Comms Dealer

Prime Networks has struck a deal with a FTSE 250 company to develop and upgrade its mobile fleet.

The £2bn property company chose Prime because it provided 'the best commercial and technical solution' to accommodate a vast increase in data working across its business.

Prime is advising on the best way to deploy smartphones across the property firm's workforce, including Blackberry Q series phones, iPhones, Androids and tablets.

Security and device management will be provided using Prime's cloud-based MDM solution.

Commenting on the deal, Adrian Barnard, Managing Director of Prime Networks, said: "We're pleased to have delivered, yet again, a value-adding client solution with Vodafone's network and Prime client support & MDM services that will prove invaluable to the client."

tIPicall, the UK-based SIP and hosted carrier, has reported a significant increase in the sales of international numbers during the football World Cup being held in Brazil.

tIPicall, which offers international numbers delivered to either IP endpoints or diverted to any number worldwide provide numbers from 28 out of the 32 competing nations at this year's World Cup.

tIPicall's resellers have been as creative as always with one ordering a local Brazilian number and having it pointed to their UK mobile phone so that they could travel through the country following the football whilst being able to provide their local number to airlines to get the special non-tourist airfares.

Guy Miller, Managing Director of tIPicall, said: "England might have had an early exit but we're seeing a huge increase in number orders for those countries competing as the nation's eyes are more focused on the world stage. There doesn't seem to be sour grapes in the telecoms world as orders for Costa Rican, Italian and Uruguayan numbers have increased fivefold."

Vodafone UK has confirmed the winners of its 2014 Partner of the Year Awards at an awards ceremony at The Lowry Hotel in Manchester.

The event followed the latest partner conference to update over 100 mobile and fixed partners on the opportunities for 2014 and to hear first-hand about Vodafone's continuing strategy of providing a total communications portfolio to the channel.

The Partner of the Year awards, now in their fourth year, recognise partners who exhibit the highest level of performance capability and skills and who have helped create the best customer experience between 1st April 2013 and 31st March 2014.

During the evening high performing partners from 2013-2014 were recognised across the following categories:

Total Communications Partner of the Year - CommsXchange

Platinum Partner of the Year - OneCom

Gold Partner of the Year - Connect Telecom

Silver Partner of the Year - Your Company Mobiles

One Net Partner of the Year - PMGC Technology Group

Fixed Voice Partner of the Year - Italk

Fixed Data and Internet Partner of the Year - Eison

Rob Mukherjee, Head of Vodafone Partner Services at Vodafone UK, said: "The Vodafone Partner of the Year Awards is a clear demonstration of our commitment to our channel partners as we place them at the heart of our strategy for the coming year."

The conference also saw Vodafone announce its latest business and partner strategy.

New to the programme is the Solutions Pioneer accreditation. This accreditation launched on 1 April 2014 is for partners demonstrating a firm commitment to Vodafone's strategy through proven capability and consistent sales performance across its total communications portfolio.

Recipients of the accreditation were CommsXchange, Connect Telecom and Redsquid.

Mukherjee added: "We want to enable our partners to focus on the things that really matter - driving converged technologies, helping customers to find better ways of working and providing a fantastic customer experience. We also want to support our partners to be the best channel to market for our total communications portfolio, as we know this is what customers want."

Europe is expected to blaze a trail for telco spending in the next few years according to market research firm Infonetics Research. Software-defined networks (SDNs) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) have the attention of nearly all service providers who are on the long road to widespread deployments, it says.

"Expect a slowdown in the Americas, but for a change, Europe will be in the telecom capex driver's seat this year," says Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.

"We're forecasting global carrier capex to rise 4%, with EMEA as the growth engine despite unabated low-single-digit revenue declines all across Europe. After waiting for so many years to upgrade their networks, Europe's 'Big 5'-Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, and Vodafone-have decided it's time to take the plunge."

Co-author of the report Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics' directing analyst for enterprise networks, added: "Economic expansion in mature economies and falling unemployment in Europe is driving stronger growth in enterprise telecom and datacom expenditures this year. We expect the network infrastructure segment to be the main beneficiary of growing investments, followed by security. The communication segment will likely have another challenging year, as companies evaluate their deployment strategy going forward."

Mobile service revenue remains the main telecom/datacom growth engine worldwide, led by the rise of mobile broadband. And, to avoid falling into the role of pipe provider, many service providers are deploying or weighing new architectural options such as caching/content delivery networks, next-gen central offices, distributed mini data centres, and video optimisation

Tech Data Europe has extended its distribution agreement with Symantec to offer its full portfolio in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Under the extended agreement customers will be able to access the Symantec's full range of security, information and availability solutions. Prior to the extension, Tech Data had access only to the Symantec's enterprise availability solutions in the UK and the Netherlands.

