Comms Dealer

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.

Nimans has stepped up the battle against cold calling with an enhanced version of an exclusive device that now blocks all calls without consent.

Two previous devices are based on blocking pre-programmed numbers but this latest device works in reverse, only allowing calls through that have been previously agreed.

The device can be remotely programmed and has been developed by CPR Global (The Call Prevention Registry) which is the UK's leading anti-nuisance call service provider.

In a further boost the cold calling industry now has a further unlikely 'enemy' in Griff from the hit TV show The Call Centre who has joined CPR in the fight against nuisance calls. Griff is spearheading an 'enough is enough' campaign and has even started his own call blocker business.

Nimans' Purchasing Director, Andy Winfield said: "The CPR Call Blocker is an easy to set-up all-in-one everyday product which helps retain privacy in the home or office, providing Caller ID is active.

"This latest innovation, the Call Blocker Protect+ blocks all calls that are not trusted numbers added to an 'allowed list'. The Protect+ also enables numbers to be added or removed remotely from the designated number list.

"Call blocking technology is becoming big business and offers resellers a great way to add to their existing revenue streams. 85% of people receive nuisance calls. It's an area of the market too big for resellers to ignore."

Exertis Micro-P's three big brand roadshow events saw the distributor bring together expertise from the mobile division's major product labels direct to the channel.

The three events held in Manchester on 14th May, Reading on 15th May, and Glasgow on 22nd May, were fully booked by resellers eager to hear the latest news and insider information direct from both Exertis Micro-P and its stable of big brands.

Speakers on each day came from Samsung, Nokia, LG, Sony, ZTE and Kazam, covering details of their product portfolios available from Exertis Micro-P, as well as top tips for the channel.

Each vendor hosted an informative discussion on the day delivering insights into their market, roadmaps, objection handling, and key sales messaging to ensure sales teams around the country are fully up to date.

Ewan Davies, head of devices at Exertis Micro-P, commented on the events: "We have had a brilliant turnout for all three of these events, and it's easy to see why. It's fantastic to get all our customers from the breadth of the country together to learn and network.

"Also, it is a testament to the solidity of the Exertis Micro-P mobile proposition that we can get all our major vendors together to work with our customers at these events, proving how diverse we are in our product portfolio and how strong our ties to our vendors."

Exertis Micro-P will be running multiple brand roadshows on a quarterly basis going forward.

Markus Schmitt-Fumian has been appointed as CEO of snom technology AG, developer and manufacturer of IP solutions.

This appointment by the snom supervisory board is the latest in a series of internal restructuring moves undertaken during recent months.

Schmitt-Fumian's task, together with Dr. Michael Knieling and Usman Tahir, will be to progressively refocus the company on innovation and future strategy.

Schmitt-Fumian said: "14 years ago, snom introduced OPEN-SIP and has succeeded in recent years in expanding internationally to cover many of the world's most important markets. Based on my international experience, it is my goal to continue this positive growth trend."

Schmitt-Fumian, 46, has previously held the position of Senior VP Business Development & Innovation and other posts at Gigaset AG and at Siemens AG.

Congrats to GCI's CEO Wayne Martin who collected the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award for the Midlands region.
 
This award is considered as one of the most recognised business award programmes in the world, celebrating the UK's most innovative business leaders, held in more than 145 cities and in more than 60 countries worldwide.
 
The candidates are measured on their entrepreneurial spirit and personal integrity, their innovation and strategic direction and their financial performance and national impact.
 
As well as Martin's award win GCI was recognised within its business sector.
 
Martin will compete at the UK finals where the eventual overall UK winner then joins the other global country winners in Monte Carlo to vie for the title of World Entrepreneur Of The Year.

3CX, developer of the Windows VoIP PBX 3CX Phone System, has liked up with Fanvil, the manufacturer of IP telephones, to provide a fully interoperable end-to-end telephony solution.

The partnership guarantees full interoperability between 3CX Phone System and Fanvil IP phones. With the 'plug and play' provisioning feature of 3CX Phone System, users can deploy Fanvil IP phones in a matter of minutes, said the firm.

In addition, all future software and firmware releases will be fully tested and validated by both 3CX and Fanvil to ensure full compatibility. The following Fanvil IP Phones are now fully supported with 3CX Phone System: Fanvil C58, C58P and Fanvil C62.

Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX said: " For our resellers, this partnership provides a great opportunity to increase their revenues by offering a cost-effective end-to-end telephony solution to business looking to switch to a software-based PBX."

Avnet Technology Solutions has been appointed senior vice president, (SVP) North region, effective from 30th June 2014.
 
As the new SVP of the North region, which comprises the UK and Ireland, Murphy will be responsible for accelerating growth and profitability in these key territories for Avnet and its partners. Miriam takes up this new role in addition to her responsibilities for driving Avnet's EMEA strategic supplier engagements.
 
"Miriam has been with Avnet for 20 years, and during this time she has earned a first-class reputation for her commercial acumen and high performance business management.
Under her leadership, Avnet's IBM business successfully expanded across 14 countries in EMEA and in just three years had reached record market share and profitability," said Graeme Watt, president, Avnet Technology Solutions, EMEA.
 
Murphy joined Avnet following the acquisition of UK-based distributor, SEI Macro, where she served for five years in a variety of roles.

She began her career at Avnet by assuming the post of European product director within Avnet Electronics Marketing, based in Germany and France. Miriam transitioned across to Avnet Technology Solutions, EMEA, in July 2003, where she held the position of vice president operations for EMEA, based in Brussels, Belgium, before being promoted to senior vice president, Enterprise Business Group, EMEA, in April 2008.  
 
Murphy said, "This is a truly exciting time for the IT channel in terms of the market dynamics and evolution of technology. We are seeing some really interesting opportunities for distribution and our partners in areas such as security, big data, analytics, converged infrastructure and related services."