Comms Dealer

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.

DMSL, the SMB-focused distributor of connectivity and cloud solutions, is offering Plusnet Business Broadband at better than half price for the first 12 months of a 24 month contract until 10th July, plus double commission to resellers.

John Carter, Managing Director of DMSL, stated: "We've received a tremendous response to the initial mail-out and many more dealers are now signing-up for Plusnet's Dealer Programme."

Winning the broadband business of customers is increasingly vital, he notes, as it is now the gateway to many other opportunities. "SMBs are starting to do more business online and they are adopting cloud services such as VoIP and Microsoft Office 365 in greater numbers.

"It is only a matter of time before most of them start favouring subscription-based purchasing and they will look to the supplier of their trusted broadband connectivity first to provide those services. When resellers secure the broadband business, they open up much greater potential for the future."

Nick Silverwood, Head of Business for Plusnet, added: "We are seeing accelerated levels of interest and activity with SMB-focused channel partners and as small firms become more dependent on their broadband connections. We expect that to continue."

GCI Channel Solutions has unwrapped Channel Gateway, a portal that allows channel partners to market, sell and provision services to their clients from a single intuitive interface.

Initially partners will be able to order and provision Hosted Desktops, Exchange mailboxes and Lync accounts without needing any knowledge of specialist tools.

Ongoing support has also been simplified with easy to use tools for engineer application and all services are hosted in GCIs 27001 credited datacentres.

The GCI Channel Gateway allows partners to create their own store front to place on their website, allowing end users to browse and order services that, once authorised by the partner, can be deployed.

Head of Channel Sales, Mark Whitehead, commented: "I believe this is a pivotal moment for GCI Channel Solutions. Our customer research had highlighted that resellers were struggling to get a foot hold in the cloud market, unable to offer a compelling service proposition, provide a competitive price point or the scalability to compete with Microsoft direct.

"Channel Gateway will enable the reseller community to access emerging markets like Hosted Desktop, Hosted Lync and Hosted Exchange without the heavy investment and up skilling of technical staff associated with these lucrative products.

"We are finding the appetite is huge for these products partly due to the fact that a single VDI seat is worth 20 X EBITDA, and should be on the product road map of any reseller MD wishing to increase shareholder value and ARPU."

Daisy Wholesale has witnessed a 300% increase in its active mobile resellers in just 12 months.

The upsurge comes after the successful launch of its B2B SIM-only mobile proposition - 'The One & Only' - to the channel last May, which allows resellers to buy at a wholesale rate and sell at a margin.

In partnership with Vodafone, Daisy Wholesale's proposition aimed to demystify the sale of mobile for the reseller market after it was deemed 'over complicated'.

Andrew Wilford, Product Director for Mobile at Daisy Wholesale, said: "Mobile has always had the reputation of being too difficult to sell among the reseller community. That is why we wanted to put a simplified model out to the market; something that would allow partners to sell mobile like any other product in their portfolio.

"The results speak for themselves. By removing the risk element and making the process familiar, we have increased our monthly mobile resellers from 40 to nearly 200 in just a year."

The One & Only offers resellers a 30-day SIM-only contract that includes unlimited minutes, texts and data bolt-on deals.

The mobile industry will fight 'tooth and nail' against government proposals that would force them to share their networks, says industry commentator, Adrian Barnard, Managing Director of Prime Networks.

He told BBC News that while the plans announced by Culture Secretary Sajid Javid to extend mobile coverage to rural areas were laudable, the idea of national roaming would not work.

"It's a great objective but I think the proposal, as it stands, will be fought tooth and nail by the the industry. If I've spent a lot of money building up my network, billions of pounds in the last year or two for 4G licences and networks, I'm not going to share it with my competitors.

"The Minister should be aware that there's a massive opportunity here, I mean a real economic and possibly political opportunity if they get this right.

"There are national players available who can deliver these services to rural communities - BT Group, which owns Openreach, the UK's national network of telephone and Internet connectivity, bought a 4G licence.

"I think the Minister should talk to industry experts and people in the business who are used to working out solutions that deliver group benefits."

Avaya has revamped its Connect Channel Partner programme and put a spotlight on skills levels within Avaya collaboration technologies. The vendor has revised the requirements for achieving Silver, Gold and Platinum level status and the introduction of new Solution Experts designations - Enterprise UC and Contact Centre, Mid-market UC and Contact Centre, Networking and Video.

To achieve the Solution Expert designation in any one of these areas, partners need to acquire credentials in sales and design, achieve certain revenue thresholds as proof of their experience, and demonstrate customer satisfaction. The Silver, Gold and Platinum level status will be determined based on the number of Solution Expert designations achieved by each partner company.

The programme supports both capex and opex sales models, allowing channel partners to support premise, cloud and hybrid cloud models. They can also take a 'full stack' approach to the Avaya solution portfolio, or they can focus on a particular area such as networking or contact centre and still differentiate their expertise and gain the financial benefits for their solution area.

The programme changes go into effect on October 1st, 2014 with Avaya's fiscal 2015, allowing partners a transition year.

Andy Litherland, vice president, European Channels, Avaya, said: "Business challenges require the expertise of a trusted partner who understands how technology can be applied to achieve the desired business outcome. It's rare that a customer will require a single isolated product.

"The changes to Avaya Connect address what we as a vendor need to do to encourage our channel partners to develop the expertise to help ensure customer needs are met to the highest level of their satisfaction and reward them for doing so."

Jamie Wood, president, Avatel, added: "We believe that when you migrate to a program that is based on skills and value and not just revenue, you create a competitive differentiator based on partner competency.

