Comms Dealer

European software vendors have generally enjoyed a relatively good year and have responded well to recessionary pressures. In 2013, the last full year for which accounts are available, revenues for the top 500 European ISVs increased by 13.04% to €104.9 billion ($137.8billion).

Overall publicly listed ISVs outperformed the major groups and their subsidiaries with growth of 14.73% (compared with 5.84% for parent companies and 11.01% for subsidiaries).

Independents also fared well, growing by 10.46% over the same period. These are among the findings from 'ISVs in Europe - The Top 500', the latest database report from IT Europa which is published today.

The database report provides further evidence that is applications rather than hardware that is driving IT sales in Europe.

Despite the challenging economic climate in many parts of Europe, ISV revenues showed increases in all 33 countries covered by the report.

The Danish market exhibited the most dramatic increase in revenues (up by 30.9%) followed by Hungary (23.9%) and Turkey (19.6%) and Russia (18.6%). The UK returned one of the lower growth rates at 3.0%.

IT Europa research manager Auri Aittokallio said: "Generally, ISVs are proving resilient in the face of both market and economic pressures. There are signs that this stems largely from adjusting their business models with services last year accounting for 44.2% of total revenues - up from 36.9% in our previous report."

Outsourced IT services firm Comms-care has acquired UK channel-based professional services firm Platform Consultancy Services for an undisclosed fee.

The acquisition enables Comms-care to penetrate deeper into the professional services market as it looks to expand its customer propositions around Microsoft, VMware, Citrix and NetApp technologies.

Ben Davies, Managing Director at Comms-care, said: "Platform is a perfect fit for Comms-care because it already delivers high end professional services in technology areas that our customers have immediate requirements for.

"We invest substantial time forging close relationships with our customers to ensure our services proposition is aligned with the needs of their business, and the addition of Platform will bolster those relationships further by demonstrating our commitment to both them and the channel as a whole."

Platform was established in 2002 and delivers a range of professional services to many of the UK's top VARs.

Simon Day, Partner Director at Platform, added: "Many of our partners are Comms-care's partners too so it makes sense to join forces and provide all partners with an enriched collaborative services model."

Comms-care currently supports in excess of 700 channel partners, some of which already use Platform's professional services. The acquisition will consolidate those partner relationships by delivering a much richer customer experience through enhanced partner services and increased operational capabilities.

Davies added: "We have seen a huge increase in requests from our partner base to provide more professional services around emerging Microsoft technologies such as Office 365, Lync, Hyper-V, System Centre, as well as Citrix and VMware virtualisation solutions.

"The business combination with Platform enables us to meet that demand while still providing the levels of service our partners have come to expect."

As part of the business combination Platform's original board members of Sean Armstrong, Andrew Mansfield and Nigel Roberts will all remain within the business and continue to drive forward their relevant technology streams.

Platform's Partner Director, Simon Day will take a seat on the Comms-care Board as Professional Services Director and will be responsible for all Platform related business.

Comms-care is in advanced stages of identifying other opportunities that will add further capability to its expanding services portfolio.

Ingram Micro has revamped its brand identity in a move to better show its outlook on technology and supply chain services.

"This is more than a logo change. We view this brand refresh as an investment in our future," said Alain Monié, CEO at Ingram Micro.

"Ingram Micro has made bold new moves with recent acquisitions, establishing global business units and developing a more global and customer-centric mindset with an agile, insightful and dependable culture.

"Refreshing and repositioning the Ingram Micro brand is a natural next step in our company's growth and success. Our new brand identity and strategy is a reflection of a bold new Ingram Micro.

"With our new brand, we want to present an identity that is simple, modern and represents who we are. We have the capabilities, insight and experience to help our partners - and their customers - understand, acquire and use technology to be more competitive."

Commenting on the recent launch of Policy Exchange's Technology Manifesto, Co-CEO of Outsourcery Piers Linney says the report makes important references on the need to use data more effectively to improve public services.

"The public sector contains a huge number of organisations with many different purposes and as a result has come in for a lot of criticism for being too siloed in how it operates," he said.

Encouraging government organisations to collaborate more and share services has been a central thrust of Cabinet Office strategy for some time, and the ability to do this rests on how data is stored, used and shared between public sector bodies.

There are a number of projects currently taking place within the industry in order to enable this collaboration. UK-based Cloud Services Provider Outsourcery, for example, is currently in the final stages of development for a cloud platform, in partnership with Microsoft and Dell, that will be accredited to carry secure and classified government documentation.

