models', Comms Vision 2014 will attempt to clarify the major trends driving Digitalisation, what this means to the comms channel, how it is changing the way organisations will be purchasing UC&C solutions in the future, who will have control of the budgets, where UC&C fits within the wider hybrid IT world, and most importantly how to exploit the opportunity. We look forward to welcoming those with the vision to understand that 'Change is Good'.

To register your interest in attending the conference, please visit: www.commsvision.com

As I write at the start of September our vacancy board has pretty much the same jobs on it as six weeks ago, plus half as many again of new ones that have come in since. We bust our two month target in early July, but since then most companies have struggled to get much interest over the summer holidays, writes Clive Jefferys, JMA Network.

Many clients have called to say 'What am I doing wrong, why is no-one applying?', and I have reassured them it's nothing personal. We've had great weather and this did effect the candidate market, as when life is good and fun, most people put off hard decisions like moving job.

The good news (for recruitment) is that summer is over! The kids are glumly awaiting their return to school, but parents and hirers have much to celebrate!

September and October is the second peak in the recruitment year, and by the looks of it business will be brisk. Hirers are fully primed to make fast decisions as they need new people to start work as soon as possible. The opportunity loss of empty seats is costing companies too much, so we are now seeing much higher salary offers to attract the right people. Overall, business confidence is at its highest point for many, many years and in recruitment terms, this is a perfect seller's market.

So my message this month is aimed squarely at people who would like a new job. Stop liking, and get looking! You'll be amazed at the selection of great job opportunities open to you.

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: Everyone agrees that you need an online presence for your business, but what people can't agree on is what exactly you should expect from your website and what portion of your marketing budget you should spend on it.

When thinking about commissioning a new website you need to ask yourself several questions to shape the expectations you should have on how your website works for you, and therefore how much time and money you should invest in it.

Some companies with old websites have the attitude that there is no need for a new website as their current one brings in no new business and no significant number of visitors. This should come as no surprise if the pages have not been updated for the past year and the web address is not promoted on other forms of company communication. Websites do drive new business but the manner in which this is accomplished is bespoke to the requirements of a business.

What are the incentives to get people to visit? How will your customers and prospects benefit from visiting your site? B2B customers want to be educated and feel that your website is enriching their knowledge of the wider product set that you are offering. Repeat visits are ideal, so what can be posted regularly to encourage habitual visits? How will your company benefit from having increased traffic to your site and is it worth the time and effort?

Simply throwing money at PPC (pay per click) advertising will make your site more prominent. But if it is irrelevant and visitors accidentally visit your site there is little justification for the money spent. It is important that you attract the right visitors and once you have their attention think carefully about what and how you plan to present your corporate messaging to them.

Telcos need to better flaunt their ability to transport, collect and aggregate large amounts of information to grasp a bigger share of the rising machine-to-machine (M2M) opportunity, according to Ovum.

The latest forecast from the world's largest telecom analyst firm projects that the cellular M2M market will bring in a total of $252bn for the 2015-19 period, presenting an attractive revenue opportunity for operators that choose to invest in their existing capabilities.

Ovum's cellular M2M forecast foresees global connections growing 162% over the next five years to reach 530 million. Asia and Oceania will have the most connections (over 200 million by 2019), followed by Europe and the Americas. According to Ovum, operator revenue share of the total cellular M2M market stands to rise to US$25bn by 2019.

As of 2013 operator revenue was largely comprised of managed connectivity (43%) and network-level data transport (36%). However, with figures anticipating the largest revenue opportunity to be within other layers (integration is expected to account for almost 50% of total M2M revenue in 2019), operators need to look beyond connectivity to reap the bigger rewards.

"Over the past few years, as the hype around Internet of Things has taken off - driven by some wildly exaggerated forecasts - we've seen operators take a gentle approach to M2M.

Staying within their main expertise, most have taken on management of the connectivity layer, yet as conventional wisdom tells us, only minor returns will be made here," says Jamie Moss, senior analyst at Ovum.

