Comms Dealer

The channel is witnessing huge changes in the connectivity landscape but mapping out how the lie of the land will shape up is no easy task. Here, we report on a round table discussion (hosted by Comms Dealer and supported by Zen Internet) that served as a compass point for the future direction of market developments.

There was a time when the roll out of fibre to all premises took the form of a cohesive nationwide plan. If the idea had been rubber stamped the UK's broadband infrastructure would look very different today, and industry debates about the provision of complex connectivity would be unfounded. However, the first UK-wide fibre blueprint was shelved and as a consequence the provision of business grade connectivity has risen up the channel agenda at a time when significant cloud uptake is driving ever greater demand. Against this backdrop Zen Internet has taken a lead on all aspects of connectivity and is aiming to bring the same coherence and support to the market that was characteristic of the first overarching strategy to link up the nation.

Round table delegate William Poel, UK Tech and Commercial Evangelist at TouchCast, has been working in the industry since the 1970s and he shared his insights into the plan that could have rendered the round table debate null-and-void. His all-encompassing statement spanned 25 years of broadband development, reaching back to the big fibre roll-out plan and its ultimate demise, and extending forwards to the significant challenges faced by ground breaking technologists in the IP TV space today, who all, like the rest of us, rely on resilient and cohesive connectivity.

Poel, who wryly describes himself as 'still standing after too many years at the bleeding edge of HiTech', commented: "In the late 1980s the former CTO of BT, Peter Cochrane, put forward a plan to deliver fibre to every premises in the UK for £50 per end point. However, BT soon worked out the impact of this strategy on existing lucrative services so it shelved the idea. I've seen the plan, and it would still work today if the government was brave enough to enforce upon BT a mandate to overhaul the UK's infrastructure. But the whole situation has moved towards a vulcanised mess of various providers, and trying to get them all together in one coherent plan is worse than herding cats."

According to Poel, today's 'scattered' connectivity infrastructure and the general digging-in of fibre is no match for the growing connectivity demands of the nation. "Within 24 months a revolution could signal the end of scheduled broadcasting and the delivery of all TV via IP will take precedence," he stated. "This will impact massively on networks. Uptake of IP TV has until now been slow and hasn't yet crushed the networks but it's beginning to happen."

The language of networks wobbling at the knees under the weight of an all-IP TV world may veer towards hyperbole but the scenario nevertheless brings a number of issues into sharper focus and shines a spotlight in the crucial role played by provider such as Zen. According to David Dadds, Director at Vanilla IP, the challenge for comms providers will be to meet the connectivity needs of business users who, like IP TV customers, will expect the product to be on tap at all times wherever their location. "This may not be the big issue today, but in five years time we will need all of the pieces in place," he said.

With no master plan to build the big picture, the less desirable 'piecemeal' development of a future-proof comms infrastructure will have to do and the role of pioneers such as Zen Internet will be a critical success factor. The company's broadband, Ethernet and leased line portfolio is growing in popularity among its reseller base, and all of the round table delegates agreed that business grade connectivity is critical, but there was no consensus on how resiliency should be packaged and offered to customers.

"It is paramount to provide connectivity within an overall managed service and ensure it's good quality," said Simon Payne, Managing Director at Damovo.

David Bass, Director at Charterhouse Voice & Data, came out forcibly in favour of providing a primary circuit with back-up bundled in. "We aggregate bandwidth, so the industry should offer 100MG back-up at half the price or free with the primary circuit," he stated. But his stance on how back-up should be offered caused a stir and polarised the views of some delegates who saw this as a moral issue as well as a commercial one. Jason Horan, Managing Director at Connect Express, agreed that there is a moral issue at stake here. "You cannot offer hosted telephony without QoS," he said. "To force customers to buy QoS is wrong." Meanwhile, Michael Thornton, Managing Director at Frontier Voice and Data, did not accept that giving away a service that comes at a cost was the right modus operandi for any business.

If Cochrane's fibre roll out plan had been executed, not only would the nation have benefitted from a more cohesive network, customers would also be buying and using their services in a different way and the method of delivery would probably be standardised by comparison to today's, perhaps, over complicated set-up. Unable to wind back the clock, the time to debate next steps has arrived. Chief among the hot topics discussed around the table was the role of the reseller in driving a connectivity market where new opportunities are arising almost by the day, driven by the cloud, the changing dynamics of end user businesses and the broadening profile of ICT buyers. And the approach to selling connectivity depends very much on end user criteria such as size, budget and attitude to risk in terms of uptime.

But for Tim Wallis, Managing Director of TWS Computer Services, one big issue dominates his thinking: "I concentrate on SME, and my customers need connectivity that works," he stated. "The problem for many of them is that the winter storms have decimated their ADSLs. And because BT can't remove the trees, how do we provide resilience to customers on the end of a copper line and who can't have two circuits from two suppliers or exchanges? Without resilience, cloud services won't work. Many of my customers do not have a connectivity choice. I've gone down the satellite broadband route because that is back-up."

In areas of the market where establishing simple back-ups and SLAs are less of an issue, bundled services are the order of the day along with a different set of attendant challenges. Campbell Williams, Group Strategy and Marketing Director at Six Degrees Group, said: "Sometimes the worst approach to take is to bundle the cost so that the customer effectively gets 'all they can eat'. At some point the IT manager, the FD or MD will see that they've been paying a certain amount for the service, and because nothing has gone wrong the reseller is vulnerable to being undercut by a rival. You have to uncouple the value and educate the customer on what might have gone wrong and the value that has been added to the deal."

