Comms Dealer

Nimans has scooped Top SV8100 distributor for EMEA 2013/14 at the NEC's annual Partner Conference staged in Cape Town, South Africa.

The award comes ahead of a dealer event to be staged on June 19th at NEC's Ruislip offices where visitors can learn more about the SV8100 platform and Nimans' service.

Nimans is reporting high growth levels of NEC equipment as year-on-year demand rockets by 136%.

Sales of NEC's SL1100 and SV8100 comms platforms were two of the biggest factors behind an sales boom, noted Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales at Nimans, who says a flourishing working relationship between the distributor and manufacturer is becoming ever stronger.

"NEC is a strong player in the market and our own client base is maturing and becoming more established which in turn is seeing sales on the rise," he pointed out," he said.

"The SL1100 and SV8100 remain popular which more and more resellers are embracing and using to drive their own sales performance further forward.

"A three-pronged assault between ourselves, NEC and most importantly resellers has delivered an exceptional set of sales results. With more upward momentum in the general economy we are confident a strong platform has been laid for further sales success."

Hosting and colocation firm UKFast has announced record results for the last financial year. The Manchester Technology Park-based firm posted £23m turnover, an 18% increase on the previous year, and £8.2m EBITDA, a margin of 35%.

CEO Lawrence Jones, who originally set a target of £20m at the start of the year, said: "I am very pleased with our 2013 results. The last couple of years we've built 3 data centres and acquired a new HQ, which is setting new standards in office design.

"Such a sizeable relocation to contend with could be a huge distraction so I am very glad to have crossed the finish line and be in the situation where we have some incredible property additions and a fantastic platform for the future. We're really looking forward to concentrating on developing our service and product range even more."

In the past 12 months, UKFast reinvested £9m capital and made its first acquisition - strengthening its offering and growing its capacity with an extra 16,000 IP addresses at a time when they are running out. The UKFast team has also grown to more than 250 employees.

Setting his sights on the new financial target, Jones added: "The first quarter of 2014 has been the best we've ever had in the history of UKFast by a country mile - the best figures, the most customers.

"It's been a landmark quarter. The office is taking shape and the economy is gaining momentum. It's an incredible time to be doing business in Britain."

Avnet Technology Solutions is to hold its HealthPath University at the home of the British Medical Association, BMA House in London, on Thursday 5th June 2014.

The keynote speaker at the event will be renowned healthcare informatics executive Charles Lilley. Delegates will learn what is driving the IT agenda in healthcare organisations and hear from analyst IDC and leading technology suppliers to the sector. ??Frank Bennett, SolutionsPath lead, Avnet Technology Solutions, UK, said: "The financial squeeze on health services gets tighter every year and the Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts spending per person is likely to fall in coming years even if budgets remain protected.

"The pressure is on to deliver smarter healthcare and greater productivity for less. Technology is the key to operational efficiencies and this latest Avnet HealthPath University is an opportunity for business partners to hear from those within the industry. The University will cover the challenges and opportunities facing healthcare organisations and where budgets are likely to be spent now and in the future to meet demand for services." ?

Lilley also noted that the wider health economy relies on partnerships, for example organisations, patient groups and clinicians working together. "Avnet's HealthPath University is an ideal opportunity for technology providers to continue this collaboration to better understand the healthcare market and its requirements," he added.??Speakers from IBM, HP, VMware and CommVault will cover the key technology areas affecting healthcare, including mobile technology projects, data analysis to support decision-making and the security of sensitive data.

AV company Square 1 Products and NeoCloud have formed a partnership to develop Faculty Vision, exclusive video conference bundles that deliver technology enabled education solutions to schools and students.

Darren Aspinall, Head of AV from Square 1 Products, said: "By crafting these bundles for the education sector we are able to deliver exactly what these users need. The flexibility and security of being able to integrate seamlessly in to lesson plans means that video is easy to engage with. This ensures a culture change towards utilising interactive video and benefits all round as students can develop a greater understanding than is possible from a book or a one way video."

NeoCloud's Margaret Brewer added: "Square 1 Products has the technology to enable educators to enter the video conference market for the first time. Square 1 Products have enabled NeoCloud on their touchscreens by Triumph Board so that it can work straight out of the box. But critically these bundles do not require new hardware, this can be retro fitted, and as NeoCloud is interoperable with any system, the bundles are suitable in almost every situation."

Contact: www.square1products.com

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has joined with CentriLogic, a provider of international hybrid hosting, cloud computing, co-location and managed hosting solutions, to enable partners in the UK and Ireland to deliver OpenTouch Enterprise Cloud (OTEC) as Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).

The new deployment model will enable partners to deliver OTEC more easily, and at a more affordable cost for customers as the enterprise cloud and collaboration market are expected to grow, said the firm.

