Comms Dealer

A new 24/7 automated telephone appointment booking system has been introduced by Barnsley Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) in South Yorkshire for the benefit of over 200,000 patients.
 
The system, known as Patient Partner developed by comms specialists Voice Connect, enables patients to call their surgery at any time of the night or day to make, cancel or review an appointment.

It is currently used by around 8 million patients across the UK.  However, the roll out of the system by Barnsley CCG is one of the most concentrated and large scale installations of the system in the country.
 
"We are delighted that practices in Barnsley are using Patient Partner to help with patient access and engagement," comments Voice Connect's MD Stefan Olsberg. "The system was specifically developed to help with this issue as it's important to offer patients a choice in how and when they book their appointments."

Users call the surgery's usual number and are given the choice of selecting the Patient Partner option. The system is able to detect available appointments in the doctors' and clinic diaries. The patient can then choose their preferred time as well as cancelling, amending or checking an appointment just by pressing a button on their touch tone telephone.  
 
The programme has been funded by the CCG as part of the organisation's drive to improve patient communication and access as well as reducing the number of missed GP appointments. So far, 30 of the 37 practices have chosen to implement this facility for their patients.
 
"Our aim is to ensure that we put Barnsley people first so that they receive the best healthcare service possible," comments Dr Nick Balac, Chair of Barnsley CCG. "By installing Patient Partner across most of our GP practices, we are able to tackle issues like missed appointments which cost our health service time and money."

Mitel has collaborated with partner Koris to deliver a contact centre solution for Freebridge Community Housing, integrating with Microsoft Lync to support over 7,000 tenants in managed homes and sheltered schemes across Norfolk.

Dave Clements, ICT Business Partner at Freebridge Community Housing, said: "MiContact Centre for Lync is a central part of our contact centre set-up. Since installing the new system we have come out on top of mystery caller tests between us and other housing associations in the region.

"Average call length has gone down every month, with the latest figures showing a 22.8% decrease in the average call handling time since deployment."

Steve Powell, Sales Director Contact Centre Solutions, Mitel, added: "Mitel MiContact Centre for Lync enables companies like Freebridge Community Housing to put the customer at the centre of their business.

"Through its integration with Microsoft Lync and range of features, organisations can benefit from an advanced contact centre solution without the cost and complexity that comes with installing a separate service."

The comms market's potential to drive real disruption is hindered by a reliance on third party tail circuit provision, according to Robert Sturt, founder and Director of the The Network Union.

"The uncontrollable aspects of complex telecoms such as tail circuit providers are an issue," he claimed.

"Third party tail circuit provision is a large component of most networks so true disruption and change is impossible.

"Clients are expected to accept major delays as a fact of life. Under some circumstances issues such as wayleave cannot be avoided but poor communication and random delays create big problems.

"If I could transform any area of telecoms it would be the method of connecting third party circuits to customer premises.

"No matter how great our value, we are all still reliant on large tail providers to fully deliver services."

Unify has been named a Leader among 11 of the most significant vendors in The Forrester Wave On-Premises Unified Communications and Collaboration, Q2 2014 report, published by Forrester Research.
 
Forrester evaluated vendors against 29 criteria grouped into three categories - current offering, strategy, and market presence.

In the Strategy category, Unify received the highest rating of all vendors in the report with 4.58 out of 5. In the Strategy subcategories, Unify received perfect scores (5.0) in 3 of the 5 categories: Product Roadmap, Extensibility and Deployment Model.
 
According to Forrester, 'Unify is innovating around social layer integrations and integrating business processes, making it easier to derive business value from an OpenScape deployment. [The Company's] ability to deliver industry solutions today and the promise of engaging, socially connected, communications-enabled collaboration experiences in the near future moves it into the Leaders quadrant."

Bill Hurley, CMO, said: "In today's competitive business landscape we're focused on bringing solutions to market that offer a more seamless way for businesses to connect and collaborate, enabling enterprises to take advantage of the New Way to Work."

Levels of software modernisation are lower than expected in most industries, averaging 30%-36%, according to a study by Forrester commissioned by CA Technologies.

The path to modern software-enabled business will take many twists and turns, it says, depending on a particular firm's starting point, environmental features and organisational capabilities and commitments.

However, in almost all firms, software modernisation is low, which reduces business agility, restricts implementation flexibility, and stretches time-to-value for digital innovation.

Given customer preferences for digital, or at least being digitally enabled, across all B2B and B2C industries, low levels of software modernisation suggest the possibility of significant returns to firms that move quickly. Software modernisation has three characteristics:

• A modern approach to software development that emphasises the use of methods and skills geared to rapidly translate software opportunities into software systems.
• A modern approach to software delivery that exploits mechanisms matching software consumption to software spending.
• A bias to employ software that provides essential business outcomes now while maximising future options for software-enabled business opportunities.

The faster-growing companies had IT application development cycles that were 29% shorter than those in slower growing companies.

Spending on technology that supports customer facing processes will rise by over 10% as firms put priorities on technologies that help them directly win, serve, and retain more empowered customers, according to Forrester.

Spending on software in general will rise by 4%, with spending on applications outpacing spending on middleware, says the firm.

However, most European countries, including the larger euro economies of Germany, Italy, and Spain, will see tech market growth in the 1% to 2% range in 2014, with the French tech market barely growing.