Williams also noted that the buying landscape has changed. "The new wave of CIOs and IT directors are not people dealing with network resilience problems," he added. "They have business conversations about profit and loss, trade-offs, upsides and downsides, risk and rewards. Larger corporations do not sit and discuss whether they need resilient connectivity. The cost of back-up and SLAs is less of an issue for them."
On the other hand, Frontier Voice and Data operates mainly in the 10-150 employee customer space where typically there is no board level IT leader. "We deal with IT people who don't have the skill set of CTOs and CIOs," stated Thornton. "The questions we are asked are more cost and product conscious. It's a different proposition. What they need is an understanding of the products that providers offer and where they can be delivered, and for what cost. That is all they are interested in."

Summing up the points, Ben Bradbury, Managing Director at Clarion, added: "We have to cater for companies whether they have small or large cheque books and explain the services to them, and it's the service provider's responsibility to tell us how much capacity there is in the network, where the latency is, the cost, and not just seek the upside. We have various connectivity choices and we have to cater for clients from remote areas right up the scale. Providers need to explain very clearly the price points and risks."

Unravelling the various strands of a connectivity proposition to make it simple to understand, buy and take to market is no easy task, particularly in an environment where resellers are over shadowed by the shades of grey that sometimes blurs the process. But Bradbury said the issue is clear cut. "Providers need to be working together with resellers to ensure the necessary bandwidth to support the services they provide," he said. "We need transparency and honesty to overcome the disconnect between cloud delivery and the connectivity."

Dominic Carroll, Senior Product Manager at Zen Internet, commented: "It's no longer about companies looking to deliver data services over private connectivity such as broadband, Ethernet and leased lines, it's more about how they deliver a converged network and the underlying infrastructure to facilitate that. Attention levels are heaped more on the services than the delivery method. But the emergence of new technologies and how we can take advantage of them to create a world class network that successfully delivers the services is just as big a talking point of differentiation."

According to Deborah Wrigley, Channel Sales Manager, Zen Internet has stolen the march on this issue by beating the education drum while Zen's hypercautious approach ensures the fitness of its business grade services. The company has, she says, turned its collaborative vision into a channel strategy that insulates reseller partners from the issues discussed and connectivity glitches that blight many deployments by resellers in general who tread a familiar - and doomed - path.

"Zen believes that good providers don't just provide a product, but also the training, guidance and expertise channel partners need to sell it," she said. "With the new Partner Programme, we're working harder than ever before to share our knowledge and expertise. There are huge opportunities out there. We want our partners to be able to take advantage of every one."

Poel's invocation of Cochrane's fibre roll out plan did not just highlight the piecemeal nature of the UK's network infrastructure, it also brought into clear view the opportunity for resellers in the SME market, an opportunity that perhaps would not be present if Cochrane had got his way. The lack of a coherent infrastructure, on the flip side, enables resellers to reaffirm their status as ICT suppliers cum consultants, especially among the smaller businesses which only have admin level IT support. "Sub-50 organisations tend not to have a CTO or IT manager," concurred Williams. "These companies need resellers to offer bespoke solutions. They are dependent on the reseller market for specialisation."

While Williams' argument underlined the value of SME resellers, Thornton wasted no time in sizing up the scale of the market. "There are 80,000 UK SMEs that need to know what the product is, the cost and how it works," he said. "Breaking down solutions into their component parts is very important."

Finding out what resellers need from connectivity suppliers should be, you would think, not too big a mountain to ascend. But climbing higher than base camp all too often proves to be a challenge. But with his climbing boots tightly laced up, Carroll outlined the route Zen Internet is taking to address the issues raised during this lively round table debate.

"Just as the requirements of end users vary significantly depending on the size of their business and the market they operate in, so do the needs of the ICT channel who supply them with connectivity services," he commented. "To serve the population of our resellers that 'just want connectivity to work' we have developed a range of services which can be purchased off the shelf as a fully managed option. These start from basic ADSL2+ and Fibre Broadband with business grade SLAs through to Ethernet Leased Lines with automatic failover to a broadband line for assurance and backup included as standard."•

Pragma's Chairman and mega-channel supremo David George has achieved great industry recognition and stature as a giant in UK comms distribution. Here's his story...

For a Chairman less than two years into office and presiding during the worst economic slump in memory George has managed to pull off a remarkable triumph in building up Pragma. This 'David' had already established himself as Goliath in the comms channel so there were few doubters when he set-up Pragma along with two former colleagues just a slingshot away from where his career in distribution began in 1990 with Crane Telecom. Prior to the advent of Crane George had many years of comms experience under his belt and believed that the reseller channel would become the dominant route to market.

"I spent the early part of my career working in multinationals such as Sony, EMI, ITT and STC with ever expanding responsibilities up to divisional management," recalled George. "However, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with my scope to mould a business within the constraints of a corporate environment. So when I was offered the role of Managing Director of newly launched National Telephone Systems - it's main product line was the London range of PBX systems - I jumped at the chance."

