Comms Dealer

Node4, the cloud and data centre specialist, has appointed Brian Conheady as Channel Business Development Manager.

He will be responsible for driving Node4's presence in the South of England and will create a strategic partner development programme that will target IT and comms resellers in London and the surrounding area.

A channel veteran, Brian brings nearly 20 years of sales leadership experience to Node4 with previous positions including Channel Director at Fastnet International and Channel and Partner Services Manager at Mistral Internet and Kingston Communications.

His experience of working with partners of all sizes will be invaluable as Node4 invests in its channel strategy to accelerate growth in Southern England.

"Node4 has seen significant growth in its channel business in the past few years and my role is to build on this success and to strategically develop our partner programme in the South," commented Conheady.

"As the bottom continues to fall out of the hardware market, more and more IT and comms resellers are looking for alternative solutions that can create recurring revenue streams.

"Reselling Node4's data storage, cloud and communication solutions can generate this and at the same time give end users access to the most up to date IT solutions."

Paul Bryce, Business Development Director of Node4 added: "Brian's knowledge and expertise of the UK IT channel market will be invaluable as we continue to expand the organisation as part of our ambitious growth plans.

"Brian understands the importance that Node4 places on having strategic partnerships with all our resellers. He will be working closely with new and existing partners to deliver success for both parties."

Exertis Micro-P staff are to take part in a 24 hour football match in support of a local football club, Hyndburn Youth FC, and Blackburn Youth Zone.

Staff from the warehouse and sales teams based in the UC, IT and Mobile distributors Altham office will join over 100 children and adults from the local community to compete in the 24 hour non-stop game, kicking off at 10am on 7th June at Blackburn Youth Zone.

Hyndburn Youth was established in 2010 by Paul Hammerton, Goods Inwards Supervisor at Exertis Micro-P, with other parents who believed children should play football for fun and all children, regardless of ability, should be treated as equals.

Hammerton said: "The team name, badge and kit colours were all designed and chosen by the original players and parents and the club is now a well established Charter Standard Club, supporting the local community.  

"The team partnered with Blackburn Youth Zone for this event as they share the same ethos as Hyndburn Youth FC where every individual, no matter what age, deserves the chance to have fun.

"In addition the youth zone provide continued support for children and young adults from the local area to provide opportunities for the young to show what they can do and that everyone matters."

The 'goal' of this event is to provide funding to allow continued running of the Youth Zone & HYFC and to facilitate the purchase of new equipment for both organisations.

Exertis Micro-P are a sponsor of the Youth Zone and also sponsor the Hyndburn FC Adults team.

For anyone wishing to donate, please click here

Cloud-based customer contact centre and self-services supplier Enghouse Interactive has rolled out a new pan-European Partner Programme with a select group of distributors and VARs, including technology resellers and application service providers.

Customers that have already joined include BT, Virgin Media Business, Telefónica UK, Unify Communications and 4Net Technologies.

Members of Enghouse Interactive's EMEA Partner Programme are sub-divided into distributors and value added resellers. The latter category consists of technology resellers, application service providers, OEM providers that rebrand products as their own, and partners focused on supporting delivery to end customers, often as part of a broader solution.

The programme also features tiered platinum, gold, silver and authorised membership, depending on the partner's level of market reach, skills and expertise, revenue generation capability and ability to take on multiple products.

Tony Davies, International Partner Director, Enghouse Interactive, said: "We are looking to recruit partners that want to develop specialist expertise in our solutions and can commit to growing an ongoing and scalable business with us while investing in the development of their teams through training.

"Through our new programme we will concentrate on delivering the capability to enable partners to break out of their product silos, work with us to develop a breadth of solutions and become a single point of contact for their own customers."

Lance Grogan, Alliance Director at Telefónica UK, added: "We are focused on providing customers with hosted voice and enterprise capability around Microsoft Lync. The Enghouse Interactive contact centre offering is suited to this market and now forms a key element of our offering. We are seeing our business pipeline growing and expect the same from our relationship with Enghouse Interactive over time."

Resellers not in the programme can now purchase through the company's family of distributors such as Westcon, 5i Ltd and NEC.

Data centre capacity continues to rise confirms a new study. Digital Realty's 2014 survey of trends across Europe canvassed data centre decision makers in the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Ireland. When asked about future plans for data centre capacity planning, almost all respondents (92%) indicated they are planning some form of expansion within the next four years.

