Comms Dealer

A new cloud-based UC offering based on the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) platform has been rolled out by Node4 targeting the mid-market with voice, video, instant messaging and presence, conferencing, voicemail and integrated messaging, mobility and contact centre.

Node4 is seeking additional partners to bring this solution to market.

A recent Node4 survey of 200 UK IT decision makers showed that cost was the number one complaint regarding UC in the mid-market. And mid-market companies feel that their UC deployments are not reaching their full potential.

Just 18% of mid-market companies rank their UC deployments as being in the top quartile in terms of functionality, and one in five claim to be 'very satisfied' with their UC.

Node4 will offer its Cisco HCS-based solutions to the channel at wholesale prices.

Channel partners will be able to sell licences at a reduced cost compared to direct mid-market sales, and white label the service with their own branding and a powerful self-provisioning tool, said the firm.

"In the last year we've sensed real hunger within the mid-market for the kind of advanced, fully-featured UC systems that, until recently, only the largest enterprises have been able to afford," commented Simon Herbert, Cloud Solutions Development Specialist, Cisco.

"There's an enormous opportunity here. It's only right that more advanced functionality should start to migrate down the chain via a UcaaS model."

Andrew Wilson, Director of Channel Sales, Node4, added: "Our focus is on new customer acquisitions in the mid-market and our channel partnerships form a critical part of our strategy.

"With the expansion of our UC proposition to incorporate Cisco HCS, collaboration solutions are no longer a privilege for the large enterprise. For the first time Node4 is giving its partners the opportunity to offer a UC solution based on HCS to market at a price to suit mid-sized businesses."

Enghouse Interactive has signed a partnership agreement with ScanSource Imago enabling the distributor to resell a range of Enghouse products including the Enghouse Interactive Communications Center (EICC), together with its Quality Management Suite (QMS) and Real Time Speech Analytics (RTSA) offerings.

Phil Boyd, Vice President of Merchandising, ScanSource Imago, said: "We were looking for a partner with expertise in contact centre and customer interaction technology.

"EICC has a native integration into Skype for Business and a strong record on other UC platforms including Avaya and Cisco."

Gary Bennett, Director of Channel Sales at Enghouse Interactive, added: "We continue to show strong momentum in the scale of our contact centre implementations. Partnering with ScanSource gives us the opportunity to accelerate this momentum throughout 2017 and beyond."

Cloud and network provider Exponential-e's financial results for year ending January 31st 2017 were ahead of forecast with revenues up 26% to almost £97.5m driven by an increase in demand for cloud network computing and managed services.

Exponential-e reported EBITDA of over £20m, up 45% with profit before tax up 48% to just over £9.9m.

CEO Lee Wade said: "The last year has been incredibly successful for the business, delivering record revenues. Customer acquisition has continued to rise fuelled by strong demand for our cloud-based offerings.

"Our model is built to deliver innovative, 'non-stop compute' solutions, that use best-of-breed technologies. These have proved popular with our customers over the last 12 months and have contributed to this revenue growth."

The last 12 months have seen Exponential-e develop a range of new products and services.

In July it launched an SD-WAN proposition which allows companies to centrally assign and manage application policies across multiple sites and scale bandwidth up or down as required.

In February it made a 10 Gigabit Internet service available, which is over 400 times faster than the Government's minimum definition of superfast broadband, available to businesses throughout the UK.

The company also expanded its operations outside London, moving its Manchester office to a new, bigger location and growing its headcount there to 20 people.

Earlier in April, it appointed Afshin Attari as its Director of Public Sector who is tasked with significantly growing the company's presence in the government computing space.

"Despite the ongoing market uncertainty we anticipate the next 12 months will continue to be positive," added Wade.

"Our determination to innovate and create products ahead of the market will endure and hold us in good stead. As further commitment to this part of our business, we have earmarked £2m to be used solely for research and development."

Avaya has named Stephane Boudier as new EU Mid-Market Leader following a year working with the vendor as Orange Global Account Director, delivering a +160% growth in Avaya's mid-market space in Q4 2016.

He took over French Channel last summer contributing to an expansion of Avaya France's Unified Communication, Contact Center and Networking solutions.

Boudier brings almost 30 years of experience in the telecoms industry, including two decades with service providers such as TDF, Orange, and SFR.

He also brings international experience to his new pan-European role having formerly served as CEO of PSN in Poland, Executive CTO for Orange Jordan, and years of experience in both North American and Asian companies.