NTS was a fast growing international business that went public with full listing on the London Stock Exchange. The business was then acquired by Alcatel and the acquisition reverted George back into corporate life. "I didn't want to be there, and seeing an opportunity with LG to introduce its key system range into the UK market I set up my own business, Crane Telecom. At that time the reseller channel was still in its infancy but it was my belief that it would become the dominant route to market for telecom products and services, and that Crane would become the supplier of choice for resellers."

Crane quickly established the LG brand and in 1995 became the first UK distributor for Avaya (then AT&T) and grew to become the largest Avaya distributor outside of the USA. Crane's revenues peaked at £80 million and the company became the largest independent telecoms distributor in Europe until it was acquired by Westcon Group in May 2007.

"I gave retirement a go but quickly got bored and was lured back into the channel by a long-standing Crane reseller called Redwood," stated George. "I invested in this business in 2008 and despite being faced with the economic downturn we grew revenues by more than 30 per cent over the following three years, with an even greater improvement in profitability. This led to the successful sale of Redwood to Timico in 2011 and I once again had another attempt at retirement."

George kept in touch with a number of old Crane customers who had since become personal friends. They confided that there was little or no added value left in the channel and many felt poorly supported or even let down by their current suppliers, compounded by ever increasing demands to conform to vendor requirements which they did not believe were in the best interests of their businesses, recounted George.

"When playing golf with Tim Brooks in April 2012 , who was a long-serving Crane man and had been running Westcon Convergence UK, we were discussing this and decided there was a clear opportunity to create a new company that would mould itself around the needs of the reseller community," commented George. "We researched the market and decided our vendor of choice was Ericsson-LG which we felt was a sleeping giant in the UK but held leadership in many other global markets."

The former colleagues travelled to Korea to test out their theory and following due diligence they became convinced by the product roadmap and its potential. "By that time we had been joined by Will Morey, another long-standing member of the Crane team," added George. "We then set up Pragma and started sales in September 2012."

Not surprisingly Pragma exceeded its year-one target and outstripped the first year's sales within five months of its second year in operation. Pragma passed its break-even point after 10 months and is exceeding profit targets, enabling the company to fund future growth. A central part of Pragma's growth strategy is its focus as the sole distributor for Ericsson-LG in the UK and the company was awarded European Distributor of the Year at Ericsson-LG's 2013 global partner conference.

According to George, Pragma is more than a distributor. "Ericsson-LG has no people in the UK, therefore the go-to-market model and execution are entirely within our control," he explained. "Our overriding philosophy is that our business should be designed and run based on the needs of our resellers. To ensure that we achieve and maintain this ethos as we grow we created the Pragma Partner Council. This is a forum to gain feedback and approval from our resellers on all aspects of the business including policies, processes, products and even pricing. We also hold an annual reseller conference which last year was attended by more than 140 of our resellers, where together with Ericsson-LG senior management we presented the product roadmap, new products and market direction."

Pragma has set the date for its partner conference this year - October 9th in London. A centrepiece attraction will be the unveiling of a new UC platform from Ericsson-LG together with a product roadmap which includes cloud-based services. "Later in the summer we will launch iPECS UCP, a new range of VoIP call servers with embedded UC applications that scale from five to 2,400 users," said George. "Our efforts will then be applied to the introduction of a cloud-based iPECS solution, the details of which will be shared at our conference."

Pragma's priorities for 2014 also centre around a complete refresh of the Ericsson-LG iPECS range. This began with the introduction of iPECS eMG80 at the beginning of the year, a new and cost-effective hybrid solution for users with five to 50 extensions. "This product has been successful and well received by our existing resellers and has also attracted many new resellers to the Ericsson-LG brand," added George. "It is important to stress that our goal is not to recruit infinite numbers of resellers, but rather to operate a controlled distributor policy whereby we can grow while protecting our resellers' margins at the same time."

Pragma also offers resellers margin opportunities in connectivity. With the adoption of SIP being a key trend George believes that the combination of SIP trunks together with a highly featured iPECS IP-PBX offers a stand-out solution for most businesses, as opposed to relatively expensive and featureless hosted offerings that use the reseller channel as little more than sales agents, and so risk losing customers in the long-term.

"We've helped our resellers to adopt SIP technology more rapidly with a combination of dedicated sales and engineering training, SIP set-up guides and even our own SIP trunk service through our joint venture company Pragma Networks," added George. "This means we can provide end-to-end compatibility and support to our resellers."

As a result of the new products from Ericsson-LG together with marketing programmes and tools from Pragma plus its network services, George says a great many of Pragma's resellers are growing rapidly. "It's Pragma's strategy to ensure that our resellers are always equipped to compete and win as markets evolve," stated George. "It is our plan to be a major player in the market and I believe we have the products, the team and the resellers to achieve huge gains in market share.

"The consistent feedback I hear from resellers is that they no longer feel valued or respected by their suppliers. In many cases they are seen as nothing more than a route to the end user rather than customers in their own right. I believe every reseller principal is an independent business person who wants to be acknowledged as that, rather than being dictated to by large, faceless corporate organisations."

George believes in building close personal relationships with resellers, and making sure that their needs always shape Pragma's strategy is a mode of operation that cannot fail, noted George. "We get to know our customers better by surrounding our formal events with a great deal of social activity," he added. "We also run regular incentive trips, host sporting events and generally take every opportunity we can to spend time with our customers. We want our customers to feel important, because they are."•

Close engagement, not price, has become the master of relational links in the channel, according to Nine Group Marketing Director Mark Saunders, who argues that today's marketplace demands a new posture on relationship building and customer support.

