Comms Dealer

BT has lifted the lid on One Phone, a new service that brings together a company's office phone system and mobile phone usage into a single service, hosted in the cloud and delivered on a mobile phone.

All of an individual's numbers are linked to their work mobile phone, so whether somebody calls their landline, extension or mobile number, all calls go to one phone.

The service works with a full range of mobile phones by inserting a BT One Phone SIM.

Graham Sutherland, CEO, BT Business, said: "With an increasingly mobile and demanding workforce, businesses need communications technology that is as flexible as they are. Missed calls mean missed business."

BT One Phone provides inclusive on-net internal calls between users within a business, a choice of company shared bundles or unlimited voice and text tiers, and access to billing data.

To install BT One Phone, in most cases BT will build a dedicated mobile network in a customer's premises. When an employee leaves the office there's a handover between their dedicated mobile network and the BT Mobile national network.

The organisers of this year's Managed Services & Hosting Summit have released more details about the speaker line-up and the content they will be covering. Staged by IT Europa and Angel Business Communications on 25th September in London, the event has also attracted more high profile sponsorships.

The new speakers will draw on new research to chart the fast developing nature of the managed services sector. The Managed Services & Hosting Summit 2014 is a management-level event designed to help channel organisations identify opportunities arising from the increasing demand for managed and hosted services and to develop and strengthen partnerships aimed at supporting sales.

At the summit, Phil Smith, AVG's New Business Development Manager, SMB, will highlight the changes needed in an era of industrial-scale IT automation, ensuring that there are secure devices, data and people. Drawing on the latest independent research conducted by AVG, delegates can expect valuable insights into the different user priorities in various geographies, as revealed by the research, and an in-depth understanding of the issues they face. The session will conclude with advice on how managed services can best deliver value for users looking to address their concerns of Risk, Complexity and Cost.

Dave Sobel, director of GFI Max's partner community, will look at how managed services is moving beyond the device. For example, how do service providers bill activity across desktops, multiple laptops, phones and tablets for each user? The more sophisticated part of the market is coming up with all sorts of ideas, and discussions with customers may be finally moving on from pricing, it seems. Dave will share information from new research on how service providers are changing to address customers in an increasingly mobile cloud-connected world.
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Rob Rae, VP of Business Development, Datto will discuss how business continuity can be added to the provision of managed services. 'sales' is not magic, he says. "Sales is a process through a series of questions and relationship building. In this session, we are going to share insights that we have gathered and analysed from hundreds of successful MSPs that have added business continuity to their offering."

The strong line-up of speakers for the Managed Services & Hosting Summit 2014 is headed by Tiffani Bova, VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner Research, who will provide the opening keynote. Tiffani's presentation will examine how both technology changes (cloud, consumption and managed services) and new customer demands are forcing technology providers and the broader channel ecosystem to re-examine their sales models.

Other presentation subjects will include: Trends in service delivery and changing customer demands, Hybrid IT, the impact of new technologies and evolving business models, Creating Value with Managed Services and the Future of Managed Services and Hosting and the changing role of MSPs and other channels.

These conference sessions will be augmented by boardroom sessions presented by leading vendors and service providers which will provide further insight into the opportunities for channel organisations looking to expand their managed services portfolios. Throughout the day there will be many opportunities for both sponsors and delegates to meet fellow participants within the Summit exhibition and networking area.

The new sponsors announced - Datto, NaviSite, Avnet, Claranet, Modern Office, QLogic, Virtual Instruments, Webroot and Aurora Kendrik James - join a strong line-up that also includes AppRiver, AVG, Autotask, Dot Hill, Dropbox, GFI Max and EG Innovation, with further major names expected to be announced over the coming weeks.

Driver demand for connected cars is intensifying as consumers call for better safety, smarter navigation and lower-cost insurance, according to Telefónica's second Connected Car Industry report.

The study found that consumer awareness of Connected Car products and services around the globe is high and is now influencing purchasing decisions; 80% of consumers expect the Connected Car of the future to provide the same connected experience they are used to at home, at work and on the move via their mobile phone; while increased safety, early warning systems, smarter navigation and usage-based insurance are cited as the most popular benefits of connectivity in cars.

