Comms Dealer

Dimension Data has embarked on a campaign to sell one million new seats of Microsoft Lync Enterprise Voice by 2017 either hosted or on site. The $6bn global ICT services and solutions provider is aiming to capitalise on 30% year-on-year growth in Microsoft's Lync business.

"There are still millions of enterprise employees who would benefit from Lync," stated Peter Menadue, Dimension Data's Group GM for Microsoft Solutions.

Dimension Data currently has 500 Lync projects under its belt and according to Menadue the firm's Lync experience combined with its strategy to target all delivery models will provide a springboard into mature and emerging markets.

"In mature markets there is a desire to enable knowledge workers to communicate easily wherever they are," he added.

"While in emerging markets many organisations are leapfrogging traditional communications tools, particularly where existing infrastructure may be immature, and the desire to drive down cost and prepare for as-a-service is relevant.

"Our experience, together with our history of working with Microsoft over the past 10 years, ensures that we will meet the one million target."

Adding weight to his ambitious plans cited Menadue research by T3i Group on the impact of Microsoft Lync on the enterprise voice market.

The study reckons that 93% of enterprises have plans or already using or trialling Microsoft Lync, up from 80% on last year.

Meanwhile 59% of enterprises are planning (or are already deploying Lync Voice), up 45% in 12 months.

Giovanni Mezgec, General Manager for Lync Marketing at Microsoft, added: "In today's competitive, global business environment, teams need to collaborate more closely than ever before.

"With Lync available on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution, enterprises have the option to evolve their IT at the pace they choose."

Vodafone UK's One Net Business service is now available with the integration of Microsoft Lync for existing customers.

One Net is a cloud-based communications service that delivers fixed and mobile communications through a single platform. The new feature will also be available to new One Net customers in the coming weeks.

The addition of Lync to One Net enables 'click to call' through the Lync application from any device - either a PC, mobile or tablet.

In one click, businesses can set up virtual meetings, share files and their desktop and now speak to their colleagues, all within Lync.

Phil Mottram, Vodafone's Enterprise Director said: "SMEs need to be able to respond quickly to customer requests wherever they are, or risk losing out to the competition. Vodafone can provide a fully integrated suite of mobile and fixed communications services from the cloud on its own network."

Storage and server distributor Hammer has been given international Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) rights to Dell's entire portfolio.

Hammer has been a supplier of Dell systems and software for a while and this deal serves several vertical markets, including media and entertainment, telecom, industrial automation, medical, transportation and utilities and military and defence.

Gerard Marlow, General Manager of Business Development at Hammer, said: "Our experience in bespoke server design means that we are set up for Dell OEM. Adding value from concept to deployment, Hammer supports Dell in offering local flexibility for the bespoke customisation of systems in our on-site integration centre, from one unit to thousands of units."

Back-up specialist Acronis has named Chris Hilderbrand from Microsoft as its Vice President for Global Channel Sales.

The moves aims to accelerate market adoption of the Acronis AnyData Engine through the channel.

Hilderbrand oversaw SMB sales and commercial distribution in Latin America and the Caribbean at Microsoft where he managed key alliances and partnerships to drive more than 95% of his organisation's transactions through the channel.

Hilderbrand said: "I will work to strengthen our channel relationships even further so that we address the explosive demand for data solutions in the market and grow revenues and profitability together."

Acronis has recently announced a number of top executive appointments including the addition of its new President of Global Operations Yury Larichev.

The organisation has also expanded its programmes for the channel, including a new Acronis Certified Engineer course and a North American Partner Council.

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.