Fadi Moubarak, Vice President for Avaya Channel, EMEA & APAC, said: "Stephane has demonstrated both a clear understanding of the diverse needs of our partners and end customers as well as real enthusiasm for achieving growth and strong, enduring relationships."

The extent of MyPhones.com's influence across the globe has been revealed following analysis of SIP trunks in use with the firm's Altos hosted telephony platform which highlights customers in the southern as well as the northern hemisphere.

"We originally designed Altos for the UK reseller channel," said Dr Stuart Marsden, founder and chief executive of MyPhones.com. "So, it came as a surprise to see just how far our end-user base had spread.

"As expected, the vast majority of our end users are located in the UK, but they are also spread across Europe, North America and Asia, and as far as South Africa, Australia and New Zealand in the southern hemisphere."

International end user subscriptions now represent almost 5% of MyPhones.com's total subscriptions.

MyPhones.com currently has end-users in more than 60 countries covering most of mainland Europe and Russia.

In Asia, they include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, China, Japan and South Korea. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States, Canada and Brazil also figure.

"Altos doesn't mind whose SIP trunks are used to carry the calls," added Dr Marsden. "And our approach is to try to accommodate the needs of our resellers, leaving them free to negotiate the best possible rates for SIP trunks and minutes from their preferred providers.

"Some of our resellers are looking overseas either for better SIP trunk rates or to deliver a service to customers based outside the UK. And we are very happy to support them."

The top 20 overseas countries with Altos registrations are Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Germany, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Luxembourg, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, United States.

Intercity Technology has invested £10m into the development and launch of Touch Technology, a global UC solution that has already been adopted by a number of global brands and is due to launch into the channel this year with a focus on boutique resellers.

Touch Technology was developed in-house and is protected by a global patent, offering integrated voice calls, video conferencing, mobility, screen sharing and collaborative tools.

Touch Technology is also available as a mobile first solution without the need for any fixed infrastructure.

Touch Technology also has an open API and integrates with other business systems including Sales Cloud from Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.

Andrew Jackson, CEO at Intercity Technology, said: "To have global brands embracing and benefitting from technology that has been developed here in the UK is a huge achievement.

"We have created a disruptive solution that can completely transform the way businesses work. Boosting productivity is key to business success and Touch Technology is an exciting innovation that empowers organisations to facilitate communication and collaborative working across the business."

Lee Hull, executive director at Intercity technology, added: "Thanks to its global coverage and scalability, Touch Technology enables us to support more businesses across the world, helping them to work smarter and get the most out of their team.

"We've worked hard to create a flexible and scalable communications solution which can be quickly deployed. We're looking forward to launching this into the channel later this year and we are confident that it will become a selling point for our channel partners."

The current industry obsession with Big Data and Business Intelligence plays directly into the hands of Sentel, according to CEO Ger Connery who has spent two decades working with telecoms analytics in the cloud.

Against the backdrop of the late '90s dot.com gold rush Connery first worked as a Sales Manager in payroll software and mailing equipment before joining Sentel, a telecoms start up, as Sales Director in 1998. The company serviced the network reporting market which at that time was only served by BT. It won a number of large corporate and public sector accounts including Barclays, AIB, the Department of Social Welfare and MOJ, along with many SME accounts mainly through the partner channel.

"Our USP was online access to reporting suites for CDR management with graphical as well as statistical display, not DOS which was the standard presentation output back then," explained Connery. "We were the first true cloud-based provider of telecoms analytics taking a managed service approach. We targeted all of the alternative telcos and resellers, and becoming profitable within three years of launch was a milestone."

Connery put his house on the line to lead an MBO before becoming CEO in January 2006. "When the stock market crash came we had to readjust," he added. "Our move into more traditional call logging through vendor channels such as Cisco, Avaya and Mitel followed, but always in the cloud and with a managed service wrap. It didn't suit everyone as many were still wedded to the on-premise approach. But we had developed a hard shell, always believing that cloud was the future."

To drive revenues the company branched out into other areas such as billing analytics for Your Communications which then became C&W, and ran a mobile reporting service for the NHS. "The market changed quickly during the noughties," recalled Connery. "After the building downturn and the following economic downturn of 2008, and drawing on our broad experience of all things telecoms, we decided to invest in an all-in-one telecoms platform focused on cost reduction, audit and asset tracking, tapping into the growing Business Intelligence and Big Data space.

"We built and launched our TEMS solution targeting enterprise and the public sector. This service is a strong performer for us today. We never lost sight of our telco and service provider history and thankfully there has been a huge upturn in activity in this space since UC adoption has become the trend. Sales are rising for our UC analytics and our new toll fraud protection service propositions, tapping into the cybercrime defence market."