There has been a lot of hue and cry in the channel about the importance of partner relationships but all too often actions do not speak louder than words. The 'promise' must deliver specifics, not platitudes, asserts Saunders, who believes that Nine has revealed a new world of customer engagement that offers a holistic approach designed to bring about transformative change. Nine's promise, he says, is to deepen partner relationships through a tried and tested process of knowledge sharing and hands-on assistance. "We are in the business of relationships and happen to have a service-centric operation based in the telecommunications sector," he said. "It is important never to lose sight of what we are and what we need to do well. Supplier choice is not about price, it's about how we can help partners be more successful."

Saunders believes that relational policies to date have been too general and that many suppliers are missing a trick simply because they do not prioritise, or invest in, the partner relationship. "Our ethos is based around building and developing relationships with our resellers and we believe this is equally valid for them when they are considering their own customers," added Saunders. "Our Train>Guide>Win formula is about helping our resellers to be more successful by sharing our own views, experience and expertise with them. Resellers are often competing against more sophisticated businesses, so we believe in helping them to level the playing field."

The lesson of Nine's success for others is that close collaboration with partners reaps rewards and ongoing mutual growth is no pipe dream. "We change the depth of our reseller relationships from strangers, to acquaintances and friends and even fans," commented Saunders. "We believe with certainty that by building the trust of our resellers we will both enjoy success. Nine embraces ambitious resellers looking for a lasting relationship with an energetic, innovative service provider. Furthermore, for those resellers who want to talk openly about their business exit, our track record in structuring deals makes us a natural choice where this factor is a key consideration."

Nine's partner-centricity is aligned with various service options for resellers including outsourced billing, direct debit collection, out of hours service and provisioning. "We offer a compelling alternative to the carriers," emphasised Saunders. "Through our Purple Partner Programme, we offer real world business benefits to our resellers, not just re-branded collateral, but professional quality videos and workshops which deliver practical advice on improving margin through a better understanding of tariff maintenance and billing rules.

"Marketing workshops and Twitter Q&A sessions also benefit our reseller community. We take our role as defender of the channel seriously and offer support for our resellers to join FCS, enabling them to be engaged with legal and regulatory changes that impact telecommunications. We are also working alongside the industry fraud awareness body, TUFF, to deliver a second reseller event in June."

Nine also evangelises the importance of measurement. "We are obsessed with improving and translating the data we hold on our resellers into information that we can then use to create better levels of engagement," explained Saunders. "It would be folly to invest precious marketing dollars talking to the wrong reseller about the wrong opportunity, so we always preach the gospel of clean data and recommend this to our resellers too. It is just as important to understand what our resellers buy from us and what they buy elsewhere so we can market our proposition more effectively. They should be doing the same with their customers and we are happy to share our insight. There is zero value in implementing an idea, not checking if it worked and then repeating it just because that was Plan A."

Nine's stance puts less engaged organisations to shame, according to Saunders, who pointed out that employee collaboration and engagement is a key factor in the company's overarching philosophy. "Our business is about our people and we invest in allowing them to be the best that they can be," he commented. "Last year we achieved the Silver Standard for Investors in People on our first attempt and we going for Gold this year, supported by our move across the car park to a new 12,500 square feet flagship office which offers a remarkable work environment with great facilities for meeting our customers."

Nine is a natural relationship building organisation that with alacrity puts resellers on a new course by imparting sound advice rather than the self-righteous bluster, believes Saunders. "There is always a lot of noise around new product developments, be they alleged seismic shifts away from ISDN towards SIP, the eternal question of what is Lync really for, the possible business applications of 4G, or the as yet not so meteoric rise in hosted IP telephony," he said.

"We try to engage with our resellers to debate the key issues, often over lunch, and offer our own perspective on which product is worth putting on the shelf. There is a lot of traditional hardware and network services business still out there, and although a monocular focus in this area would prove catastrophic a balanced portfolio can provide rich dividends."•

Fourteen IP Communications may be 'Fourteen' forever but standing still in time is not an option in the fast moving comms sector, believes Managing Director Neil Tolley.

Tolley's introduction to telecoms came early in life. His father worked in the industry and the close family linked proved to be a formative factor in Tolley's outlook on how best to operate in the comms sector. He joined Wigan-based Ashland Communication Equipment in 1997 and his experience there also made an indelible imprint. "Ashland was a fantastic company with fantastic people and a genuine zeal for doing everything we could for our customers, something we have carried on with Fourteen," said Tolley. "Ashland and I were a perfect match and we had many great years selling a mix of Mitel and NEC solutions and thousands of payphones."

Tolley recalls that Ashland's Managing Director Anthony Vose was a 'detail person' with a passion for caring about customers and for making a profit - a winning combination. "Anthony inspired and drove the management team and instilled in us a way of working that carries on to this day," added Tolley. "After my early experiences I swore I would never get involved in running a business of my own, but Ashland and Anthony changed that view. And even with all the hair loss and sleepless nights starting your own firm brings, I am delighted that we did it."

