Comms Dealer

Large-scale telco cloud deployments will reach global critical mass after 2020 says ABI Research, in parallel with the deployment for 5G.

This network generation will likely require a new core network to allow for advanced concepts, including network slicing and services geared toward different business verticals.

Early 5G deployments, during which time there will not be an immediate need for a new telco core, will likely focus on enhanced mobile broadband.

In spite of investment and the creation of partner programmes, telcos in Europe have so far failed to deliver their target of reaching SMBs with cloud services.

"Although telcos are transforming their technology and business platforms to become more agile and to evolve past their monolithic access-based business models, they are finding it much more challenging than anticipated," said Dimitris Mavrakis, Research Director at ABI Research.

"Software, cloud computing, and open source will simplify operations, but in the short term telcos are preferring to rely on their trusted vendors to continue this journey."

AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, and Verizon are honing their strategies and planning their networks as shared platforms, rather than a mix of individual network appliances.

This means that network resources will be virtualised, distributed and software controlled, leading to a much more agile network. This will allow the implementation of an 'Untelco' strategy, selling tailored network resources to different verticals.

However, there are a few indications that end-to-end systems are still the end goal. For example, Telefonica O2 UK awarded an end-to-end contract to Nokia for a cloud-native packet core, something that would be a considerable challenge to implement in-house with a true vendor agnostic, common-off-the-shelf network. ABI Research expects many more end-to-end telco cloud contracts will be awarded in the years to come.

"Although a few open source projects are contributing valuable inputs toward the evolution of telco networks, there is also competition among open source projects, and the concept is also misunderstood and in some cases, misused by several industry players," concluded Mavrakis.

"The golden ratio is somewhere between end-to-end systems and open source components, if vendors provide open interfaces and flexibility to integrate third-party and smaller vendors."

Hybrid is driving cloud and the overall IT opportunity, says researcher TBR. Over half of all enterprises have at least one hybrid process, it says.

After years of vendors investing in acquisitions, development and alliances to enable hybrid environments, customers are finally starting to see real adoption momentum.

The use of hybrid cloud (a combination of cloud services) and hybrid IT (a combination of cloud services and on-premises assets) is now a reality for most enterprises, with 51% reporting at least one workload is leveraging a hybrid cloud or IT deployment method.

While it took time for these enterprises to understand the market, build the skills and develop the use cases, more customers are demonstrating real maturity meeting the IT and business challenges inherent in hybrid deployments.

Growing hybrid adoption is a reflection of increased customer readiness and wider availability of technology from vendors for managing and integrating assets across cloud and on-premises environments.

With no signs of customers or vendors slowing their investments in hybrid, TBR anticipates companies' initial adoption will grow and deepen as the flexibility, cost savings and quality of delivery of hybrid are further demonstrated in the next year. 

The hybrid influenced market size will grow 78% year-to-year in 2017, to $155bn. With a majority of enterprise customers having adopted hybrid, the ability to deploy and manage hybrid environments will influence an increasingly significant pool of customer investment and vendor opportunity.

Cloud in general has been a steady supplemental growth driver for most vendors but has not represented most their revenue.

Cloud markets maintain growth rates that range into mid-double digits in an environment where most IT markets are either declining or flat.

However, even in the broadest terms, cloud investment across public, private, hybrid, components and professional services represents less than 10% of the total IT market. The interconnection of cloud and traditional IT resources is changing the control points for a much larger pool of revenue than just cloud, shifting opportunity.

The overall hybrid IT influence pool of revenue, which includes cloud and non-cloud software and services, will begin to rival the pure-cloud market size in 2017.

For vendors providing cloud services, it is critical to deliver services that will integrate with customers' on-premises infrastructures and data centres.

One of the biggest shortfalls of the pure-cloud model is the difficulty aligning to this mixed mode in which most customers find themselves, as experienced by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Business model shifts that began in 2016 to address hybrid IT, including partnerships across IBM, VMware, AWS and Microsoft, will accelerate in 2017, it says. 

Gateshead-based Synergi IT has won two blue light and two water authority contracts on the strength of its process mobility platform, Nintex, an automation system that helps improve workflow processes.
 
Justin Short, Director at Synergi, said: "Reducing fire officers' administration time and allowing them more time to carry out their duties is vital. The hours of work saved by streamlining and automating processes, genuinely makes a difference in how they save lives on the frontline.

"We're also actively engaged with two water authorities. For one, we have successfully introduced and developed a solution to drive ideas and innovation across the entire organisation, while driving efficiency around safety auditing and risk management."

Exertis and Samsung are preparing to showcase the vendor's latest version of its Call Management Solution (CMS) applications suite during events to be staged at Samsung's offices in Chertsey on 24th May and at Exertis's new National Distribution Centre (NDC) in Burnley on 1st June.

The latest version of CMS integrates with the Samsung telephone system allowing users to manage all aspects of the call reporting, call recording, real time and historic call stats and agent status and activity across the whole Samsung UC Estate.

Kelly Maynard, Samsung UC Business Manager at Exertis, said: "CMS is a key application within Samsung's portfolio and these roadshows will allow our partners to touch, feel and play with the applications in our live demonstration areas and fully understand that this isn't just a version upgrade, it's a new suite of applications engineered from the ground up."

Timico has appointed tech-driven PE specialist Neville Davis as Non-Executive Chairman.

He brings 20 years experience as a chief executive including 12 years at a quoted company, and has a strong track record in scaling and developing private equity backed companies having chaired and grown other tech businesses to in excess of £300m turnover and 1,500 employees.

The appointment follows a £50m investment in Timico by growth investors Lyceum Capital in February 2017 as part of Timico's plans for growth and to finance future selective acquisitions.