Sentel has now streamlined its services into two clear lines of business - a Service Provider UC Analytics wrap and Enterprise with full TEM managed service wrap. "Instead of all things to all people, with 10 services we are clearly defined and better resourced to pick our battles," added Connery.

Sentel has over 500 customers and expects to grow 30 per cent this year as part of a three year plan to achieve 100 per cent growth, with staff numbers forecast to rise by 50 per cent. Connery says a young management team and more dynamic product development will speed up the delivery of products and services to market, thereby accelerating growth. "Our drive is to double turnover in the next five years and build the business into a BI market leader in the telecoms space," stated Connery.

The growing popularity of UC and the cyber fraud issue has also improved Sentel's position in the service provider market, resulting in a product roadmap that includes toll fraud protection, voice recording integration, contact centre, SP facing UC adoption reports, revenue assurance and CTI wraps. "The consolidation of SIs and telecoms vendors served to trigger a refocus on our channel driven services, making them sharper and more stable," said Connery. "All the chat is data analytics and business intelligence. This is good for us and we are in the right place."•

When elevating portals to the next level there is no match for taking an intelligent approach, according to plan.com co-founder Keith Curran who reveals the remarkable 'smart' capabilities of the company's upcoming Version 4 portal.

Since launching into the UK market in April 2014 plan.com has developed three versions of its renowned portal, but the latest 'smart' iteration, Version 4, comes with a brain. With it, the company has pioneered targeted data penetration and automation giving power to partners who control it. The primary purpose is to enable partners to do things they currently can't do with network operators or distributors, while giving them a helicopter view of their entire operation 'as things happen'. "Our investment in V4 and a private APN into the heart of the network is huge," stated Curran. "It enables the intelligent management of data and delivers live insights that are invaluable for partners wanting to understand the anatomy of their business in real-time. V4 is the manifestation of our thinking about the future of portals."

Laying your hands on needles in finite haystacks is easy compared to identifying and connecting useful data assets in ever-expanding seas of Big Data. But Version 4 extracts key information automatically and in real-time, putting unprecedented power into the hands of partners. "It's no different to partners having an infinite number of people analysing every aspect of their business 24/7, with key data fed back to them live via a TV, computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone," added Curran.

It is estimated that 90 per cent of the world's data has been created in the last two years, amounting to several quintillion bytes of unconnected user, network and traffic data per day, creating a wilderness of information and a new technology frontier for probing innovations such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). These techniques push the boundaries, they interpret the creation of data in real-time to reveal patterns that put channel partners streets ahead of the competition, pointed out Curran.

"The answer is in the detail, but the challenge with Big Data is that there is no guarantee of finding it," he said. "V4 will be regarded as the industry's first smart portal because it does all of the detailing for partners and gives them the information they need when they need it, online and in real-time on whatever connected device they choose. Partners can manage their business from anywhere in the world. Some partners are 'one man' operations, others have 500 employees, whatever their size customers will be impressed and astounded by the flexibility."

The portal enables partners to build fully bespoke tariffs and whole solutions in front of customers, calibrated to meet their needs and offering a level of flexibility not currently possible with network operators or distributors. Partners can also build deals according to the most advantageous commission structures based on contract value and likely overspend, and see the commission figures in real-time as the deal is put together.

The real-time management of existing customers is also a boon, and Curran cited practical examples of V4 in action to illustrate this point. "If a customer visits a country its national flag immediately appears to indicate that the client is now roaming there, enabling the partner to react accordingly in real-time," he explained.

Curran also offered a snapshot of the portal's wider capabilities, of which there are many. These include knowing the moment when customers are starting to overspend (prompting an appropriate action from the partner). V4 also identifies which customers are most at risk from the competition (displaying the exact status of SIMs that, for example, are out of contract and how many days are left until they become out of contract); which customers are the most lucrative; the handsets customers use (highlighting upgrade opportunities); insights into the live status of deals made by individual sales people and collective teams (offering quote-to-sale conversion rates in real-time); and shows information such as customers who are having difficulties paying their bill.

Plan.com's claim to have introduced, with V4, the industry's first 'intelligent portal' is driven by its mission to always put partners first, so much so that the direction of plan.com's portal development is largely governed by feedback from partners to ensure the portal always reflects their fundamental requirements and 'wish list'. "It's all about the partner and taking them to the top of the pyramid," added Curran. "Enabling them to not only match but go beyond the capabilities of network operators. We also have a partner 'radar' that blips 24-7-365. They are part of the team and we encourage partners to talk to us. Not a day goes by without a portal enhancement based on their feedback."