Lancs-based Fourteen IP was established by Chairman Alan Poole with Tolley and a group of former Ashland colleagues joining soon after. "The plan was to operate as a small data and voice reseller but we grew bigger than expected in the UK and across Europe," explained Tolley. "We initially focused on wired and wireless networking with considerable success, only doing voice projects when asked. Now we are busy on both fixed and hosted telephony as well as a range of networking projects.

"Starting a business in the worst recession in memory was always going to be a challenge. Selling phone systems to customers who don't want them is also no easy ask, so we have adapted. We have listened to our customers and created solutions that they want, some quickly and some over a period of time. We have had to innovate and that approach along with working closely with our partners and being seen as a thought leader in our chosen market is making a real difference to our business."

Fourteen IP operates in the hospitality vertical market and as if that was not niche enough, its also tries to do things differently. An approach that is paying off. "Our customers are a mix of local UK hotels and chains and global hotel chains plus some strategic partner organisations. We have focused on partnerships with vendors such as NEC, Mitel, BroadSoft and HP, and creating solutions around these products," added Tolley.

"It amazes me how many of our peers don't work closely with their partners. We are working with Mitel and NEC on a range of PBX and DECT solutions, and it is going well. But the world is going hosted and there is no stopping it. If a five star luxury hotel can take a hosted solution then what more proof is needed. You need to own your own platform or partner carefully with someone who does."

The hosted telephony versus fixed debate is only just catching on in hospitality. This is due, in the main, to nobody actually using the phone systems in hotels, and also they are interconnected to numerous other systems, so there was no real solution, pointed out Tolley. "We have a solution now that is gathering momentum," he commented. "Equally, there are also real opportunities for systems integrators who can pull together solutions built around copper or fibre converged networks. Luckily for us we are one such company."

Fourteen IP is growing significantly year-on-year, reporting circa 100 per cent growth last year and Tolley's formula for success is easily understood. "We are 100 per cent about our customers and will do anything for them 24/7," he commented. "Having the core team from the Ashland days means that this culture is embedded in our company, and as new people join they are quickly on board with the way we do things. We used to have the Ashland Way, we now have the Fourteen Way. It's about our customers, our people and making a profit.

"Listening to customers and innovating means we are not just another reseller, and it means we have things people want to see and talk about and buy. It's an approach that has led us to places and potential deals we would never have thought possible. It has also led to some operational challenges and quick thinking requirements."

Also occupying Tolley's thinking at the moment is the emergence of Big Data, a buzzword that has landed squarely on the Fourteen IP agenda. "Big Data was something I kept hearing about but assumed it would never have relevance to us," he added. "But it suddenly arrived. By leveraging technology and the imagination we are able to achieve incredible results with the data, and customers quickly see the benefits."

Evolving in this way is vital for all resellers, believes Tolley. "The world is changing and to succeed we need to move with the times and somehow stay ahead of the game," he commented. "There has been no future in just selling PBX for some years. It's about solutions, integrated solutions and creating a need. The day-to-day business has to continue, but it is important to keep an eye on the future and deliver the solutions that customers want."•

Openreach has boosted its high bandwidth optical capability with a UK-wide 40Gbps and 100Gbps service capable of delivering ten times more traffic capacity than existing solutions.

The new services are supported by Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform and enable comms providers (CPs) to connect multiple sites more efficiently by cost-effectively transporting larger amounts of data over longer distances. Comms providers using the service can offer flexible, high bandwidth multi-site connectivity and cloud-based services to their enterprise and data centre customers.

The optical services also give enterprises and storage providers the tools to offer a broader range of services and applications, including the ultra-low latency facilities required by particular industries such as high frequency trading in the financial sector or synchronous data backup. They will also enable businesses to locate in the most strategic locations, with the assurance of having access to high bandwidth, high quality connectivity.

Mark Logan, Director of Fibre Products, Openreach, commented: "As more and more businesses move to high bandwidth cloud-based services and applications our CP customers are looking to support them with a much broader range of high quality connectivity options. These new optical services from Openreach are future proof, and they take advantage of BT's investment in fibre infrastructure across the UK. They also come with the backing of our combined professional service teams, giving customers access to expertise and support from both Openreach and Ciena."

Nigel Williams, Vice President of Global Channels and Strategic Alliances, Ciena, commented: "Demand for high bandwidth services and business critical applications is increasing at an exponential rate. Expanding our relationship with Openreach ensures that providers get the flexibility and scalability they need to build a competitive advantage in the marketplace, offer a broader portfolio of next generation services and the applications critical to the success of their enterprise clients."

The product, which was rolled out on April 29th, took just nine months to develop from its conception to launch. "With the market growing at pace, and requirements for 100G solutions already evident, we wanted to offer a solution fast," commented Darren Wallington, Head of Optical Solutions.

"We already had a proven capability for best practice use of third parties to carry out installation on our behalf, so deepening our long standing supplier relationship with Ciena to bring the 6500 to market in this way was a no-brainer. Importantly, the approach does not change any of the planning, order or repair touch points for customers. It simply means that all installation and repair functions are carried out by Ciena."
The close collaboration between Openreach and Ciena helps to align best practice design choices with specific sector requirements. "We are also working together on continued lifecycle improvements such as fault finding and diagnostics," added Wallington. "We now have the potential to bring additional 6500 capabilities to market just as fast in the future."