Davis also currently chairs private equity-backed IT companies, Peppermint Technology and Clifford Thames, as well as travel management company Key Travel. He is also Non-Executive Director of Kalibrate.

Previous chairmanships include SecureData, Fourth, Trustmarque (now part of Capita), Ascribe and Amor.

Ben Marnham, CEO of Timico, recently led a programme of change to reorganise the business around a single Timico brand and service model, honing its strategy and new proposition as an end-to-end Managed Cloud Service Provider in the IT and cloud space in preparation for its next stage of growth.

Marnham said: "Neville's considerable experience in managed IT and more than 20 years as a successful CEO will be a real asset to Timico."

Davis added: "I am confident that I can make a significant contribution, helping the team realise its ambition in the UK mid-market."

Simon Hitchcock, Non-Executive Director and partner at Lyceum Capital, noted: "Neville understands the dynamics and challenges of delivering on strategy in our highly competitive and driven environment."

Network operator Vaioni Wholesale has launched its Pre-Ethernet service in London enabling partners in the city to accelerate the connectivity delivery process, improve service levels and move from order to invoice more speedily.

Vaioni MD Sachin Vaish stated: "While our average delivery time for Ethernet is above the industry norm it still isn't good enough. With our Pre-Ethernet Service for London businesses we can deliver our SLA-backed product in as little as five working days."

The London Pre-Ethernet service offers flexible contracts and can be delivered as a fully managed service including data, voice and video.

"The service covers 10,000-plus postcodes across London and delivers a seamless transition to the primary service once live and can be ordered easily online via the myVaioni Procurement Platform," added Vaish. "In the coming months we will be launching several complementary National Pre-Ethernet products."

Blue Planet Networks, NV Consulting and The Cloud Networks Germany have joined forces through the Intelisys Global model to secure an initial three year contract from an international sports retailer to provide an in-store Wi-Fi service at 40 sites across Europe in a deal worth 130,000 euros with more stores in the pipeline.

Making the most of partnerships established through the Intelisys Global two-tier distribution model, Sales Partner NV Consulting was able to put together a multi-country network solution to support a Wi-Fi package from The Cloud Networks Germany and leverage Internet connectivity services from Blue Planet Networks, a new Intelisys Global supplier partner.

"This project shows how the Intelisys Global Technology Services Distributor model can bring together consultancies, resellers and suppliers to enable new market opportunities," commented Stephen Hackett, MD for Intelisys Global.

"From an initial introduction at our London Mindshare event in September, NV Consulting was able to build out its solution within just a few days, removing all the overheads and delays typically associated with pricing and specifying as this was all handled by Intelisys Global."

Achim Moehrlein, CEO of The Cloud Networks Germany, added: "Working with the Intelisys Global model gives us access to initial supplier agnostic support and advice, along with access to the consultants, technology providers and implementation specialists we needed to create a competitive proposition for our retail customer."

A channel marketing programme introduced by Atos company Unify will simplify and ease the selling of its OpenScape portfolio, according to the vendor, which also claims that the new online tool, called Triple Play, will enable resellers to intercept potential customers early in the buying cycle.

Triple Play will be integrated into Unify's Partner Programme in the UK and can also be hosted on a partner's own website.

One of the tool's big plus points, says Unify, is that it removes complexity from the buying process, replacing tech talk with straightforward information about outcomes that end users can more easily identify as relevant to their business.

"Triple Play provides end users with transparent solution choices, ensuring their collaboration and communications needs are accurately met," said Zara Pasalar, UK Channel Marketing Manager.

"For partners, Triple Play offers an opportunity to increase revenues, enhance demand generation and break into new markets."

Triple Play is based on three simple choices (platform, deployment model and payment model) that enable partners to tailor their solution in a way that chimes with a prospect's business objectives and desired outcomes, which could be reducing costs, enhancing customer satisfaction or increasing cloud capabilities.

"Triple Play provides partners with a tool that demonstrates the flexibility of our OpenScape portfolio, taking technology off the table and focusing on what matters, the desired business outcomes of their customers," added Pasalar.

The marketing tool also removes much of the hard work required of partners wanting to address new markets with UC&C solutions, presenting resellers with the required outcomes for specific public and private sector organisations, and matching the right products to meet these demands.

"The tool is unlimited in terms of business size, so for those partners wishing to capture 250-5,000 user or large enterprise opportunities they can lead with Triple Play," explained Pasalar.

"As well as the Triple Play digital tool, a complete marketing kit enables partners to reach out to prospects through social media, or target customers directly via a ready to go email campaign."

Office space within Nimans' Trafford Park Trade Counter has been commissioned to extend the distributor's training programme.

The first course housed at the new venue - a three day programme on Panasonic's NS700 and NS1000 comms platforms - attracted resellers from distant regions such as Edinburgh, Tamworth and Hull.

Head of Category Sales Paul Burn said: "Trafford Park is a conveniently located new location for reseller training and it received a thumbs-up from all those that attended."

Ingram Micro company Comms-care has launched a new set of configuration services covering a range of hardware and software for reseller partners.
 
Services will be delivered from a dedicated 4,000 square foot space in Ingram Micro's Logistics and Distribution Centre in Crick near Daventry.

Comms-care can now take delivery of hardware components and configure them at the same location for shipping, reducing the time taken to provide fully configured devices.

Mark Forster, Operations Director of Comms-care, commented: "Our key objective in launching the new configuration service is to reduce the friction involved in the whole supply chain from hardware manufacturer to end user."
 
As well as configuring hardware the engineers at the new centre can install and configure a wide range of vendor or customer specific software, including operating systems.