Comms Dealer

Westcon is running a series of roadshows in the north of England and Scotland from 11th September to 2nd October, offering demonstrations and presentations from its vendor partners with new product launches from Avaya, Audiocodes and Snom.

"Places at the roadshow are getting booked up fast," said John Richardson, UK Marketing Director, Westcon UCC.

"As Unified Communication and Collaboration solutions are increasingly becoming more complex and consist of multi-vendors, it is becoming more challenging for resellers to stay ahead of the game.

"This event is an opportunity for resellers to see how Westcon works with the 'best of breed' vendors and how we simplify deployments and add value."

Supporting vendors at the event include Polycom, Sonus, Plantronics, Extreme, Snom and Avaya.

Exertis Micro-P has secured an exclusive UK distribution deal for global technology smartphone brand Asus which is launching three new 3G devices into Britain (the ZenFone 4, ZenFone 5 and ZenFone 6). A 4G device is set to launch in September.

Further smartphones for the high-end segment will be available in the first quarter of 2015.

The deal builds on a long history of partnership between the two companies in other product areas including tablets, netbooks and desktops computers.

Asus Sales Director Steve Hope stated: "We are committed to building a strong mobile business and have a roadmap of future products planned.

"We entered the smartphone business with innovative high end products in the PadFone tablet-come-smartphone series. These products have now been accepted by the market, and so Asus has now reached the right time to begin selling mainstream models."

Asus released ZenFone 4, ZenFone 5 and ZenFone 6 into China and its home-island, Taiwan, at the beginning of the second quarter this year, where pre-orders outstripped supplies.

The planned European launch was delayed until now to allow production to catch up with consumer requirements.

ASUS Product Manager, Anand Unadkat, said that the successful launch of the company's smartphones in Asia has already bought the business' shipment targets for the year well into reach.

"We launched in India in July and within four days shipped 40,000 units and have shipped 200,000 ZenFones in Taiwan," said Unadkat. "Our devices are now available in Sweden where we launched last month, and as of today the UK, with the help of Exertis Micro-P."

Daisy founder and CEO Matt Riley (pictured) has made a tentative take-private approach for the business at 190p per share backed by investors Toscafund and Penta Capital. Philip Carse, Principal Analyst, Megabuyte, said: "One clue to what Daisy may seek to do if privately owned comes from the other UK comms holdings of its backers - Phoenix IT and Six Degrees. A combination of the three would create a £600m UK business comms and IT player, behind only BT and Vodafone/CWW."

Matt Riley has built Daisy into one of the larger independent B2B comms service providers in the UK through the initial reverse into FREEDOM4 (the ex-Pipex) in the Summer of 2009, associated with an £83m fund raise at 80p per share, and then 20-25 subsequent acquisitions. The share price fluctuated within a 90-110p range until early 2013, before rising in line with peer group multiples, reaching about 205p at the end of 2013. It fell back to just under 140p but has since recovered to 175p.

Carse added: "The announcement says that institutional and private equity investor Toscafund approached Daisy at the end of July on behalf of the consortium. Toscafund has been a long standing shareholder of Daisy, owning 28.5% (not much less than the maximum it can do without triggering a bid), whilst Matt Riley owns 23.0%. The third consortium member, Penta, is a private equity investor; its stake, if any, in Daisy is unclear.

"A 190p offer would value Daisy's equity at about £490m, giving an enterprise value of £600m, or about 10.3x current year consensus EBITDA. This is comfortably above the 6-9x of most of its UK B2B peers, though below Alternative Networks M&A-boosted 13.2x (though still 11.3x financial year 15)."

More analysis by Philip Carse, Principal Analyst, Megabuyte
The official motivation for the take private is unclear, but we believe this is certainly not the first time that Daisy has been subject to such an approach. Whilst Daisy's share price has slightly more than doubled over the last five years, it has lagged some peers, including Alternative Networks, whose shares have more than quadrupled over the same period and it may be that Matt Riley would prefer to drive the company through its next phase away from the glare of public markets.

The original expected exit to a larger UK strategic has yet to materialise, with two obvious buyers - Vodafone and CWW - combining in 2012, and a rumoured approach earlier this year from Virgin Media coming to nothing.