At a local level, work to increase collaboration is leading to the development of smart cities projects - where significant quantities of data are being shared and analysed to develop more effective services across municipal areas.

Outsourcery aims to drive this through every aspect of the business, from basing its headquarters in Manchester, to hosting industry functions in the region like the 'Digitally Enabled Smarter City' event, in order to promote discussion around how to achieve greater collaboration for public services.

Linney added: "I am supporting Manchester, where my company Outsourcery is based, to develop a 'smart' city approach so we can replicate the achievements seen in other cities where data has been used to build and develop more effective public services.

"While the success of shared services initiatives must be driven at the local level, to reflect local priorities, recommendations like those in Policy Exchange's report should be considered by central government to foster innovation and speed up thinking in this vital area."

Outsourcery was recently accepted to CloudStore, the Government's G-Cloud 5 framework, to offer its cloud-based services to the public sector.

Linney added: "While the power of technology to improve our lives is incredibly exciting, it is also important that we remember that much of the data held by the public sector is directly linked to an individual citizen.

"Understanding and respecting data privacy in the context of delivering public services is therefore an important step to achieving greater collaboration.

"Points raised in the recent manifesto recommend new ways to involve the public in how their data is used. Getting the balance right on privacy is as important as establishing the technology that would enable this to happen".

So the latest TUC survey shows that whether you can feel the benefit of the economic recovery is dependent on where you live in the UK. No surprises there. London powers ahead followed closely by Manchester and Birmingham, but for most people, in most places, all they know is that life is still tough, writes Clive Jefferys, JMA Network.

The report concludes that most of the population is 'hanging on grimly to the same job' and not willing to risk change, unless there are substantially improved rewards on offer.

While this may well be true across employment as a whole, within the mix many types of qualified professional are already on the move and certainly within telecoms this is true. Deloitte's yearly analysis reveals that recruitment advertising has increased by a whopping 25% and 85% of companies want to continue to expand their headcount.

At JMA, our new salary offers are up by 11%, but of 102 vacancies on our books a month ago, 83 are still open. Apart from the positions that we filled, it seems that most companies are not having much luck.

The UK workforce continues to peak at an all-time high due to a risk averse, static candidate market, yet in just three months unemployment fell by an incredible 375,000 driven by seasonal and temporary hires.

Here's a good example of this conundrum. One of my friends has just got the go ahead to run a £50m property redevelopment in Central London. Yet despite all this economic positivity, he will have to prefabricate as much as he can, because he cannot recruit enough skilled workers to do it onsite.

So who are the winners in our battle to attract new staff?
Well, this year's round of telecoms awards reveal an awful lot... we had 11 Finalists and 7 Winning Companies from our client list.

How did we come to work with those organisations? Simply because they offer great jobs, great pay, give greater worth to well matched candidates, and value what we do to make it happen too.

They are companies that are fast moving and decisive in word and deed, and that's what our candidates want to buy into. Perhaps if more companies followed this example, next year they could be winners too?

Panasonic has entered the cloud market following a link up with Radius Communications that will see the vendor offering cloud PBX and cloud contact centre services to the UK and Ireland. Radius Communications has developed a bespoke service, called storm, for Panasonic which is fully interoperable and works in conjunction with its hardware. This includes Panasonic's latest range of SIP handsets, as well as on premise Panasonic PBX systems.

The solution is designed to enable Panasonic's distributors to take cloud PBX services and hybrid deployments using Panasonic CPE to their traditional SME customer base, as well as secure valuable new business with larger PBX and advanced contact centre deployments.

This service is now ready for launch in the UK, with a further launch in Ireland planned later this year. The solution will be made available exclusively through Panasonic's distribution network, and represent Panasonic's first offering for both the global cloud and contact centre markets.

Panasonic manufactures over 300,000 PBXs a year and the move is in response to declining demand for in-situ PBXs and the growing trend for cloud telephony.

The development of the storm proposition represents a new addition to the Panasonic product family, and a decisive move for the organisation as it seeks to expand its range of communications services.

Bob Mercer (pictured above), Network Communications Group Manager at Panasonic, said: "Though Panasonic remains fully committed to the development of customer premise systems, the rapid expansion of the cloud segment of the PBX market has shown us that there is increasing demand for hosted alternatives.

"storm is our response to this demand, and will offer our customers the same enterprise grade features that they have come to expect from our range of PBX systems."
?Users of the new storm services will be able to use the platform as a standalone PBX replacement from the cloud, or as part of a hybrid deployment alongside existing Panasonic equipment.

Several UK resellers have now contracted to use the new storm services, and Mercer is excited about the platform's prospects for 2014.

