Comms Dealer

tIPicall, the UK-based Channel-Only SIP and hosted carrier, has witnessed a significant rise in demand for mobile applications on its Hosted PBX service, One PBX.

"Just a year ago, around 10% of hosted license sales were mobile," said tIPicall Managing Director Guy Miller. "Now 40% of licenses sold by our resellers are either converged or solely mobile applications."

The report coincides with tIPicall launching its latest upgrade to OnePBX which includes improvements to converged licenses and introduces Call Monitor where supervisors can listen in to their employee's calls as a standard included feature.

"There were two important upgrades to be done to reflect the changing market," added Miller. "Originally, hosted telephony was a replacement service for onsite PBXs however increasingly companies are turning to hosted for its additional feature set, in particular mobility and call centre functionality.

"We therefore took the decision to focus on upgrading the mobile applications and introducing call monitor for all users without additional charge."

This shift to mobile apps is not without its challenges, continued Miller: "You can make the perfect app with a great interface but we are still heavily reliant on the mobile providers having stable data services over 3G and 4G and not blocking VoIP traffic, something that not all mobile carrier are meeting their promises on. We still have to build in features such as seamless transfer to GSM because the signal is not always good enough, even in the centre of cities."

Miller sees this trend is only going one way, adding: "We expect this to continue and be 50% by the end of the year, the cost savings and flexibility achieved by mobile voice apps is too compelling an argument for customers to ignore."

Brocade and Arrow Electronics have announced a distribution agreement that will enable the UK arm of the global distributor to offer the full Brocade IP networking solution portfolio.

Arrow's resellers focused on the Data Centre, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Cloud Service Provider (CSP) segments gain access to offerings including Brocade Ethernet fabrics and Software-Defined-Networking (SDN) solutions, along with Arrow services to support the sales and after sales process.

Recent research revealed that 92 per cent of senior IT Decision Makers (ITDMs) feel that their infrastructure is not agile enough to deliver robust and scalable services to stakeholders or support next generation applications.

The next generation data centre must be able to support the deployment of Cloud environments and handle the demands of the Internet of Everything. As such, it will rely on virtualised and automated systems to operate effectively and efficiently, representing a significant market opportunity for channel organisations.

Arrow will also enable data centre solutions to be financed through the Brocade Network Subscription offering, which gives resellers an advantage in negotiations by offering subscription based financing that allows customers to pay for their technology investments through OpEx rather than CapEx funding.

David Ellis, director of strategy at Arrow ECS UK and Ireland said, "Our commitment to developing data centre solutions that don't just fix the issues of today, but also address customer challenges five years out, means Brocade IP solutions such as fabrics and SDN are a perfect fit for us and our customers."

Chris Lamborn, head of distribution EMEA at Brocade added: "With the fast moving shift towards the Internet of Everything, Big Data, IaaS and the Cloud there is a significant opportunity for resellers to help their customers adopt the right solutions now for the data centre environment they'll need in the not so distant future.

"However, these can be complex projects involving multiple vendors and Arrow's expertise and partnerships in this area reflect our commitment to supporting the UK channel in grasping that opportunity to the fullest."

The quarterly survey of mobility security by Good Technology shows growth for Android, coming growth for Windows and further work needed on getting applications to work together.

The total number of enterprise app activations continues to see double digit growth, increasing 20% qtr/qtr.

Phil Barnett, VP and general manager for EMEA at Good Technology said that it was enterprises and the public sector pushing ahead with all types of applications on mobile.

"After a lot of discussions about securing users, first on phones, then on tablets, and moving to any type of device, there will be a period of expansion. In-house developers have got the core 5-6 apps covered, and seen the productivity gains.

"We had a customer who worked on getting the main 40+ apps secure, but who then warned us he might need 42 new ones added each week."

There has been particular growth in financial services and banks. Customers generally think they are at the start of a ten year run with mobility strategies to enable users gain access to everything they need to replace the desktop, he says.

The move to mobile will then extend to the Internet of Things, with users expecting data on their car dashboards etc. Traditional integrators with their own applications and management are also having to make this switch.

The gap seen in previous quarters in the number of tablet and phone apps activations closed in Q2, with 58% tablet and 42% phones, with government accounting for an increase in 5% in iPad activations.

The Windows position is interesting: It still accounts for less than 1% of activations, and Android claimed 12%, growing 5% this quarter, driven by strong usage inAsiaPac. Windows is starting to show up in plans, particularly in the public sector says Phil Barnett.

"Logically there are three big players in mobile: Apple, Samsung and Microsoft. In the public sector where there is no BYOD, Microsoft has an advantage, but has some catching up to do."

Because Europe was an early starter in mobile, its standards and people are still highly engaged. "Particularly in New York, where a lot of the financial players are working, we find a lot of Europeans, Brits especially. Europe is cutting edge, and this is important to the ISVs working in this area."