The new deal aims at all customers, from small home users to large enterprises, it says. This includes retailers and webstores as well as systems integrators and value-added resellers (VARs), which are offered an expertise of Tech data's enterprise business unit Azlan.

Mitel has delivered a virtual contact centre solution to South Lakeland and Eden district councils in Cumbria, enabling home-based agents to integrate seamlessly into the contact centre and supervisors to manage and monitor operations from any location.

Implemented by Gateshead-based IT Professional Services, MiContact Centre for Lync from Mitel integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Lync to deliver advanced contact centre applications for the district councils' 25 customer service agents, all in a familiar, easy-to-use Microsoft Office interface.

Features including presence-aware telephony, conferencing and messaging have improved the contact centre experience for customers, as Caroline Metcalfe, Contact Centre Team Leader at South Lakeland's site in Kendal, explained: "The Mitel solution has had a positive impact on the quality of service and has been very well received by customers using our contact centre.

"We can provide much richer information to callers and the ease of transferring interactions and collaborating with knowledge workers throughout the council has increased first call resolution rates and reduced call times."

The virtual contact centre environment gives home-based agents complete access to all the voice and data capabilities of the contact centre and ensures customer service is not impacted if agents cannot reach the council sites.

The management capability has been extended to the home, enabling supervisors to spot problem areas, analyse trends, make decisions in real-time and also help to take calls at peak times.

Graham Bevington, VP International Markets, Mitel, said: "MiContact Centre for Lync is ideal for organisations that are invested in Microsoft Lync but need a more advanced and feature-rich contact centre solution, without added cost and complexity."

Networking solutions specialist Brocade has appointed Curt Beckmann, who was previously Principal Architect at Brocade, as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the EMEA region.

He will be responsible for a delivery of a product roadmap across the region and lead the company's technology strategy. At the same time, he will continue as a leader in the Open Networking Foundation where he chairs Forwarding Working Group, the company says.

Beckmann joined Brocade in 2003 as a result of an acquisition of Rhapsody Networks where he was a member of the founding team. Prior to this, he worked at Bay Networks where his responsibilities included development of chipsets for Ethernet switching.

Beckmann will be based in Paris, France, and report directly to Brocade vice president for EMEA, Marcus Jewell.

"We're already seeing customers in EMEA laying the foundations for SDN deployment in their data centres, to enable business growth and innovation," said Jewell.

"Curt is an industry veteran with the vision to help customers and partners understand how they can transform their existing networks."

The TFM Networks sponsored Milton Keynes Rowing Club successfully completed the Milton Keynes Half Marathon in a time of just 2.5hrs.

The running team attracted media interest and coverage including a live interview on BBC Three Counties radio, local press and national rowing publications.

Following on from the success of the 2012 London Olympics the club has experienced a 50% increase in membership.

TFM CEO Stewart Yates said: "As a local employer, and with a keen rowing interest within TFM, I am extremely happy to support this local club in their quest to raise vital funds for the next generation of rowers and maybe even future Olympians."

Through the fundraising team and their sponsors the club has raised a total of over £10,000 so far this year.

For more information visit www.mkrowing.org

Imago Group has expanded its European network of subsidiaries with the acquisition of Vitec Distribution GmbH in Germany.

Vitec, based in Mainz, represents a number of audio visual and communications vendors including Polycom and is a specialist in video and data collaboration, digital signage and presentation solutions.

Vitec has built a sizeable business based on delivering value added services, including consulting, project management, installation support and training.

"Video communications is an international business and our customers and end users need support on an international basis," said Ian Vickerage, Managing Director, Imago Group.

With offices already in France, Belgium, Holland and Spain, the acquisition of Vitec will enable Imago to launch its fifth European subsidiary.

The acquisition is expected to complete by early July.

The growing popularity of Brocade's partner accreditation programme has greased the wheels of a rolling campaign convoy across EMEA that has seen partner accreditations rise by 69% in the first half of its financial year.

The Brocade Certified Ethernet Fabric Professional (BCEFP) level is proving especially popular with 1,500% growth in the last six months.

The Certified Network Eng-ineer accredited partner base has also seen significant growth with new accreditations up by more than 25% in EMEA.

"With many legacy networks now beginning to show their age, businesses are increasingly looking for technology partners to help them deliver next generation innovation, applications and services," said John Mitchell, Head of Channels, EMEA, Brocade.

"We have designed our accreditations to help partners seize this opportunity, working with them to build the technical and sales expertise they need to meet the growing demand for emerging technologies such as Software Defined Networking, Ethernet fabrics and cloud.

"We have also had success with our Partner Academy series which has been rolled out across the EMEA region."