"Instead, operators need to leverage their other capabilities, namely their ability to aggregate large amounts of data around their customers.

"We're seeing device and application management become the new focus in M2M, and the ability to collect vast amounts of data will be of considerable value. Data itself has intrinsic worth, but it is the business decisions made based on the aggregation and analysis of that data that are the greatest source of value for enterprises and their connected service provider partners."

As the M2M opportunity continues to develop, so will the business models that operators are adopting to gain a greater share of the revenue.

"Ovum's research into the cellular M2M market has highlighted five key models. Some operators are developing end-to-end services internally as an offshoot of their own supply chain needs. Others are crafting bespoke, end-to-end solutions for individual enterprise partners, although this remains the exception. An increasingly common strategy involves outsourcing to acquire M2M specialisation, which is being done in three ways.

"Some operators have acquired dedicated M2M service providers to own that intellectual property, resell those services into other markets and use the assets acquired to develop new services. Others have partnered with specialists from other markets, working in unison to deliver connected, value-added variants of existing services. Lastly, some operators have opted to license suites of third-party M2M services from aggregators.

"Ultimately M2M is all about the enterprise partner (not 'customer') of the operator. M2M is a market with unique dynamics, where the aim of the operator is to become embedded in the long-term business strategy of the enterprise, not to simply be their current service provider.

"In order for the M2M market to realise its potential, operators must educate enterprises in the utility that connectivity brings. Enterprises should never have to become experts in connectivity, however, as that knowledge is part and parcel of the managed service that the operator must provide for them."

Node4 has launched File Sync and Share, a cloud-based collaboration product that allows users to share and collaborate on content using cloud services.

Based on Node4's resilient N4Cloud platform, File Sync and Share is an alternative to consumer solutions such as Dropbox, Box and Google Drive.

A small software app can be installed by users on a variety of connected devices and synchronises automatically when files or folders are created or modified. This means an employee can create or receive a document on his/her desktop in the office and, using File Sync and Share, access it on a connected smartphone, tablet or laptop through the app.

The platform can be used to share files internally and externally and is centrally managed through a web-portal where administrators monitor access rights and permissions, giving businesses more control than many 'open' consumer applications.

Administrators can manage remotely time-limited projects, so an employee who has left the business or an external user who no longer needs access to information can have project files removed from their remote devices.

John Williams, Product Manager, Node4, said: "The increasing use of personal devices for work purposes has led to consumer sharing platforms such as Dropbox and Google Drive becoming popular with business users.

"For businesses, the issue is that it is difficult to control and monitor the use of such platforms and, ultimately, you don't know where your data actually is or what security measures are in place to protect it. File Sync and Share is a solution that provides SMEs with a secure and collaborative way of sharing potentially sensitive information.

"By using a solution based on N4Cloud, hosted in one of Node4's four state-of-the-art data centres, SMEs know exactly where their critical data is being stored and who has access to it. Node4's highly experienced technical team is also on-hand 24/7 to provide local support to businesses in the UK."

Exertis has expand its European footprint with the acquisition of CapTech Distribution AB, Sweden's largest independent technology distribution business.

The transaction is expected to complete during September 2014.

CapTech has a particularly strong market position in IT hardware and AV systems. CapTech partners with technology manufacturers and brand owners including Acer, Asus, BenQ, Dell, Microsoft, NEC and Samsung and sells to a very broad range of etail, retail and reseller customers.

Niall Ennis, Exertis Group Managing Director, said today: "The acquisition of CapTech represents an excellent strategic fit and is another significant step forward for Exertis following the rebranding of the business last year."

Daniel Johnsson, CapTech Managing Director, commented: "We believe our partnership with Exertis will enable the next phase of growth for our business, including an expansion of the business in the wider Nordic/Scandinavian region."

A survey of UK public sector professionals, commissioned by Six Degrees Group (6DG), has found that the majority (66%) of UK civil servants have no knowledge of the UK Government's G-Cloud initiative.

