Comms Dealer

Ingram Micro shares have tumbled after it revealed rising costs in Q1.

It still says it expects sales to grow in low-to-mid single digits in the quarter ending June and the year ending December. It is busy restructuring the European business and closing offices, and reported better growth in Europe, offset elsewhere.

"The company accelerated its strategic investments and ramped up spending ... first quarter earnings per share growth was impacted by the combination of these investments and higher interest and other expenses," it says. Revenue rose 1% to $10.38 billion.

The company's costs rose 10% to $542.2m in the first quarter ended March 31. Net income halved to $24.8m from $49.8m a year earlier.

Maintel has been contracted to deliver 4G and business mobile telephony services to Inspired Dwellings, the national smart home technology consultancy.

Maintel is set to enable Inspired Dwellings with 4G to enhance and increase the speed of communication between the high-end home improvement business and its customers.

Maintel is also faced with the challenge of re-aligning some 40 mobile connections and contracts on a range of different consumer tariffs with varying renewal dates, as well as delivering a considerably higher level of service than Inspired Dwellings has previously experienced.

Ben Tootill from Maintel said: "Our job will be to simplify the management of the Inspired Dwellings mobile estate, re-align its connections and considerably reduce time and costs to the business.

"We will also be implementing 4G to give the business greatly enhanced mobile broadband speed and download capability and ultimately help improve the service Inspired Dwellings delivers to its own customers."

MVNO provider Coms has moved into the expanding ethnic marketplace with its new partnership with Live Telecoms' brand PhoneAfrika.

Coms is providing PhoneAfrika with a SIM only product that offers cheaper call rates to Africans travelling to and living in the UK in order for them to call back home.

David Sutton, Head of Coms Mobile, said: "PhoneAfrika turned to us as they recognised that we are able to offer them reliability, marketing expertise, technical support and that we have access to a large network coverage area."

The initial 2-year agreement will see Coms supplying PhoneAfrika with 50,000 SIMs - 10,000 have already been delivered and are ready for use.

Additionally, Live Telecoms will be accessing another Coms company - Coms Media - by utilising  its capability in marketing PhoneAfrika mobile's new solution.

Victor Kisseih, CEO of PhoneAfrika, said: "This partnership means we can now take our product to market with confidence."

Mark Quartermaine is to join the Alternative Networks Board on 12th May 2014 as Chief Operating Officer reporting to Edward Spurrier, CEO. 

Quartermaine is currently Vice President, UK & Ireland for Juniper Networks and until January 2014 was a Non-Executive Director of Alternative.

He has more than 27 years experience in the IT industry in a variety of general manager and sales and marketing roles. He joined IBM in 1984 and spent 16 years in various sales positions including running the Point of Sale business for Europe and latterly working in the USA as the Worldwide Marketing Director for their Retail Division.  

Since leaving IBM in 2001 Quartermaine has served as COO on the board of NSB Retail, and has held various roles at BT Global Services, including MD of Public Sector as well as the UK President. More recently, from 2010 to 2012, he was Chief Executive Officer at Azzurri Communications.

His non-executive experience also included being a director at Prologic, which was successfully sold in 2012.

Spurrier commented: "I am delighted that Mark is re-joining Alternative. We know him well and he has a wealth of relevant experience in leadership roles within our industry."

TheVoiceFactory has successfully approved the interoperability of Yealink's SIP-T48GN executive handset for use on TheVoiceFactory hosted voice platform.

Compatibility was established following testing under the Yealink ITSP Partner Programme. It enables TheVoiceFactory to extend its SIP handset portfolio and offer its customers the T48GN colour touchscreen to use on their hosted platform.

Yealink handsets will be supplied to The Voice Factory pre-programmed so that they will automatically connect to the company's provisioning server.

Coms has joined forces with London Taxi Advertising to launch an awareness campaign around the capital. There are now four fully wrapped taxis circulating London in the distinctive colours of the Coms group.

And in conjunction with Comms Dealer, readers who spot the cab are encouraged to tweet 'selfies' of them in it or in front of it with the hashtag #greencomscab. They may see their tweet on the Coms and Comms Dealer social media channels and they will also be put into a draw to win a luxury spa day at The Oxfordshire Golf and Spa Complex or a round of golf for two.

The objective of the campaign is to raise awareness of all the services Coms delivers from communication to business infrastructure, smart building and creative media and the taxis are emblazoned with the Coms' slogan "inspiring businesses with the solutions we provide."

Eclipse has added Hosted Exchange 2013 to its cloud portfolio, offering partners a range of collaboration tools that dovetail with the seamless communication and connection requirements of end users, said the firm.

The Eclipse Partner Hosted Exchange service provides email, calendars and contacts, all accessible from the cloud.

"Partners will benefit from having access to the Partner Productivity Console enabling products to be ordered, created and managed on an individual customer basis," said Henry West, Head of Sales at Eclipse.

"This service also provides full access to the Partner Portal which includes campaign support, product collateral and training materials."

Eclipse Partner Hosted Exchange 2013 is backed up by UK-based support and provides 100Gb mailboxes as standard. And with the addition of Partner Hosted Exchange Lite, starting with 1Gb mailboxes, users are able to configure their resources to fit with their needs.