A clue to what Daisy may do as a private company comes from its private equity backers. Toscafund has amassed a similar 28.1% holding in Phoenix IT in recent times. Matt Riley has often spoken of his desire to create a substantial mid-market converged telecoms and IT player, and the acquisition of Phoenix would certainly accelerate that process, increasing Daisy's £360m revenues and £58m EBITDA run rate by £221m (61%) and £27m (47%).

Indeed, there were rumours circulating a view months ago that a Daisy/Phoenix merger was in the offing. A merger would undoubtedly unlock significant cost synergies and potentially help resurrect Phoenix's fortunes (Phoenix IT generated £50m of EBITDA back in the year to March 2011), and would probably not be that expensive given Phoenix's current 4.9x EBITDA valuation, but would involve the mother of all integration challenges.

Meanwhile, Penta is the backer of privately owned Six Degrees, having sold its previous telecoms venture - SpiriTel - to Daisy in November 2010. The SpiriTel management team has created Six Degrees into a much more data, connectivity and hosting-focused provider than SpiriTel, and would add some strong, complementary capabilities, and growth drivers, to Daisy. Estimated run rate revenues and EBITDA of £70m and £14m would add about 19% and 24% to Daisy.

A combined Daisy/Phoenix/Six Degrees would have revenues and EBITDA of £650m and £100m before synergies, similar to Virgin Media and behind only BT and Vodafone/CWW in the broader-based fixed and mobile UK business comms market. 

Nimans is urging more resellers to use leasing to take greater control of their customer bases.

"One of the most important areas that often gets overlooked is how leasing can help resellers lock-in their customers over a long period of time," said Head of Dealer Sales, Tom Maxwell.

"There's no worries about cash price discounts that can erode margins and they also have greater control over a customer where they can upgrade or add additional equipment further down the line."

Nimans has launched an educational marketing campaign to help resellers understand the 'hassle free' way they can use leasing to grow their businesses.

Maxwell added: "There are still a lot of resellers who view elements of leasing as complicated. They don't want to embrace it and only go after cash deals which very often ends up with a price discount and loss of margins. We offer a free lease desk which takes away all the pain of paperwork and liaising with different lenders etc.

"Many resellers are very good at selling leasing but others are a bit frightened of it, particularly at the end of the deal about who owns the kit. We want to soothe their fears and show them how to remain in control."

Logicalis has raised £25,600 for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity (GOSHCC) at its annual charity golf event held at Wentworth Golf Club in Surrey. Logicalis UK has now raised a total of over £50,000 for GOSHCC over the last 12 months through its fundraising events.

Mark Starkey, Managing Director of Logicalis UK, presented a cheque for £25,600 at a ceremony held at the Hospital on the 31st July.

He said: "We're constantly amazed and inspired by what Great Ormond Street Hospital does on a daily basis. It is critical service and industry do all they can to enable GOSH to maintain its first-rate reputation as a world leader in the care of young patients and their families."

Logicalis has also hosted a series of other fundraising events over the course of the last 12 months, including a successful Christmas event, which raised over £30,000 for the charity.

Catherine Sheard, Fundraising Executive at Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity, added, "We rely heavily on fundraisers to help us buy essential equipment, rebuild and refurbish our hospital sites and fund vital research."

Pictured (l-r): Mark Starkey, MD, Logicalis UK; Beth Morton, senior management team support, Logicalis UK; Pete Morgan, service delivery manager (and Logicalis Charity Committee), Logicalis UK; Catherine Sheard, fundraising executive, Community Fundraising Team, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity; David Turner, project manager (and Logicalis Charity Committee), Logicalis UK.

Daisy Wholesale has doubled its number of Hosted Voice Exchange (HVX) training courses in response to the channel's escalating demand for education.

Daisy Wholesale will be running eight courses focusing on its HVX solution from now until the end of the year, double the original number intended.

Graham Harris, Product Director for Cloud at Daisy Wholesale, said: "It's our responsibility to instil our partners with the upmost confidence in the products that they are selling. When it comes down to it, knowledge brings profit, and skills produce satisfied customers.

"By increasing our educational efforts we are making it as easy as possible for our resellers to grasp our hosted voice solution, arming them with all the tools they need to successfully deploy it to their customer base."

Excell Group has been awarded Toshiba Platinum Partner status following a strong performance in Q1 FY2014.