CentriLogic, already a major data centre provider across North America, will host all data and infrastructure in its state-of-the-art data centre located in Bracknell, UK.

Peter Tebbutt, Country Leader UK&I, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, said: "Our new relationship with CentriLogic presents a great opportunity for our partners to extend their use of cloud technology, as well as expanding their product base in terms of Unified Communications solutions.

"Working with CentriLogic is a key part of our continued drive to support our partners and enable them to deliver solutions in the cloud. Our OTEC solution is already gaining traction in the UK&I and we look forward to now being able to extend our offering with the new UCaaS deployment model. In fact we expect to announce our first partner in the very near future."

Computacenter has been awarded EMC Business Partner Program EMEA Solution Provider Partner of the Year. The award was received at the 2014 EMC EMEA Global Partner Summit, which took place during EMC World in Las Vegas, NV between 5-8th May.

Philippe Fosse, Vice President, EMEA Channels at EMC Corporation, said: "Computacenter has had a truly exceptional year and fully deserves the Solution Provider Partner of the Year award. In a highly competitive category, Computacenter won by achieving an outstanding annual EMC revenue growth of 57%, including double digit growth across all lines of EMC business, firmly cementing its position as our largest Pan-EMEA reseller. It is to a large extent through channels such as Computacenter that EMC has had such a successful year and I thank them for their efforts."

Neil Eke, Director of Datacenter and Storage at Computacenter, said: "Being recognised as EMC's Business Partner Program EMEA Solution Provider Partner of the Year is a further endorsement of how we are successfully responding and delivering critical business outcomes for our customers through our Data Optimisation and Storage expertise."

Jabra has rolled out a new customer CXashback offer for Q2 available to all authorised Jabra WIN Partners.

The new Jabra cashback promotions gives customers a way to claim money back when they purchase selected Jabra devices during the period. This incentive can be used by all authorised partners registered to the Jabra WIN Partner Programme and allows them to offer the cashback promotion to their end customers in the easiest way possible.

A toolbox of marketing materials to support the Q2 Cashbacks has been created and can be utilised by partners to co-brand and promote the scheme to their customers. The toolbox can be found on Jabra PartnerNet, the sales and marketing web portal for authorised partners.

Nigel Dunn, Managing Director, Jabra Business Solutions UK & Ireland commented: "Jabra's Cashback promotion ensures that our valued partners are supported with an easy way to grow their headset category and gain incremental revenue, whilst also giving our customers value for money when investing in some of our most popular devices."

Exclusive Networks has struck a distribution deal with WhiteHat Security, a provider of cloud-based application security testing products.

WhiteHat Sentinel is said to offer both dynamic application security testing of live production websites, mobile application security testing, as well as static, pre-production application security assessments of the original source code.

"WhiteHat Security is a respected global player in web application security and its decision to invest in the channel will be warmly received by partners looking to increase service revenues and scale-up web application security testing capabilities," said Graham Jones, joint country manager at Exclusive Networks UK.

"Adding WhiteHat Sentinel to our portfolio extends the opportunities for reseller partners seeking to develop complete multi-vendor cyber threat solutions using our CARM platform."

GCI Channel Solutions has appointed Andrew Walton who brings broad experience of converged solutions across mobile, voice, data and cloud platforms.

Walton has 18 years-plus sales experience under his belt including a stint at Vodafone where he played an early role in the introduction and sale of One-Net across its SME base. He then moved to Timico where he specialised in converged solutions and the acquisition of new SME clients.

He said " I am a huge believer that great service to the client is the most important element of any sales role. I see my new role as a challenge to learn more, do more and help channel partners drive their business forward."

A new report from Juniper Research forecasts that the number of unique consumers accessing cloud-based services will exceed 3.6 billion by 2018, rising from an estimated 2.4bn in 2013.

The report highlighted that an expanding collection of connected services within cloud-based storage, music and games will drive consumer demand over the next five years.

According to the report, despite the success of cloud-based storage providers attracting large numbers of users, they are failing to capture a significant percentage of premium subscribers.

In contrast, music streaming services such as Spotify are claiming the lion's share of revenues, when compared to storage or games focused applications. This is partly due to the availability of extensive music catalogues that are way beyond the storage limits of the mobile device, coupled with low subscription costs.

Additionally, the report found that cloud-based music streaming and storage service providers are facing a tough battle to turn revenues into profit as they try to find a balance between premium tier pricing and the scope of the basic, or free tier. Players such as Pandora and Spotify have yet to turn a profit, while Ubuntu recently withdrew from the cloud storage space, citing the current price wars as being "unsustainable".

Meanwhile, the cloud games market, where game computation is located entirely in the cloud, is experiencing somewhat of a renaissance following the re-launch of OnLive and the market entry of PlayStation. Nevertheless, with games effectively being streamed from the cloud, latency may hamper the success of this opportunity.