"The volume-to-value transformation rewards partners that are aligning with Avaya's growth strategies and strategic products in the areas of networking, video and security."?

Daisy Wholesale has completed the line up of its new product directors, who, according to Daisy Wholesale MD Terry O'Brien, will bring a fresh focus and expertise to the channel offering.

"Earlier this year I talked about my aspiration for a more product-centric approach and to do that we needed knowledge and experience across our portfolio," said O'Brien. "Now that we have all our product directors in place, I believe that we can truly start to showcase our potential as a provider of integrated products, applications and propositions."

Lee Broxson, Product Director for Data
A new face to the Daisy Group, Broxson leaves his role as Head of Sales at Griffin to concentrate all his efforts on building a high quality data offering for the reseller market. With 18 years experience working for ISPs, Broxson has built up a wealth of experience and knowledge in all aspects of the channel, from supplier through to end-user.

Daisy Wholesale's dream team

Graham Harris, Product Director for Cloud
Moving from his former role as Head of Sales at Splicecom, the focus of Harris' new role will be to identify new cloud-based products and services for Wholesale's portfolio. Covering Daisy Wholesale's hosted voice platform (HVX), virtual hosted desktops (HDS) and various other cloud-based applications, Harris will be delivering the next generation of downstream revenue opportunities to the channel.

Alex Mawson, Product Director for Voice
A familiar face around the Daisy camp, Mawson is something of a Daisy veteran as one of the original employees when the telecoms business was born. vBefore moving over to the Wholesale side of the telecoms group, Mawson spent the majority of his time as Technical Director in the Retail arm. In his new role as Voice Product Director, he will be using his well-earned experience of IT and voice technology to continuously enhance Wholesale's telephony offering, to ensure they are consistently at the forefront of change.

Andrew Wilford, Commercial Director & Product Director for Mobile
Another Daisy Wholesale convert, is Andrew Wilford, former Head of Commercial and Mobile at Daisy Communications.vAs Commercial Director & Product Director for Mobile, Wilford has a big task ahead of him as he focuses his efforts on the continued development of compelling mobile propositions. Coupled with this will be a change in the way that Daisy Wholesale brings those offers to market, simplifying the purchasing process for resellers and delivering exceptional results.vWilford has already made his mark with the introduction of the business' most distinctive mobile offering to date, 'The One & Only', which has not only transformed Wholesale's mobile business but also the perception of selling mobile among the reseller community.

Richard Beeston, Product Director for Partner Services
An important focus for Daisy Wholesale this year is its provision of IT and professional services to the reseller market. To champion this, Vodafone's New Product Introduction Team Manager, Richard Beeston, has joined as the business' newest recruit. In his new role, Beeston will utilise his 15 years of telco experience to create an industry-leading professional services proposition - the cherry on the cake for Wholesale's thriving portfolio of products and services.

C4L Group Holdings the parent company of IT infrastructure specialists C4L, has acquired CloudSpec.

The acquisition gives CloudSpec inside access to C4L's coreTX network, meaning a costly part of the business can now be removed and efficiency will significantly improve with positive revenue forecast generated.

In turn, C4L now has a new service offering - scalable cloud backup, archive and storage.

Archie Maddocks, Service Delivery Director of CloudSpec has now been appointed as Operations Director of C4L.

Simon Mewett, CEO of C4L Group Holdings, said: "There was a twofold reason for the acquisition of CloudSpec. Firstly, CloudSpec has enormous potential through leveraging C4L's coreTX network; and secondly, our first Director-level appointment of Archie Maddocks as Operations Director of C4L not only strengthens our team as he brings with him a wealth of experience in Operations, but he also has strong commercial acumen which compliments the senior management team at C4L.

"It is a strategic goal to expand our products and services through acquisitions which offer both our customers and our channel partners the leading edge in the industry.

"So, to bring CloudSpec under C4L Group Holdings and welcome Archie to the team gives me great pleasure as I look forward to a fast-growing profitable year with many more happy customers."

Maddocksadded: "I have worked with C4L closely over the last four years with a previous company and over the last six months we have been in formal discussions about bringing CloudSpec under C4L Group Holdings.

"This way I can put my skills to best use directing the Operations within C4L and CloudSpec. By combining CloudSpec technology with the coreTX network we can deliver a highly effective cloud based storage and backup service."

Inclarity has extended its hosted telephony solution to include UC capabilities .

Inclarity Hosted Unified Communications delivers call control from the desktop, personal address books, recent calls & call history, real-time presence, contact popping and integration into all of the leading desktop, CRM and Accounting applications such as Outlook, Lotus, Lync, Google Contacts, Salesforce.com and SAGE.

Enzo Viscito, Managing Director, Inclarity, said: "With Inclarity Hosted UC organisations can gain a real productivity improvement from their staff while significantly transforming the service they deliver to their customers."

Video conferencing revenue experienced a strong seasonal decline in the first quarter of 2014, but it remains positive on a year-over-year basis, noted Infonetics Research in its new report.

"The dedicated systems market continues to struggle as companies look for more cost-effective video solutions," said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research.

"This dynamic is driving the PBX-based video market which is delivering all market growth."

The worldwide enterprise video conferencing and telepresence market was dealt a strong seasonal blow in 1Q4, down 22% sequentially. Demand for videoconferencing capabilities remains strong, but buyers' preferences for less costly personal systems is slowing revenue growth.

Sales of PBX-based systems are up 32% in 1Q14 from the year-ago first quarter videophones were once again the fastest growing segment of the hardware endpoint market, with unit shipments increasing 48% in 1Q14 from the same period a year ago.

Growth in Asia Pacific has been slowing, but it is still poised to become the strongest performing region in 2014.