Curran says the imminent launch of V4 will render the industry's old ways of doing things defunct, and he believes that the core technology driving V4 will continue to blaze a trail in solving partners' day-to-day bugbears, including spreadsheets and renewals. "Partner commissions are reported on spreadsheets that need reconciling, which for many partners means a full-time member of staff to fulfil this task," he explained. "With V4, all relevant data is automatically fed into the partner's Wallet on screen, in real-time, so they know immediately how much money they are making.

"As for partner growth, losing one customer costs twice as much as gaining a new one, because two new customers must be added to continue the growth. Feedback from partners shows that 75 per cent of their time is spent on renewals, so we developed V4 to remove this costly task, allowing partners to manage renewals in minutes rather than days.

"We are empowering partners to do more than a network operator by just using their finger tips. Our in-house developers have succeeded in their original core usability objective - to make even Apple look complicated. A good portal is simple in nature and easy to use; a great portal delivers what partners want and expect; but a groundbreaking portal delivers the unexpected. As the first intelligent smart portal, that's what V4 is all about."

VoIP over VDSL poses a long-term risk to business continuity despite many company leaders rating the technology as adequate, according to Spitfire's joint Managing Director Harry Bowlby who puts a spotlight on the potential pitfalls.

A lack of QoS guarantees for VDSL (Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line) leaves businesses vulnerable to poor voice quality with no route to resolution, emphasised Bowlby. And users wanting to upgrade to Ethernet connectivity for VoIP can face deployment lead times of up to a year. The situation is set to worsen as more public Internet services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix and digital TV are prioritised. The answer, according to Bowlby, is a complete end-to-end SIP service run over a wholly owned IP and TDM infrastructure. "Businesses that choose a VoIP solution without appropriate QoS guarantees are gambling with their future," he stated. "VoIP telephony has numerous benefits in terms of cost savings, flexibility and functionality. But to provide a dependable VoIP service a high quality, reliable and secure online connection is vital."

VDSL technology has become widely established in the UK and is increasingly being used by businesses for high speed Internet access. With download speeds of up to 80Mbps it is not difficult to see why. However, a broadband circuit optimised for Internet browsing is not the best choice for VoIP. "To give satisfactory voice quality it is generally accepted that a circuit must deliver a maximum latency of 150ms end-to-end (mouth-to-ear), packet loss less than one per cent with jitter less than 45ms," noted Bowlby. "These requirements may be met on a VDSL service most of the time. However, they are not guaranteed to be met for all or any of the time. A 500ms delay on a web page is barely noticeable, but such a delay during a telephone call is clearly noticeable."

QoS is available on VDSL as a chargeable option. VDSL supports two types of services - Best Efforts and Real-Time. By default all traffic is Best Efforts meaning that in the event of congestion voice traffic could be dropped just like any other Best Efforts traffic. Real-Time QoS is an additional service that can be purchased for downstream VDSL. But there is no QoS mechanism deployed upstream on VDSL as this is not considered necessary because most web access involves download, not upload. However, a phone conversation is asynchronous and requires equal download and upload quality.

"No actual latency, jitter or packet loss targets are stated for VDSL Real-Time QoS, the service just offers to prioritise marked packets over others," added Bowlby. "In the event of poor voice quality on VDSL faults may be reported, but fault investigation is limited to the underlying broadband service. That said, VDSL is probably okay for now for many customers. It is considered by many to be adequate for voice based on how the wholesale network is currently dimensioned and performing. But in the future VDSL may not perform as it currently does in which case there are no guarantees to fall back on, because no contractual commitments have been broken."

Network usage is growing by the day and a big growth driver is television delivery over broadband with new service providers such as Amazon Prime, BT Vision, Netflix and NOW TV requiring assured data rates for their subscribers. "As this grows other traffic may have to take lower priority," said Bowlby. "High definition TV is already here and Ultra HD (4K) has been launched that uses 30Mbps per TV channel. As competition grows, to become a leader in the streaming TV market the national network will have to meet this new objective. Given the amount of money being spent on content for TV services Internet broadcasters will be keen to ensure that viewers on VDSL have priority access. As video traffic grows it will take priority over VoIP traffic and voice may get squeezed out resulting in call quality issues, which neither the end user nor the service provider have any recourse to resolve. So a critical consideration for customers should be, ‘if VDSL proves unsuitable over time can I swap it for another circuit that will work?'."