Pavan Mathew, Global Head of Connected Car at Telefónica, commented: "Through looking at the connected car from a driver's perspective, it's clear that the demand for connected services in cars is unquestionable. Even though we're just moving off of the starting line, people are ready for it and know what they want. But challenges to widespread roll-out remain.

"Many consumers currently think of connected car services in terms infotainment and WiFi, but this changes when they are made aware of the variety of options that the technology can offer. Safety and diagnostics appear to be the most attractive features to drivers, illustrating just how important factors such as road safety and vehicle maintenance are in consumer purchasing decisions.

"We can expect to see a gradual creep of connectivity into vehicles over the next few years but there won't be an explosion over the next 12 months," said Mathew. "The reason for this lies in the complexity of the challenges that connectivity is trying to address.

"While OEMs still have a way to go before they break out of their traditional role as a manufacturer and become a full, connected service provider, they certainly have a strong, trusted base to build from."

The Phone Co-op has posted a 4.2% increase in sales for the first six months of the year. The consumer co-operative saw sales reaching the £4.5 million mark for the period 1st September 2013 to 28th February 2014.

Mobile services experienced the highest growth with sales going 37% up at £247,000. The other factor contributing to these good results was teleconferencing after The Phone Co-op's takeover of Community Network last summer, which added £118k to the business.

The Phone Co-op's Vivian Woodell said: "We're delighted to report such strong growth, especially considering prices and sales continued to fall in our industry. Mobile sales growth has been particularly strong and in the first six months of the year have nearly equalled those of the whole 2011-12. This start of the year has laid solid foundations for two important developments - the launch of the new Pay As You Go service in the spring and the acquisition of Namesco's broadband services in May."

The Phone Co-op also built up its reserves passing £1 million for the first time and reported growth in members' share capital by 15% to a new record of £4.65 million.

C4L has signed a partnership agreement with cloud company Virtustream, enabling C4L to add a set of cloud offers and expand its portfolio.

In turn the deal enables Virtustream to provide customers improved access to its Data Centres and Cloud platform using C4L's CoreTX MPLS network.

In addition, C4L can now leverage Virtustream's Data Centres, Service Provider partners and xStream Cloud platform, both in the UK & internationally, fuelling their international growth plans.

Pete Hill, Business Development Director at C4L, said: "Virtustream has provided C4L with colocation space in its Slough Data Centre (UKDC1) for the last court years, this being one of the Points of Presence (PoPs) C4L has access to in its UK footprint of DCs.

"Virtustream's core strength and expertise lies in providing cloud computing solutions to enterprise and government clients. We plan to leverage this expertise to gain new exposure to enterprise market verticals as well as expand our overseas customer base."

Mobile airtime distributor Daisy Distribution has refreshed its Vodafone and O2 commercial models.

Historically, the distributor's bonus commercial framework has focused solely on rewarding primary connections and new business. However, the Ipswich-based business has now expanded its model to take into account additional products such as Microsoft 365, fixed line and Vodafone One Net Business.

Julien Parven, Marketing Director of Daisy Distribution, commented: "As a business, we have evolved from being just a mobile distributor into a provider who is more entwined with our network partners and our resellers, and we want our commercial models to reflect that.

"We want to be able to reward our partners for their delivery of secondary products and in turn satisfy the network partners' focus in these areas. Making these additional revenue streams accessible to our partners and new products available to their customers, both become inherently more sticky. This in turn can allow partners to retain relationships more successfully and minimise churn.

"These secondary product sets, such as Microsoft Office 365, fixed line and Vodafone One Net Business, are a variation on existing products within our partners' portfolios, so we would like to encourage all partners to engage with us to secure that extra training and support they may need to take advantage of this new commercial framework."

Timico has launched a new referral programme to reward partnering IT organisations, consultants, and business professionals with cash incentives for recommending Timico services to their customers.

Timico clients and partners can earn up to 15% of the new deal value if a sale is completed.

Neil Armstrong, Director of Business Services at Timico, said: "By looking after our existing customers and offering financial incentives, we hope that our customer base will happily spread the word about our services, while also earning themselves some additional revenue."

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."