Comms Dealer

F-Secure has acquired London-based security consultancy firm Digital Assurance, which provides an information security assessment service to governments and companies in the financial, petrochemical, retail, communication and defence industries.

AJens Thonke, Executive Vice President of F-Secure's Cyber Security Services, said: "Digital Assurance has a deep understanding of cyber security and delivers a broad range of security testing, consultancy and training services to organisations in both the private and public sectors.

"This acquisition will help F-Secure grow its service business to meet the increasing demand for cyber security services."

The latest iteration of Entanet's Ethernet Quoting Tool offers additional bandwidth options from a select group of carriers.

In addition to the previously available options of up to 100Mbps, resellers can get immediate quotes for 200Mbps, 300Mbps, 400Mbps and 500Mbps leased lines on 1Gbps bearers.

Resellers can add multiple options to each quotation, rather than having to generate separate quotes for each, making it easy for resellers to present customers with a simple set of choices.

Sales Manager Paul North said: "We've seen an increased number of requests for 200Mbps, 300Mbps or more on 1Gbps bearers in recent months.

"We could provide these before of course, but they weren't on the quoting tool which we have always wanted to keep as simple as possible. The desire for higher bandwidth now is very strong. That's being driven by increased use of the cloud and digital transformation, both of which are raising awareness of just how important connectivity is for the growing number of organisations that depend entirely on their digital systems."

Building on its programme of sailing-based corporate hospitality Koris has taken title sponsorship of the Royal Southampton Yacht Club's annual Double Handed race series, a run of eight races divided into two sub-series (Solent and Passage) of four races each.

"Among other things, we will be exposing our customers to the controlled mayhem of racing by taking them out to the start line on the committee boat," said Craig McCalley, Sales & Marketing Director at Koris.

"This high adrenaline sport mirrors some of qualities we see in our clients... the ability to remain calm and make good decisions under significant pressure."

Pictured: Paul James, Marketing Manager at Koris, who is taking part in the Solent Double Handed Series.

NG Bailey has recruited Peter Jones as MD of its IT Services division, taking over from Bob Dunnett who retires at the end of May.
 
Jones reports directly to NG Bailey's CEO David Hurcomb and joins from G4S where he was MD of facilities management UK and Ireland. He has also held senior leadership positions at CBRE and Carillion.

Hurcomb said: "Bob has done a great job and we wish him a long and happy retirement. He leaves us with a strong client base and an ever-expanding pipeline of new business opportunities.

"I now look forward to working closely with Peter to continue the development of the division, as well as actively pursuing opportunities to accelerate the growth of all of our services businesses.

"Peter has a well-deserved reputation within the facilities management, construction and commercial property sectors at both a national and international level and has a deep understanding of providing complex services to both the private and public sector.

"This, coupled with a background in engineering services and strong leadership skills, will ensure that we continue to innovate and grow our IT services capabilities."

Jones added: "Developments in Smart Buildings, the Internet of Things and increased digitisation of client businesses are all creating significant demand for our core structured cabling and managed services solutions, both within new build and major refurbishment programmes.

"I am looking forward to leading the IT Services business at such a pivotal time in its development."

German IP phone company Snom Technology has hired Armin Liedtke as Head of Global Sales with a remit to meet bold targets within a new global strategy following the takeover by VTech.

He brings more than 25 years sales experience in the voice market, most recently as Polycom's Sales Director Voice, Central Europe. He also spent 13 years at Cisco in a number of key roles.

"Not only does Armin bring his voice expertise, industry knowledge, contacts and experience to Snom, but also the drive to meet Snom's high expectations for swift growth in this competitive technology segment," said Gernot Sagl, Snom's CEO.

"Snom is now putting the final pieces into place for what will be a major drive to capture a much bigger slice of market share."

Liedtke added: "With all of the advantages the recent takeover by VTech offers, the expectations are high and this is a great opportunity for me."

TalkTalk Business has again proved itself to be a key contributor to the wider Group's revenues, reporting a 30.8% increase in data revenue in its preliminary financial results for the 12 months to 31st March 2017.

Across the year, revenue growth accelerated in H2 to +6.1%, up from +2.3% in H1.

The number of new Ethernet and EFM lines increased by 8,000 during the year.

Overall revenues grew by over 4% year-on-year.

TalkTalk Business has ambitions to double its size over the medium term driven by growth in high bandwidth data products and next generation voice services ahead of the 2025 ISDN switch-off.

The company recently announced its intention to take advantage of the opening up of the Ethernet market with the introduction of Dark Fibre access later this year.

While legacy voice revenues declined by 17.9% there was a strong take-up of TalkTalk Business's new next generation IP voice product, with revenue growth during the year of 20%.