If in time a VDSL circuit proves unsuitable users may consider replacing it with Ethernet or complementing VDSL with a voice approved circuit. This is dependent on the supplier being active in the local exchange and whether there is spare capacity to provide the circuit. "It can take up to one year or more to install a new Ethernet circuit," said Bowlby. "During this time a business will continue to experience poor quality voice calls which may prove detrimental to the organisation."

Spitfire has tackled the issue head on with its own Voice Approved Broadband circuits for VoIP SIP trunks which assure end-to-end call QoS with guarantees on latency, jitter and delay both upstream and downstream. The reassurance of an end-to-end service with QoS guarantees has been a key factor in the growth of Spitfire's SIP trunks for VoIP. "Businesses that opt for VoIP solutions without QoS guarantees are storing up trouble," warned Bowlby. "VoIP over VDSL is a significant potential risk to UK business.""

As a world champion powerboat racer Informatica's channel chief Rodney Foreman has emphatically proven his competitive strength, which is reflected in the company's ramped up ambition to become an ever potent force in the global data management market.

Informatica's worldwide expansion campaign has begun, and with Foreman at the helm it is likely to be another example of high speed growth and glory. The company's long-term goal is to double the value of the business from $5 billion to $10 billion and accelerate its strategy to deliver more data management offerings in the cloud. "We are looking to drive 50 per cent of our business through the channel," stated Foreman, who is Informatica's SVP for the Partner Ecosystem. "Our priority is to ramp up partner capacity and give them the skills and knowledge they need to sell and deploy our products. We are addressing this, our greatest challenge, by creating an authorisation programme with training roadmaps and courses. This is a crucial part of our vision for the future and will be central to how we grow the business."

The company currently works with over 7,000 customers and 500 partners globally and is focused on building a network of VAD and VAR channel partners via a two-tier programme designed to bring to market its Intelligent Data Platform. As part of the growth strategy Informatica has formed a distribution deal with Arrow. The company also expanded its distribution agreement with Avnet to include the United States and Canada, building on agreements in EMEA, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. "The implementation of a two-tier channel programme will enable VADs to undertake partner recruitment and activation," said Foreman.

Informatica was founded in 1993 by Gaurav Dhillon and Diaz Nesamoney after they spotted an opportunity to help organisations gain a competitive advantage from making the most of their data assets. "Our purpose is to enable customers to achieve maximum business value from all things Big Data in the cloud, real-time and streaming," explained Foreman. "Informatica provides software to help organisations turn their troves of raw data into actionable information."

In 2015 Informatica changed ownership and transformed its corporate structure, a move that made life better for employees and enabled the company to be more flexible in how it builds products and services, while speeding up the development of cloud offerings.

"The cloud has been one of the most fundamental business model shifts during the last 10 years," added Foreman. "That meant we needed to find ways of getting closer to our customers through a broader range of touchpoints. The global channel partner programme, launched in February, widened our scope to bring in new partners. Reaching new customers globally is dependent on the success of our channel programme and the work we do with partners."

Foreman says Informatica's biggest opportunity is to become 'the intelligent cloud data management platform for mid-market companies'. "We are seeing tremendous growth in the mid-market," he noted. "We also see a huge opportunity with data governance. Our acquisition of data governance platform Diaku supports that focus. We can also combine this with data security in an approach that secures data at the source, rather than by protecting the perimeter which is the practice of most security software vendors."

Foreman expects the evolution of his strategy to embrace more OEM type business models with system integrators, jointly creating solutions by industry vertical around data integration, data management, data quality and data security. "We expect to leverage the VAD marketplaces to align our products with other vendors and create these industry vertical solutions," he added.

Foreman brings deep industry insights to the task in hand. His career began as an engineer working on portable computers at Compaq Computer Corporation before becoming an architect for large scale network systems, and then moving into software product management and sales. He went on to lead the cloud software channel business unit at IBM. To sum up, Foreman's career experience positions him well to succeed in his current role as Informatica's senior exec' responsible for the channel. "I enjoy having face-to-face time working with partners," he added. "Creating a win-win scenario with partners is something I'm passionate about. We will continue to strengthen our partnerships, execute on our aggressive product roadmap and grow our customer base, while reflecting the broad shift in customer buying behaviours.

"Customers today are more likely to purchase multi-vendor solutions from technology partners. They want resellers and SIs to be their trusted advisors, providing complete end-to-end solutions that leverage the cloud. In this context, partners will evolve into a role that drives new customer sales and innovation around ISV products. The most successful partners will combine multiple vendor solutions that are targeted at specific industries. That will be the way customers buy in the future."•