The spirit of collaboration also played a role in shaping the look of new services by taking into account the viewpoints of customers. "We received a full wish list from one customer at the outset," added Wallington. "We reviewed this with all customers and provided a view on the items we could deliver. The period of development collaboration with customers that followed earned feedback via the OTA (the telecoms adjudicator) as an example of how Openreach should engage and develop products."

The overall optical market is forecast to grow by a significant 135 per cent during the coming years, representing a big opportunity for communications providers. The size of the opportunity and speed of potential monetisation is illustrated by the big advances made by Openreach following its previous major optical product launch - the ADVA FSP 3000 launched in January 2012 - which now has over a thousand installations. Furthermore, at the close of 2013, Openreach's customers were collectively supplying industry with 20TB/s of access and backhaul data capacity via its Optical portfolio alone.•

ICUK's philosophy on getting things right by sticking to an in-house policy is paying great dividends, according to co-founder and Director Paul Barnett.

ICUK started life in 2001 as a virtual ISP selling 0845 dial-up minutes purchased from CIX. It then moved from dial-up into web hosting and domains, reselling solutions from a number of providers but hitting barriers with them all. The company then incorporated broadband and telecoms, and again ran up against limitations and obstacles to reselling. "The biggest turning point for ICUK, especially when we were smaller and a reseller, hinged on our frustrations with suppliers," commented Barnett. "They failed to listen, couldn't evolve or simply did not deliver on their promises. We had reached the end of the road and had been forced to either move on or ultimately bite the bullet and bring more in-house."

Those early glitches proved to be a blessing in disguise as it became apparent that reselling was a minefield of overselling, lack of ultimate control and deep frustration. "The only way forward was to build our own platform," added Barnett. "We had seen and experienced the mistakes made by suppliers, and we ensured that at every stage of development our platform delivered what we had wanted as a reseller."

Giving resellers what they want has, not surprisingly, brought about a success story. ICUK has grown from being a reseller to having in excess of 600 resellers of its own. "In 2011 we made our first major acquisition and purchased CIX, the company that helped us start this journey," explained Barnett. "We now have an exciting roadmap planned following a major restructure. Our journey has been undertaken with sheer determination, without external investment and debt, and wouldn't have been possible without the talent and hard work of our staff."

ICUK employs 15 staff primarily split between support and development, and they are backed up by hundreds of servers which help to automate much of the daily routines. The company services in excess of 60,000 clients as well as 600 white label resellers. Last year saw 30 per cent growth in revenues and 2014 should bring a further 45 per cent growth. "Significantly, this growth is not through acquisition and debt," added Barnett. "We are self financed and free from external investors. Although we're always happy to consider acquisitions our focus remains on our current client base and continued organic growth.

"We have a platform and entry path which makes it easy for resellers to enter the web hosting, telecommunications and broadband arenas, and as such we're here not just as a supplier but to help guide them. The advice we give to resellers focuses on their key strengths, and the reasons why they may want to move from a competitor."

Barnett has witnessed significant growth in ICUK's broadband and telecoms business in particular, fuelled by developments in its own network and control panels, along with the inclusion of new products such as leased lines, quoting tools and improved diagnostics. "By exposing a wider portfolio and empowering our resellers they are more confident about selling lines and high value connectivity," commented Barnett. "ICUK is an organisation that prioritises ongoing development and learning. We have a relaxed and collaborative atmosphere and all members of staff are able to contribute and be part of our journey."

Barnett ranks the build of an in-house reseller control panel platform spanning web hosting, broadband and telecoms (with an invoicing platform to link them all) as his biggest career achievement to date. "It would have been easy for us to have opted for an off-the-shelf system, or pay a contractor to build a one-off platform, but it's quite another matter developing in-house," Barnett commented. "It's a big achievement for the ICUK team and I'm proud to have been one of the architects."

The control panel is a triumph of single minded determination and is emblematic of ICUK's inward looking approach to developmental growth. "It would be easy for us to become complacent about our portfolio and expand it to include new opportunities," Barnett added. "Likewise, it would be easy for us to bolt-on third party products. But to do either would not do justice to our clients or what we have achieved by moving control in-house. Everything in our portfolio is our own and managed through our control panel portal. Third party or half-hearted third party solutions are absolutely not an option."

Rather than reach out in expansion mode, ICUK is embarking on a period of consolidation which Barnett calls 'back to basics'. He knows there are limitations to what ICUK offers but he is on a mission to achieve ultimate perfection in his portfolio. "Our aim with this policy is to revisit every product, every line of code and seek out improvements," he said. "Only when this process is complete will we start to work on one of the many avenues that are open to us. And when we do, it will be on our terms, not just a bolt-on service we can't control and that offers limited value in comparison to existing offerings."

Naturally, such an approach demands knowhow, but skills are in short supply and this is a key concern. "Our main challenge is skills," said Barnett. "The talents in the employment market are limited, and without the skills to turn our visions and ideas into reality the progress of our 'back to basics' policy is hindered. We are combating this to an extent by providing internal training opportunities and opening doors to apprentices.
"We have a real need for talented and passionate developers who will work on our platforms to turn our ideas, and those of our clients, into reality. Despite having six positions available, we struggle to find the right people to fit the roles. That's not a limitation of our search, but a genuine skills shortage forcing us to look further afield and relocate staff."