Similarly, spending on computer equipment (apart from tablets), communications equipment, IT outsourcing, and telecommunications will be in the same range.

Accordong to Forrester the problem is that the Eurozone countries, while at least pulling out of recessions, are still experiencing feeble economic growth.

That will leave European CIOs being very cautious and conservative in their tech purchases in 2014.

Not until 2015, when it assumes that economic growth will start to solidify, will European tech markets return to healthier rates of expansion and growth, reckon Forrester's pundits.

The majority (80%) of SMEs have yet to merge their mobile and fixed line telecoms, according to research from Olive Communications.

However, of those businesses that have been through this process, many report benefits including cost savings (72%), improved business continuity (51%), customer service (39%) and the enablement of flexible working (27%)

"Businesses are missing a trick and it's not just about saving money, said Martin Flick, CEO of Olive. "There's a clear opportunity to improve processes and enhance the working experience. As work is increasingly becoming a thing you do and not a place you go, IT leaders should grasp the opportunity and embrace the tools and systems that enable a more flexible and productive approach to work."

Despite large numbers of IT leaders having heard of converged comms, they point to a number of barriers to adoption that appear to be limiting investment. 

According to the research, over half (59%) of businesses with 10-49 employees had heard of converged communications, rising to almost three quarters (73%) amongst businesses with 250-500 employees. In spite of this, less than a third (31%) have seriously considered converging their communications estates. 

IT leaders cite perceived issues such as cost (mentioned by 25%) and disruption to current processes (31%) as the biggest barriers preventing their adoption. However, of those businesses that have gone through this process or are currently implementing it, only 7% have experienced disruption to their business. 

Flick added: "Many businesses are cautious about changes to contracts due to potential upheaval, but in reality, the disruption caused by fixed-mobile convergence is minimal.

"Converging mobile and fixed line telephony could be a quick win for SMEs who are looking to both reduce their costs and capitalise on the opportunities of a work anywhere culture."

Sennheiser's 2014 charity golf day raised £16,000 in aid of the Caron Keating Foundation and Diabetes UK.

This year's event, staged at the Bearwood Lakes Golf Course in Wokingham, included representatives Corptel UK, Westcon, Rocom and RBS, with entertainment from Sennheiser UK's own Ken Morrison during the evening.

??The majority of the auction money raised was donated to the Caron Keating Foundation, which was set up in memory of the late television presenter Caron Keating and provides a range of support services for cancer patients and their families, with £2,000 being given to Diabetes UK.

??"The day was another great success," said Paul Whiting, President, Global Sales at Sennheiser. "Bearwood Lakes is a beautiful course and the golf is absolutely superb. We like to add a little extra quiver to proceedings with a couple of competitions during the day and there were added elements of fun during the afternoon with the addition of a few exploding golf balls!"

?One of the prizes, donated by Corptel UK, included two tickets to any available Manchester United game of the winner's choice for the upcoming season, including a grand tour of the stadium, champagne reception, VIP access and a four course meal.
 
Pictured: John Richardson, Westcon; Linda Irvin, Sennheiser; Michael Waterworth, Sennheiser; David Silous-Holt, Rocom.

Elite's latest acquisition is the final piece in the jigsaw of its transition from switchless reseller to full ISP with carrier capabilities and multiple data centre facilities.

The acquired data centre, which carries 'secret' status, looks after sensitive public sector data and global corporations including insurance and finance companies, which is why details of the data centre location cannot be revealed.

After a string of high profile network attacks including Domino's Pizza, Reuters, The Sun and more, CEO Matt Newing saw a potential opportunity to bring improved network security to UK businesses.

He said: "Hosting, the cloud and network connectivity is big business, but security is a concern to many businesses. This is where the market is heading."

With this acquisition, Elite launches a full range of data centre services including managed firewalls, unified threat management, colocation and its own hosted PBX, Elite Plus Talk, which is embedded within its own recently launched core MPLS Network.

Newing added: "We've been acquiring unified comms businesses in recent years to get a decent hold on the hosted and network connectivity market, and now with our own infrastructure we have a serious competitive advantage."

Earlier this year Elite made a further £780,000 investment into its own core network, offering MPLS and private connectivity services to businesses.

"Adding our own security measures and acquiring this data centre completes the solution for our clients and helps companies navigate their way through the minefield that can be buying, installing and securing big networks," commented Newing.

According to results from the annual Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) report into cloud adoption, 53% of small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) are currently running a Windows Server 2003 operating system.

On 14th July 2015, one year today, Microsoft will be ending its extended support period for the operating system, meaning there will be no further patches, updates or fixes.

The report, in its fifth year, polled 250 senior IT and business decision makers, 153 of which were from businesses with fewer than 200 employees.

The research found that for 69% of SMBs, infrastructure refresh is seen as a key consideration in adoption of cloud.

While cloud adoption among SMBs has risen to 75%, the research found that a hybrid model of cloud services mixed with on-premise IT has become the preference. 86% of SMB respondents don't currently use an entirely cloud-based IT strategy and 47% claimed to only be using one cloud based service at present.

"SMBs are clearly already favouring a hybrid approach. Our view is that 9 out of 10 companies will continue to invest in on-premise IT alongside and integrated with remote cloud solutions" said Nick East, CEO of Zynstra.

"Businesses can use the opportunity of infrastructure refresh to deliver better value from their IT estate. Those with Windows 2003 server still running should act soon to ensure a smooth transition before support ends."