More than one-third (38%) of respondents expected their existing data centre budget to grow between 5-10% in the next 12 months, with an additional 7% of respondents expecting to increase their data centre budget by more than 10% in the next 12 months.

When making decisions about new data centre facility investments, the most important considerations for respondents were the data centre's network connectivity options (81%), including carrier availability and carrier density. The next most important considerations were the resiliency level and availability of the data centre facility (79%), the cost of energy at the data centre location (77%), and the level of control over the data centre facility (76%).

Storage growth, business growth, and the virtualisation of critical applications are seen to be the greatest drivers for data centre capacity growth for European companies participating in a commissioned survey conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Digital Realty Trust, provider of data centre and colocation solutions.

The combined survey results for the five countries revealed that the top expected drivers of data centre capacity growth were storage growth (56%), business growth (48%), and virtualisation (42%). The next tier of drivers included big data (36%), business continuity (26%), and data centre consolidation (23%).

Commenting on the survey findings, Bernard Geoghegan, Managing Director, EMEA, for Digital Realty said, "This information further enhances our understanding of current and prospective client requirements. In a notable shift from last year, the top three drivers of data centre capacity growth were storage growth, business growth, and virtualisation, versus security, disaster recovery, and the supply/reliability of power in the 2013 survey. This is consistent with the shifting view of the data centre from a cost centre to a revenue centre, and a critical component of underlying business growth."

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan Analysis of the European hosted IP Telephony and UCC services market finds that the market earned revenues of $2.46 billion in 2013 and estimates this to rocket up to $9.53 billion in 2019.

"Most installed legacy on-premises systems have reached the end of their useful life and businesses are looking for upgrade alternatives," said Frost & Sullivan Programme Director Elka Popova. "Rising confidence in the maturity and capabilities of voice over IP (VoIP) and IP telephony coupled with a better understanding of the benefits of cloud technologies is driving enterprise migration to next-generation communications solutions and services."

While large distributed organisations with a growing number of remote and mobile workers are expected to deploy hosted solutions, penetration will remain higher among small and medium-sized businesses. Moreover, as long as the installed base of on-premises systems still meets the basic communications needs of most businesses, they may not see the need to switch to hosted IP telephony and UCC services. Businesses with specific customisation, integration or security requirements also prefer premises-based solutions over hosted services.

The fear of losing control over their communications as well as concerns over VoIP quality and reliability further prevent many businesses from outsourcing IP telephony and UCC solutions. Improving service standards and performance consistency will be crucial to enhance customer satisfaction and therefore limit customer churn back to premises-based systems.

"The development of new types of solutions (multi-instance platforms based on virtualised private branch exchange technology) and new business models (UC-as-a-service and cloud UCC) will boost penetration in different customer segments as well as in companies with stringent customisation and security requirements," observed Popova. "Additionally, gaining access to a channel network with significant IP telephony and UCC expertise will help service providers succeed in the European market."

As the market matures, geographic reach and financial stability will become important factors for market expansion in this region. Mergers and acquisitions will pave the way for solution providers to establish a strong foothold.

Network complexities delay business system improvements by nearly a month and negatively affect the majority of businesses according to a recent Avaya survey.
 
The Avaya survey showed that companies wait almost a month (27 days) - most of the time on a maintenance window - before they can make a significant improvement to a business system.

At an average of 10 changes a year, businesses can wait up to nine months for improvements that can help their company grow, increase employee and sales productivity and improve business analysis.

Avaya has simplified network infrastructures with Fabric Connect technology driving the Automated Campus, which now extends to the wireless edge with the introduction of a new series of Wireless LAN solutions.
 
Avaya Fabric Connect automatically configures the distribution and core switches, so IT personnel need only configure edge devices.

Avaya's Fabric Connect now extends to the new Wireless LAN 9100 series for zero-touch provisioning of access points and edge-only provisioning of services.  
    
Simon Culmer, Managing Director, Avaya UK, said: "We find that IT departments go to impressive measures to mitigate risk. The maintenance window model of the 80s is methodical and precise. We have no issue with the process, but what we have done is remove the reason for the model."

Azzurri's Chairman Steve Andrews is poised to take on the role of interim Chief Executive from 11th June 2014 when outgoing CEO Vim Vithaldas exits the business. The move is a precursor to other significant developments within the firm including the closure of Azzurri's High Wycombe office and a logistics centre in Aldridge. The shut-downs form part of a three-year plan to overhaul the company.