ICUK has also started to take its marketing and sales operations more seriously. For eleven years the company grew without a marketing budget. Growth was achieved through recommendations and organic search engine listing. "Having a good detailed website and a friendly intelligent member of staff on the phone or email was welcomed by many who were all too familiar with the sales person at the end of competitors' lines, and then a lack of support when issues arise," said Barnett. "However, we're growing up and now have dedicated marketing and sales staff. We still remain true to our principles and staff are not paid commissions, while new starters are inducted into the technical culture that has come to define ICUK in this industry."

The quest for cultural perfection is a big defining factor in the ICUK ethos, and this is reflected across all areas of the business. "Our focus today is on perfecting what we have now," said Barnett. "We're lucky to operate in three core industries that are evolving and collaborating more with each other, which sets up its own challenges and opportunities. However, we are watching various emerging technologies and schools of thought which we hope to incorporate into our portfolio for resellers, while remaining true to our philosophies at every step.

"Within five years, I would like to see ICUK with a larger portfolio, all developed in-house, and with a support and development team twice the size as we currently have. No matter how large we get we recognise the importance of not repeating the mistakes we see time and time again with growth, and that's why our focus remains on support and developing a better proposition to the customer. We've managed it for 12 years, and have every intention of remaining true to our formula."•

There aren't too many comms entrepreneurs who began their careers by setting up a game lodge in South Africa, but as you will see, Mark Colquhoun, Chief Executive at Solar Communications, is one of a kind.

With the job of setting up a game lodge in South Africa done and dusted, Colquhoun returned to the UK in 1997 unsure of his next move. His father was a solicitor who at the time was doing some work for Tony Lewis at Club Communications. Colquhoun senior suggested an introduction as Club seemed to be on the up. "I secured an interview with Tony and worked at Club for a year making appointments for the sales people who were selling LCR," recalled Colquhoun. "I then decided to set up my own telecoms company, Call Options UK, with Tony's backing and support. That was in 1998 and I have been in the comms industry ever since."

Solar Communications was established in Bristol in 1988 providing telephone systems in the south west. After selling Call Options in 2005 to Adept Telecom, Colquhoun set up a company called Drumbeat Communications the same year, primarily focused on selling network services. Colquhoun bought Solar in December 2007 and merged it with Drumbeat. The Solar brand was retained, and over the last six years the company has expanded to offer a full telephony portfolio across the UK from its offices in Chippenham, London and Manchester. The Manchester office was established after Solar acquired Armstrong Communications in January 2013. Central to Solar's growth plan is delivering the best customer experience possible. "We believe this is the main differentiator in our industry," said Colquhoun.

His strategy continues to pay off with revenues rising from 8.5 million in 2011 to a projected 16.5 million this financial year. The company has circa 1,000 customers and has grown its headcount from 42 to a planned 80 this year. Colquhoun expects future growth to come from three areas - providing more solutions to the existing client base (notably in data services and mobile); offering services to new clients delivering contact centre and UC solutions; and facilitating more mergers or acquisitions with companies that have a similar service culture to Solar. The firm's three year strategy is to amass sales of at least £25 million in 2016 based on its business plan.

Aside from Solar's impressive growth phase another big change noted by Colquhoun has been the growing number of customers that buy all of their comms services from the firm. "This has been especially helped by the emergence of SIP whereby clients trust their telephone system provider to install it for them and support the data circuit it sits on," commented Colquhoun. "Another change we have experienced is that we are not just selling to the IT Manager/Director any more. The Financial Director, Sales Director and CEO are now far more interested in the differentiation that a good comms strategy gives them."

In terms of product development, Solar's cloud offering is proving to be the talk of the town. According to Colquhoun, end users are interested in a cloud solution but only if it offers the same reliability and functionality as an on-premise solution. "The cloud also brings with it a number of questions," he added. "Does the client move to a full cloud solution where they pay £x per month, or do they host their telephony in a data centre? Do they retain an on-premise solution or opt for a hybrid model? There is a technology and a financial decision to be made, and Solar can support all of these options.

"The challenge is ensuring that we continue to keep the proposition easy to understand and offer clients the best solution to meet their business needs today and in the future. Coming from a network services background I see the benefit of moving our PBX revenue to a recurring model and I believe that there are a large number of businesses with legacy PBXs who will be interested in moving to an £x per month for everything bundled in - calls, lines, Internet and PBX functionality."

One of the most interesting trends Colquhoun is tracking is the rising number of comms rooms shifting to the data centre and the growth of outsourced managed services. "Yet, in most businesses of 100-1000 employees, which is Solar's typical client size, the IT Manager/Director is still keeping most applications and servers in their own comms room mostly due to concerns around security and control," added Colquhoun.

"The speed with which companies will move to the cloud will vary depending on industry, business size and personnel's own views. Solar can support either on-premise or cloud or even hybrid versions, and will continue to give the best advice depending on each client's individual circumstances."

A closely related trend is the move away from installing physical PBXs to installing virtualised instances of telephony applications on the clients' servers, whether at their offices or hosted in a data centre. "Solar saw these trends emerge and has already invested considerably in up-skilling our engineers in virtualisation and data centre which are essential to support our clients," added Colquhoun.

He noted that Solar will continue to grow by providing total communication solutions. "We see clients as wanting Solar to be its trusted partner for all their voice and data needs," added Colquhoun. "The biggest challenge is making customers aware of all the available benefits for their business of the different options open to them when deploying a telephony solution, especially around SIP and the move to cloud. We are addressing this by constantly updating our website, holding client seminars, sending out regular newsletters and through constant training making sure that the Solar sales people and technicians are giving a consistent message."