The survey reiterates the findings of a Freedom of Information Act conducted by 6DG at the end of 2013, which similarly revealed that the majority (76%) of local authorities and councils had no knowledge of how the G-Cloud framework could be used.

Of the 300 public sector authorities questioned, only 38 had used G-Cloud to procure their cloud services.

Campbell Williams, Group Strategy and Marketing Director at Six Degrees Group, said: "These statistics demonstrate that as we move towards the end of 2014, the government still needs to do a lot more to educate all public sector departments on G-Cloud.

"The initiative has the power to transform radically how authorities interact with cloud providers. However, as the findings from both surveys have shown, the public sector remains unaware of the many benefits that using the G-Cloud framework can provide. It's a framework designed specifically for the public sector, so it's essential that they know what it is and how it can benefit them."

The UK's alternative superfast network operator market looks buoyant with new investment flowing in from a variety of sources, and new relationships being built between network operators and service providers.

These are the findings from a new report reviewing the past six months in country's superfast broadband sector.

"There is a real buzz in UK superfast broadband with prospects looking good for several of the country's alternative network operators," said Annelise Berendt, Principal Associate at Point Topic.

"Although the period has been marked by final closure of one of the country's alternative network pioneers, Digital Region, several other altnets are proving themselves in it for the long haul, gaining financial backing to power expansion of their networks and develop scale in their relative niche markets. Some are also growing strategic relationships with other players that effectively bypass reliance on BT."

Operators attracting new investors in recent months include Ask4, CityFibre, Gigaclear and Hyperoptic. Urban-focused CityFibre plans to roll out 'Gigabit Cities' throughout the UK after an oversubscribed £30 million secondary fundraising was approved by its board on 9 June 2014.

This latest funding round added to £16.5 million the company raised at its IPO in January 2014. In May 2014 Darwin Private Equity agreed to buy a majority stake in student accommodation specialist Ask4 for £21.5 million.

The operator also provides FTTB services to residential apartments in Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Shipley. Residential gigabit specialist Hyperoptic's expansion beyond London into other cities as it secures more funding, is also big news for the altnet community.

Meanwhile, rural FTTP operator Gigaclear confirmed the successful completion of a new round of equity financing totalling £7.75 million in July 2014, designed to enable rollout of several additional new networks.

Also on the rural front, Call Flow Solutions is making its mark in Kent, widening coverage through both its own investment and via public funding. And community-grown venture, Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN), is gaining real ground with deployment in Lancashire speeding up as subscribers come online, easing cash flow as it works towards its coverage targets.

Moving into more remote areas, the Rural Community Broadband Fund (RCBF) in England and Community Broadband Scotland (CBS) appear to be making a difference with deployment now taking place in several communities leveraging their support.

In addition, there continues to be a mushrooming of small altnet deployments around the country including Internet Connections Ltd's deployment in Staffordshire and TripleConnect's in Cumbria.

"Some of these operators are proving themselves highly versatile with a number of companies active in a variety of deployments," says Berendt.

"Fibre Options is a prime example with its FTTP deployment in rural Gloucestershire, new-build home development near York, fibre provision in the RCBF-funded wireless project in Tove Valley, and a 16Gbps infrastructure build for the business community in London's Perseverance Works. ITS Technology Group and Keycom are other examples of players with deployments in a range of locations."

Relationship building between alternative network providers has also been a key feature of the past six months, with a number of smaller players using CityFibre's infrastructure - this includes players such as Ask4, Gradwell, Keycom and potentially Gigaclear.

ITS Technology Group and Fluidata are partnering to establish a wholesale network in London's Hammersmith and Fulham. And the deal involving CityFibre, Sky and TalkTalk to build a FTTP network in the City of York announced in April 2014, is part of a growing set of relationships involving infrastructure and service providers that sidestep BT.

"While the initiative does not make either service provider a permanent infrastructure player, it does signal a willingness to look at possibilities beyond the Openreach network," added Berendt.

"Indeed Sky is building other relationships - it has agreements with both GTC and seethelight, and is also trialing FTTP infrastructure in Hampshire with television solutions provider, Love Digital TV."