The next wave of mobile technology development will be about offering applications that combine available data and systems for customers, so there is still a lot of work to be done, increasing business processes and ensuring compliance and efficiency, he says.

NEC sales have hit an all time high at Nimans which has witnessed a 15% hike in annual sales.

Orders of NEC's SV8100 comms platform are particularly strong, said Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales at the distributor.

"Sales have been growing month on month for well over 12 months and it's encouraging that demand has reached record levels this summer," he said.

Nimans was named Top SV8100 distributor for EMEA 2013/14 at the manufacturer's annual Partner Conference in Cape Town, South Africa earlier this year.

"NEC is a strong player in the market and our own client base is maturing and becoming more established which in turn is seeing sales on the rise.

"A three-pronged assault between ourselves, NEC and most importantly resellers has delivered an exceptional set of sales results. With more upward momentum in the general economy we are confident a strong platform has been laid for even more sales success."

Earlier this year Nimans was named Top SV8100 distributor for EMEA 2013/14 at the manufacturer's annual Partner Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Arrow has signed a Pan-EMEA distribution deal with SimpliVity, a specialist in the hyperconverged infrastructure solutions segment for software-defined data centres. Arrow will also distribute its OmniCube platforms.

Mitch Breen, senior vice president of global sales, SimpliVity, said: "We are excited to expand our footprint in Pan-EMEA with Arrow's support. Together, we can deliver offerings that address the performance and capacity challenges in today's virtualised data centres, ensuring performance, capacity, mobility, manageability and protection of data without driving up capex and opex."

Coms has bucked the summer lull by adding at least £1.2m in annualised revenue to the bank via its vibrant channel operation.

Dave Breith, CEO, said: "It has been a challenging but rewarding year and the hard work of everyone within our company has paid off. We are pleased with the annualised revenue figures."

Luxoft is increasing its revenue guidance following growth in the development of software for the automative industry and expansion in the US, UK and Germany,

It now expects to reach at least $486m, an increase of at least 22% year over year, compared to a previous target of $478m.

Revenue for the three months ended June 30, 2014 increased to $112.3m, up 34% from $83.8m for the same period a year ago. EBITDA adjusted for stock based compensation and for change in fair value of contingent consideration was $19.1m and corresponding EBITDA margin was 17%, as compared to $14.4m and 17.1%, respectively, in the year-ago quarter.

"We have been enjoying a strong operational and financial momentum, which, in our view, underlines resilience of our business model," said Roman Yakushkin, Chief Financial Officer.

"We believe that the company continues to grow substantially faster than the overall custom application and software development segment as our clients focus on bringing essential innovation to market in the shortest possible time. They also increasingly prefer executing complex engagements in a fixed price, managed delivery format."

Twenty five per cent of UK resellers are missing out on a valuable financial service by not using leasing to lock in customers.

That's the view of Tom Maxwell Head of Dealer Sales at distributor Nimans which has its own dedicated leasing division.

"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 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.

"There are still a lot of resellers who view elements of leasing as complicated," continued Maxwell. "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," he added.

Warrington based billing and customer management solutions specialist MDS has appointed Jennifer Fellows as Senior Vice President of Product Management and Marketing to drive the product strategy for the MDS billing and real-time charging solutions for telcos and MVNOs.

Fellows joins MDS from CSG International where she held the role of Vice President of Product Management. During her tenure, products were deployed globally and revenue targets exceeded. She also held the role of VP of Product Management at Argent Networks, and Director of Product Management at bcgi, a leading provider of real-time billing, MVNO and access management products.

Jennifer commented: "I am excited to join MDS. The organisation is comprised of knowledgeable and dedicated people, expert in delivering a quality BSS portfolio to digital service providers. Combined with an extensive history of providing value, all these assets make for a winning formula for the future."

"We're pleased to welcome Jennifer to the management team," said Mark Edwards, CEO of MDS. "Her extensive experience in real-time charging makes her an invaluable addition to the business and solidifies our commitment to an innovative cloud-based product strategy."

Aberdeen-based converged solutions reseller Orca Telecom has landed key energy sector contract wins said to be worth in the region of £600k.

The wins include Enterprise North East Trust, Harris Caprock, ADC Engineering, Ocean Installer, ITC Global, Grayloc and ADD Energy. The success comes on the back of the company reporting income in excess of £1.7million which represents a 70% hike in year-on-year revenues.
The company says it has recently doubled its support team to ensure services remain the number one priority.

Rory McEwan, director at Orca Telecom told Comms Dealer: "We are delighted to have reported such a significant growth in our development as we continue our momentum within the oil and gas sector, locally, nationally, offshore and overseas.

"We have experienced specific growth in hosted voice services, particularly with businesses who are now finding themselves in the position to expand their services and move to larger or new premises. This is giving them the option to maintain business critical services at all times whilst retaining the flexibility to retain numbers and features, wherever their new location might be.

"Having applied our service-led strategy with open and honest communication we have had great success in gaining traction within our target sector and built some excellent relationships along the way," added McEwan.