Solar's acquisition of Armstrong Communications is emblematic of the company's knack for achieving a cultural fit at all levels. "I am proud of the acquisition of Armstrong Communications," added Colquhoun. "I was especially keen that we did nothing to upset the service culture that Armstrong had instilled in its staff. We committed to leaving the business alone for a year. Not a single member of staff or significant client was lost and the Manchester team smashed their sales target.

"In January this year we integrated the Manchester staff into Solar and the instant co-operation and team work from the enlarged team has been amazing. Seeing everyone from all offices operating as one team is very satisfying. The whole experience has shown me how well acquisitions can go if the cultures of the businesses are similar. The common message I hear from all is that there is a great team spirit and enjoyable working atmosphere at Solar. I believe this underpins the great customer service that we give our clients - we have staff who all care - and I know that everyone at Solar would say that it is the clients who pay their wages."•

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: Infographics are my topic of the month as I love their simplicity and how they lend themselves beautifully to the IT and telco industry.

They provide visual impact that can quickly and concisely explain the values of a more complicated solution. In an era when we are time poor and experience information overload, infographics draw our attention to the most important elements of a subject and can even encourage us to read in more depth.

Visual thinking is apparently the most common way we piece together information and considering most of us would have seen visual learning featuring heavily in our early years of education, it is not surprising that infographics are so popular. Because many of us think in pictures, it makes perfect sense that marketing and communications should leverage this comfort zone where readers become more susceptible to reading content they may have otherwise found too intimidating to read.

The colours and styles you can introduce to an infographic means that you can use it to literally brighten up text heavy collateral. Sales proposals and onboarding packs are just two examples of how infographics lend themselves well to more traditional collateral that may in the past have been quickly flicked through. It is also a way of highlighting your company's main achievements in a manner that your competitors may not be doing.

Before you start getting happy with ClipArt, make sure you cover a few basic rules. Ensure your visual interpretations encourage your viewer to read more, use simple imagery to complement a complex subject and include as much statistical data as you can, but ensure the message is broken down into easy to digest sections. Better still, use different images to offer both a broad overview and greater levels of detail.

Hats off to Stripe 21 for winning the Technology Strategy Board's Smart Grant competition for the Proof of Market grant award.

The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) is a UK innovation agency, offering support and funding to help businesses develop new products and services and ultimately bring them closer to market.

Stripe 21 responded to the Technology Strategy Board call earlier this year, to articulate and document the services it plans to develop around predicted technology market trends.

Stripe 21 noted that the growing global trend towards mobility, working outside the office on personally owned smart phones, laptops and tablet devices such as iPads, would become increasingly difficult to unify, manage and support.

Steve North, Managing Director of Stripe 21 said: "Many SMEs outsource the entire management and security of company data to an IT support specialist or company. Although a reduction in hardware costs is welcomed by many SMEs as employees increasingly use their personal property for work, BYOD devices present time-consuming and disparate challenges, particularly around application support, data ownership, access and security."

North and his team offered their solution to the TSB - a project that will explore the technical feasibility and market opportunity of providing a low cost, vendor-neutral, managed IT desktop service in the cloud.

This platform would be targeted primarily at SME businesses, using Software as a Service (SaaS) applications such as Microsoft Office 365, Google Mail, Salesforce and many others. These applications could be accessed from any internet-enabled device using standard thin-client facilities to connect to the Stripe 21 platform, which is controlled by the SME, not the BYOD user. This centralises the management and access of IT applications, taking away the requirement to support personal employee-owned BYODs.

It allows access to corporate data for the BYOD user, but would prevent the data being physically transferred to the user's personally-owned device. Where licensed on a per-seat basis, the cost per user would reduce substantially as all subscribers benefit from the economies of scale. This would make the Stripe 21 service lower cost, more secure and easier to manage than contracting directly with the SaaS provider.

The Technology Strategy Board was suitably impressed and Stripe 21 has been announced as a winner of Round 5, stage 1 of the Proof of Market grant award.

North added: "Our team were delighted to be recognised by the TSB, and to have the opportunity to take our business to a global market". The competition win marks another success this year for the Stripe 21 team who have been putting their efforts into innovative, new, exciting offers to bring to the Channel. The team now look forward to the launch of their cloud desktop BYOD service, which already has subscribers waiting to beta-test in Q4 of 2014.

Irish Minister for Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation Richard Bruton has welcomed news that SAP is to add 200 roles across its business suite and cloud support teams based in Galway. It also plans to add up to 50 R&D positions at its Citywest campus.

Welcoming the announcement, Liam Ryan, managing director, SAP operations in Ireland, said: "SAP continues to be a great success story in Ireland and the announcement is another strong vote of confidence in the ability of SAP's Irish-based operations to continue to attract talent that will be the source of innovation and support."

"The technology sector is driving much of the recovery in the economy and is providing the types of jobs and careers that we need to create to compete in an increasingly international and digital world.

"To truly take advantage of these exciting and emerging job opportunities, we cannot become complacent. I would urge all stakeholders in Ireland's education and employment sectors to work together to ensure we continue to have a healthy pipeline of talent and skill sets that meet the demands of our businesses."