Andrews will lead the operational restructuring which will see the company consolidate into a single building in Weybridge and reduce its overall headcount by around 4% (24 positions) across the business.

In terms of its go-to-market strategy, Azzurri plans to build out its managed communications services for UK corporates with multi-site operations and 250 to 5,000 employees.

Andrews said: "Azzurri is well positioned to deliver value to our customers and shareholders as the economy improves."

Airtime provider Daisy Distribution is again celebrating the success of a large-scale partner incentive with a 129% performance increase against its Vodafone connection targets.

The promotion, which was supported by Nokia and Vodafone, saw nine of Daisy Distribution's partners jet off for an exclusive trip to the Valderama Golf Club in Spain.

As well as seeing a rise in its Vodafone connections, during the course of the promotion the firm also experienced over 111% growth in Nokia handset purchase numbers.

The incentive to the Valderama Gold Resort in Spain encouraged Daisy Distribution partners to accumulate as many points as possible between 1st November 2013 and 31st January 2014. Points were awarded for every new and upgraded Vodafone connection.

Bonus points were up for grabs if the connection made was of a One Net Express variant or included a Microsoft Office 365 deployment. All SIM-free Nokia Lumia device purchases also carried a bonus point element, creating a natural link between the Microsoft Office 365 and the Windows Phone 8 capabilities of the Lumia range.

Julien Parven, Marketing Director at Daisy Distribution, said: "Our ambition was to continue the growth which we had seen in Vodafone business since the successful move into revenue share in mid-2013. Having the ability to link this with sales of the Nokia Lumia device range, which is the fastest growing model in our sales portfolio, we felt we had a real opportunity to do something special.

"Partners were definitely engaged and it was fantastic to see how committed they were, not only to the incentive, but to the delivery of a great set of sales figures.

"It is important for us to recognise all the diverse areas within our business and to complement those partners that contribute to our combined success."

Exertis Micro-P's NEC voice solutions business unit is growing by the month, according to John Bird, Head of Systems and Support Services who has witnessed double digit year-on-year growth.

He said: "We work proactively with our resellers to support them in every aspect of the sales and installation cycle - be it impartial pre sales consultative support, to help identify the opportunity, right through to customer demonstration assistance to help close the deal, with a suite of financial and engineering services to help deliver the solution, within budget and end user timescales."

To help resellers bring new products and technologies into their portfolios Exertis Micro-P is delivering a free of charge two day NEC SV8100 sales workshop incorporating Mycalls Call Management applications and UC Desktop applications on the 3rd and 4th June in Nottingham.

"It's a fully accredited sales training course to help resellers sell the entire NEC solution, increase deal closure rates and ultimately increase margins," added Bird. This is an opportunity for resellers wishing to on board with NEC and to do so with no barriers to entry."

Plantronics has updated its Connect Partner Programme to better work with its Premium, Certified and Authorised partners.

Premium partners will gain access to a new deal registration programme to help them progress large sales opportunities. As a part of this initiative they will also get more support from Plantronics to help them take on larger deals and with the promise of higher margins on their sales.

Plantronics will also introduce Connect Rewards, a new points-based channel incentive programme, to reward Certified and Premium partners for their commitment to Plantronics and for their positive sales results.

In addition, Plantronics will launch a Fast Track accreditation process for Authorised partners who wish to quickly achieve certified status. Under the new scheme, Authorised partners will gain access to additional marketing and sales support, to Connect Rewards, and to a dedicated account manager for up to 12 months.

The company will also offer partners new specialisations via Plantronics Connect University, its training programme designed to educate channel partners so they can maximise both existing opportunities and reach new customers.

The firm will complement its Unified Communications (UC) Sales Curriculum with a new technical curriculum so that non-sales employees can develop the knowledge they need to help customers make the most of its headset solutions.

For the first time, Plantronics' most dedicated resellers can achieve company level certifications, to complement their individual salesperson accreditations, so they can share their expertise on Plantronics contact centre and UC solutions with potential customers.

The latest changes to Connect University will go into effect in June 2014.

Over 170 partners have graduated from Plantronics' partner training programme since its launch last year, and have used their new skills to maximise both existing opportunities and reach new customers.

"With the launch of our updated Plantronics Connect Partner Programme we have solidified our commitment to our channel and to making sure our most valued partners are fully equipped to offers customers the best services and solutions while growing their bottom line," said Paul Dunne, Head of Channel Sales, UK & Ireland, Plantronics.