"We are expecting a good reception for storm, and with the platform now live we are looking forward to working with our distributor partners to roll out the solution over the coming months."

Radius Communications has developed a bespoke service for Panasonic which is fully interoperable and works in conjunction with its hardware.

This includes Panasonic's latest range of SIP handsets, as well as on premise Panasonic PBX systems.

The solution is designed to enable Panasonic's distributors to take cloud PBX services and hybrid deployments using Panasonic CPE to their traditional SME customer-base, as well as secure valuable new business with larger PBX and advanced contact centre deployments.

This service is now ready for launch in the UK, with a further launch in Ireland planned later this year. The solution will be made available exclusively through Panasonic's distribution network, and represent Panasonic's first offering for both the global cloud and contact centre markets.

Intercity has become the first telecoms business to receive the ServiceMark accreditation from the Institute of Customer Service.

The designation is awarded following a process that encompasses results taken from a client survey and an on-site assessment of Intercity's customer experience and satisfaction levels, undertaken by an independent assessor.

Intercity's Chief Executive Officer Andrew Jackson said: "This award is great recognition of the work our staff undertake every day to ensure all customers receive the highest levels of service, from the moment of enquiry, right through to delivery of products and solutions and of course the care and support we provide thereafter.

"Achieving this level of recognition only comes through real team effort and everybody at Intercity continues to demonstrate such passion and commitment to offering the best service they can. The aim now is to ensure the award is used as a platform to build upon and ensure our vision and values align perfectly with what is expected of a world class service business."

In the final report, the independent assessor commented: "We were impressed that Intercity was keen not just to achieve the Institute ServiceMark Accreditation, but that they want to use it as a means to enhance an already strong culture of continuous improvement."

Value added international distie ScanSource has announced it has formed a partnership with Motion Computing, specialist in integrated mobile technologies. The new deal will enhance its product portfolio across the Benelux region and in the UK.

Under the terms of an agreement, ScanSource will distribute Motion Computing's full portfolio of mobile technology offerings, including its platforms, tablets and associated peripherals.

With the enhancement of the portfolio, ScanSource resellers will be able to target more vertical markets such as retail, utilities, healthcare, construction and public sectors, it says.

"Our reseller partners have been looking for Windows-based tablet solutions that can meet the needs of their field-based, mobile end user customers, and we believe Motion platforms can meet the demands of these vertical markets," says Maurice van Rijn, managing director, ScanSource POS and Barcode, Europe.

Telford-based communications provider Entanet has helped local Shropshire charity, Severn Hospice, raise over £5,000 over the last four years by participating in a number of fundraising events, including last weekend's Dragon Boat Race.

Entanet has participated in the annual Dragon Boat Race in aid of the hospice since 2011, raising over £1000 each year. This year a team of Entanet staff, dressed as superheroes, competed against other local businesses and organisations in a series of heats along the river Severn in Shrewsbury, on a very hot summer's day.

Darren Farnden, Head of Marketing at Entanet said: "The Dragon Boat Race has been central to our fundraising for several years now and we've had fun supporting it and the hospice in different ways to raise much needed funds for the charity. We're delighted to have raised over £5000 in the last four years."

Prior to the race the company held a number of activities in the office to help boost the fundraising total, including a cake bake and sale, 'pin the fire on the dragon' game, sweetie sweepstake, casual dress day and an auction among staff of two signed Wolves shirts.

In addition to the Dragon Boat races, the company last year participated in a 'fire walk' which saw several members of staff walk across hot coals to raise money for the charity which cares for people with progressive and complex illnesses and provides support to their families.

A team of colleagues from Rochdale based Zen Internet took on the Total Warrior challenge in Bramham Park, Leeds on 21st June.

The team battled mud, hills, water, fire, more mud and ice as they were put through the gruelling course hoping to raise over £2,500 for Zen's chosen charity, The Christie's Young Oncology Unit. Those who finished were greeted with a victory beer and for the lucky ones a hose pipe to clean up.

Total Warrior has 25 to 30 punishing obstacles including Human BBQ, The Shocker, The Plunge, and Hang Tough, to name but a few.

Designed alongside ex-military personnel, competitors get the ultimate test of strength, stamina, mental determination and teamwork. Success is about survival and not speed.

"This is the first time we have had a team enter for the Total Warrior and are delighted that they all finished in one piece. This is an important charity event for Zen and our aim is to raise funds for The Christie, whether that's by battling through obstacles or simply donating online," said Caroline Taylor, HR Director and Head of Zen's Social and Charities Committee.