The launch of new IP Voice products followed TalkTalk Business' acquisition of tIPicall in April 2015.

116 Partners have now signed up to sell this new service and the total base of SIP channels on the platform, including acquired base, increased by 7,340 channels (+65%) during the year.

The acquisition has continued our diversification into next generation telephony services, further demonstrated by our hosted telephony platform which saw the user base grow by 43%.

Kristine Olson-Chapman, MD at TalkTalk Business, stated: "TalkTalk Business continues to be one of the highest growth parts of the TalkTalk Group.

"Even more encouraging is the increase in demand for next generation voice and data services."

European VARS are outgrowing the market, riding a wave of demand for software and solutions along with managed services.

The overall EMEA market is forecast by Gartner to grow at just 1.9% this year, following growth of just 0.2% in 2016.

But new research by IT Europa in its report Solution VARs in Europe - The Top 1000, shows that Europe's leading solution VARs have achieved an average growth in sales of 9.44% over the last two years, with more than 85% of them now offering some form of managed service solution (a big jump from the 77% figure just six months ago).

Overall, 94% of the VARs supply software, some 44% of them working with their own packages, so claiming a role as software houses in their own right.

Looking at the vertical markets served by VARs, the public sector was top at 63% followed by financial services market, supplied by just over half (55%) of the top VARs.

Manufacturing was also supplied by a majority at 52%, Education at 46% was also perhaps surprisingly strong, just slightly ahead of healthcare at 44%.

It was slightly better to be an independent than a publicly-listed VAR last year as the latest analysis of the European VAR markets reveals.

The independents lifted their sales by 10.5%, the listed firms by 9.65%, according to the report.

The publicly listed firms, generally larger in size, had a higher overall sales result - the average sales figure for this group of 39 was $440m. The independents, though more numerous at nearly 800, had average sales of just over $30m.

The figures also show that some 315,000 people work in these top 1,000 VARs.

Hot on the heels of news that Beta Distribution's bid to buy Entatech collapsed the struggling Telford-based IT distie fell into administration. In February 2016 Entatech settled its lengthy legal battle with the liquidators of Enta Group company Changtel and became solely owned by Stevinson Capital, a business controlled by Entatech MD Dave Stevinson (pictured).

The settlement was a long running, challenging and complex deal involving multiple firms of lawyers, and at the time Stevinson ranked the outcome as his best career achievement.

Dabs.com founder David Atherton shared Stevinson's vision and joined Entatech as Chairman.

Dabs.com was one of the earliest online retailers of IT equipment, growing from scratch to over £200 million revenue per annum. Atherton sold the business to BT in 2006.

On Entatech's challenge Stevinson said in August last year: "Our challenge and opportunity is to be different from the big four competitors. So we are becoming more relevant to our clients and working smartly in niche sectors, using digital technology and advanced analytics as differentiators and accelerators."

It is believed that the planned sale of the business to Beta Distribution was scuppered by issues relating to due diligence.

Zen's incoming CTO Justin Fielder has compared the firm's potential with that of his old stomping ground Easynet, the first comms company to implement LLU, where he was a driving force.

Easynet was sold to BSkyB in 2005 and the network still forms the backbone of Sky's residential broadband service.

"The similarity between Easynet and Zen was a prime factor in tempting me to relocate from my home in the south east to the Manchester region," said Fielder.

"Easynet was operating at a larger scale but Zen has all the pieces in place and has just doubled its LLU footprint. There are big gaps in the market and major opportunities for Zen, so it's an exciting time to join the business.

"My experience of growing a similar business at Easynet can help Zen fulfil its ambitions. We can swiftly automate everyday back-end processes, freeing up technical staff to focus on long-term projects for the benefit of the business." 

CEO Richard Tang stated: "There are few CTOs in our industry with Justin's level of experience. We are fortunate to have him on board."

Frontier Voice and Data has added cloud call recording solutions to its portfolio following a link-up with TeleWare.

The partnership will focus on mobile, fixed line and Skype for Business call recording particularly in the financial sector where companies must become compliant with the upcoming MiFID II regulations.

Nick Reaks, Chief Operations Officer, TeleWare, said, "MiFID II is demanding greatly increased call recording and storage from companies. For smaller businesses such as hedge funds implementing a total transformation of telephony systems to achieve full compliance is a costly and difficult process.

"Operating that system can be a full-time job which takes away from their main task of delivering performance. By providing systems that are easy to implement and sit on top of existing solutions we are able to help these smaller operations remain profitable and improve their communications solutions."

Nolan Braterman, Business Development Director, Frontier, added: "The analytics that we offer will also mean that companies can gather more data and apply it to inform their growth strategies.

"The joint solutions that we will be offering with TeleWare will do more than meet current needs and will go a long way to answering future requirements as our customers continue their journey."