While recent growth has focused on driving new and repeat business with Toshiba in the education sector through TTG - an Excell Group company - the reseller's promotion was also driven by a significant repeat business contract with popular self storage firm Big Yellow.

As a Platinum Partner, Excell Group now benefits from a greater level of tailored support from Toshiba in its key market sectors.

The reseller can also take advantage of exclusive benefits to help drive its business such as referrals from Toshiba's website, a fast track for supply of products and early roadmap visibility.

Excell Group most recently worked with Toshiba to build on Big Yellow's existing Toshiba phone system. Big Yellow installed 36 new Strata CIX670s to upgrade the remaining estate that was not already at this model level.

Daniel Fuller-Smith, Sales Manager for Toshiba's Unified Communications & Solutions Division, said: "Excell Group's new Platinum Partnership will ensure it is even better equipped to target organisations in specific industries and sectors, offering tailored expertise, as well as a wide product set and bespoke unified communications solutions."

Westcon Group has expanded its Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) Solutions Practice portfolio by signing a new EMEA distribution agreement with Spectralink.

Spectralink DECT and Wi-Fi wireless devices are qualified for deployment in combination with the UCC solutions from Microsoft, Avaya and Cisco.

Guy Koster, Director of Product Management and Product Marketing for EMEA at Westcon Group, said: "As the deployment of next-generation UCC solutions gathers momentum, customers require an increasingly complex, multi-vendor experience.

"It's now more critical than ever for channel partners to specify, design, deploy and support solutions backed by best-of-breed products. Spectralink clearly falls into this category."

Wilfried Schon, Channel Director EMEA & APAC at Spectralink, added: "Increasingly, projects are for larger multi-national customers and more complex in scope requiring expertise from Global Systems Integrators and VARs to design, deploy and support them.

"We anticipate Westcon's expertise and worldwide distribution capabilities from design to delivery to deliver significant benefit for Spectralink and our channel partners."

Demand for fax machines in specific sectors is increasing according to distributor Nimans.

The company works with various manufacturers and is keen to alert resellers to the continued sales potential, despite its perception as 'yesterday's technology'.

"Many people think the days of the fax machine are long gone and to a certain degree that's true but fax machines are by no means completely dead," says Purchasing Director, Andy Winfield.

"In various business sectors demand remains very strong. Insurance, banks and the shipping industry are some to name a few."

Nimans is currently running a series of special offers on fax machines, laser printers and label printers, with savings of up to 36%.

Winfield says security is one of the biggest factors where fax machines have the edge over more modern communication methods.

"Despite the digital age where email is king, there are lots of niche industries where the fax machine remains an inherent part of a comms operation," he added.

"We tend to see demand rise during the close season as that's when football clubs conduct all their transfer dealings and signed contracts are always sent over by fax.

"Emails can easily be forwarded and altered and then you lose control. It's far easier to sneak documents out of a building on a USB stick rather than a paper document. There's a psychological side to it as well as the older generation prefer to deal with paper in their hand when viewing and handling important documents.

"It may come as a surprise but there's still healthy demand for fax machines so resellers shouldn't ignore them altogether. They need to target key sectors to find customers who are very loyal to fax transmissions and use them on a daily basis."

BT and Avaya have entered into a five-year agreement which will see BT Wholesale deliver Avaya's Unified Communications and Contact Centre applications as a cloud service to mid-market and enterprise customers via the indirect channel.

Called Avaya Cloud Solutions, the service will give businesses and public sector organisations with 250+ employees access to the full suite of Avaya Aura contact centre and UC products delivered over BT Wholesale's managed Ethernet network.

The service will be available only from Avaya accredited channel partners through BT Wholesale.

The joint initiative also offers existing Avaya customers a hybrid model with managed migration to help them evolve from on-site to cloud-based services.

The pay-as-you-grow business model will enable businesses to respond quickly and flexibly to their customer demands and improve the customer experience and revenue generation.

James Hennah, director, Fixed Telecoms, BT Wholesale said: "Hosted Communications Services are at the heart of our plans to offer more to our indirect channel business. By working with us, channel partners can offer their business customers a complete and future-proofed communications service."

Joe Manuele, vice president of Global SP-SI, Alliances and Cloud, Avaya added: "New and existing customers can now access Unified Communications and Contact Centre Applications as a Service with BT Wholesale through our channel partners in a more affordable and manageable way."