"Being able to go to market quickly with fully supported and seamless solutions is at the top of the list for our partners," added West. "And by enabling the provisioning and management of these services via our Partner
Productivity Console, we can provide productivity tools to enable flexible solutions within the cloud.

"The migration process is fully managed by our team of cloud specialists and further enhances our dedication to providing the support and service that our Partners need."

Eclipse is partnering with Hosted Exchange provider Cobweb to deliver the new service.

Ordnance Survey has entered into a new five-year agreement with Openreach worth over £23 million for the supply of a range of data products, services and value added solutions.

Ordnance Survey's relationship with BT dates back to the mid 1990s when location data and geographical information systems (GIS) were recognised as a key component of the company's IS and operations strategy.

Accurate location data now provides a valuable resource to many areas of the business, from assisting call centre teams in efficiently managing customer calls to underpinning the popular online phone directory. The agreement also enables Openreach to supply Ordnance Survey data to contractors to support a wide range of projects, including engineering and maintenance.

Andrew Loveless, Commercial Director at Ordnance Survey, says: "We have always had an excellent relationship and I expect that this new five-year deal will see this develop further. Ordnance Survey is now firmly positioned at the heart of the utility sector and the data and services we provide really adds value to the industry. This is a real success story, demonstrating yet again that the use of location data can deliver real business benefits."

Under the five year agreement, worth £4.6 million per year, Openreach will access a range of Ordnance Survey's premium datasets including OS MasterMap Topography Layer, OS MasterMap Integrated Transport Network Layer, OS VectorMap Local and 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster. The agreement also includes a range of addressing solutions providing an intelligent suite of products to support operational and insight work.

The agreement will see Openreach extending its use of Ordnance Survey's web mapping service, OS OnDemand. The service enables Openreach, and their engineers, to access detailed and up-to-date data, providing information on road geometry, house numbers, landmarks and building names.

Ordnance Survey is reinforcing the relationship by also providing expertise and technical advice to Openreach on a number of other projects. The two organisations will be collaborating on a number of additional services, such as desktop analysis of locations for engineer visits, to maximise the benefits and efficiencies available from the highly detailed data accessed under the agreement.

Other collaborations include exploring the introduction and utilisation of an asset tagger solution and understanding how Ordnance Survey can support Openreach in mapping their assets, such as street fibre cabinets. This later project will be delivered by a value-added service as part of Ordnance Survey's continuous data capture operation. Ordnance Survey is responsible for the maintenance and management of the geospatial database for Great Britain. This sophisticated database contains over 460 million geographic features and is updated on average 10,000 times a day.

Andrew added: "This is a strategically important agreement for both organisations and I am looking forward to building on our existing relationship by working on a number of exciting collaborative projects. The new agreement is more than just data, it is about delivering value for Openreach and ultimately supporting Openreach in providing the highest level of products and services to its millions of customers.

"The recognition of the importance of location data, services and solutions by businesses has grown significantly over the last five years. Openreach are one of many businesses who benefit from the use of location data - today intelligent data is helping to deliver efficiencies, support growth, underpin decision making and enable greater customer insight."

NEC has marked the continuation of its GT3.nl sponsorship agreement with the launch of The Smart Fast Track 2014 incentive scheme.

The Prospeed Porsche 911 GT3 R of GT3.nl driver Paul van Splunteren will be participating in the European Le Mans Series 2014 Championship.

The calendar features five rounds at a number of Europe's high profile race tracks including Silverstone, Imola, Red Bull Ring, Paul Ricard and Estoril.

To coincide with the races, NEC has launched the incentive for channel partners throughout EMEA. "The Smart Fast Track 2014 will give partners a chance to win an unforgettable weekend at the European Le Mans races at Imola, Paul Ricard and Estoril, while other racing events will be open for channel partners and NEC customers to attend as well," said Ronald Schapendonk, Marketing Director at NEC.

The incentive scheme has already proved popular among NEC business partners with over 50 from across EMEA signing up.

Zen Internet has completed the next phase of its North West Data Centre to meet increasing demand for its hosting services.

The Data Centre now comprises of eight halls with plans for expansion are already underway and will eventually deliver a further two halls.

This expansion forms part of Zen's £4m investment in its data centre. Other investments have included two Diesel Rotary Uninterruptible Power Supplies (DRUPS) that provide a greener standby power solution.

Last year Zen achieved Participant status in the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centre energy efficiency and has also achieved ISO 14001:2004 certification.

A survey conducted by Zen of North West businesses reported that more than a quarter of respondents aim to increase the capacity they take in a third party data centre in the next six months, which is why Zen is continuing to invest in its Data Centre.

This further expansion provides additional capacity for Zen's growing hosting portfolio including Managed Hosting and Managed Cloud Hosting.

"As the cloud computing trend continues to gather momentum and businesses are increasingly reliant on IT systems to function, it has never been more important to ensure that a company's mission critical applications are hosted in a dedicated, energy efficient data centre," said Richard Tang, Managing Director.