Comms Dealer

Abbey Telecom chief Tony Raynor has taken up the post of non-executive director at the North and Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce.

The former president of the East Lancashire Chamber has accepted the post with a 'renewed vigour' for business support and lobbying.

The appointment follows a period of consolidation for 52-year-old Rayno.

"This was a fairly logical and natural progression since my involvement with the North and Western Lancashire Chamber has been growing in recent months, not least in helping to support and judge in the increasingly popular BIBAs awards," said Raynor.

"As a new non-exec with previous Chamber of Commerce experience, I'm hoping to find my feet and contribute quickly."

Raynor founded Abbey Telecom in 1992 and has held a number of non-executive directorships for business support organisations.

A scoring system that rates the abilities and attributes of potential channel partners could ease and speed the partnering process according to its inventors.

The comparison website, which launches in May, enables companies searching for a preferred channel partner or reseller to assess and evaluate their choices.

Final judgements are based on the feedback of customers who have experienced the service offered by particular companies in the ICT value chain.

Called Recommended Channel Partners (RCP), the service claims to be the first that ranks IT and communications providers in this way.

"RCP is free to use and has been designed for IT procurement professionals and anyone else looking to source an IT or comms channel partner," explained RCP founder Julian Barrow.

"Users have the ability to rate the competencies and services offered by providers across a range of disciplines, including IP telephony, unified communications, contact centres and networking."

Barrow also noted that RCP gathers feedback on levels of customer satisfaction with users rating and reviewing companies across a range of areas including account management, engineer skill, technical competence, project delivery and value for money.

"Choosing a channel partner to work with is an important decision and getting it wrong can be expensive, time consuming and damaging," he added.

"The aim of RCP is to help companies make considered decisions based on the experiences and shared feedback of others."

RCP will also gather information on key performance indicators from providers  as well as data on company profiles including vendor partners, accreditations, number of employees, number of engineers etc.

iHub has lifted the lid on its Nteract mobile client, the latest addition to its Smart Office UC portfolio.

Nteract gives business users the freedom to work from virtually anywhere, says the firm. The mobile client provides the same tools and features which traditionally would only be available to users when sat at regular office desks.

Available on almost all smartphones and tablet devices, users can use WiFi or their data allowance to originate or terminate calls on their mobile through Nteract.

Nteract uses the office number and business contacts list of the user, providing a consistent business identity across devices.

iHub Commercial Director John Donaldson said: "While there is no shortage of VoIP diallers available in App stores, these do little more than enable simple voice calls to be made over Wi-Fi.

"With its feature rich functionality and seamless integration, the Nteract client has the potential to revolutionise the activities of mobile workforces and drive down the mobile costs for businesses, particularly when travelling abroad."

Nimans resellers are being encouraged to blow away their sales targets and win a five star trip to the 'windy city' of Chicago with Unify.

Nimans is the official distribution partner for Unify in the UK and the two parties have joined forces to offer resellers a three-night stay in the cosmopolitan city in October.

Resellers need to exceed agreed sales targets of the OpenScape Business UC Suite between April and September 19th - while new dealers need to complete Unify's on-boarding programme to stand a chance of jetting off to the USA.

Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales at Nimans, said: "Guests will be wined and dined while watching live music and they will also enjoy a major sporting event and sample the culture of a very unique and colourful city. It will be a trip to remember."

EE has opted for Londonderry in Northern Ireland as the location of its new UK customer service centre.

The new site will be managed by Convergys and is set to open in late Spring with recruitment for the new roles to begin shortly.

In February this year EE set out plans for a jobs drive that will see over 1,000 customer service jobs brought back to the UK from overseas call centres.

The opening of the new customer service centre in Northern Ireland will provide a boost for employment in Northern Ireland.

The location of the remaining roles for the UK will be announced in due course.

Olaf Swantee, EE CEO, said: "Returning over 1,000 customer jobs to the UK from overseas call centres is a significant part of the strategy to achieve this goal."

Arlene Foster MLA, Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, added: "Following the Invest in NI conference chaired by the Prime Minister and the First Minister last autumn I am delighted that EE, along with their partner Convergys, have announced that they will be opening their newest customer service centre in Londonderry and bringing 300 jobs to Northern Ireland.

"This shows that Northern Ireland workforce can compete and win on the quality of service they offer."

Fibre network operator Venus Business Communications has expanded its network as the government grant scheme Superconnected Cities gathers pace.

The network now provides 30 per cent more network coverage than before giving businesses in Euston, Camden, Whitehall and Westminster direct access to the Venus Dark Fibre Network.

The Venus Dark Fibre network delivers speeds of 10 gigabits per second and an uncontended service meaning that businesses experience no drop in speed during busy periods.

It also provides a symmetrical service, so businesses can upload and download data at the same fast speeds.

"There is growing demand from businesses across London for our network as they begin to realise that it provides a true fibre to premises service and can deliver very high bandwidth with access to a range of data centres," said Brian Iddon, Venus Business Communications' Director.

"We already have 14 points of presence across London that allows us to connect businesses directly to our network.

"This latest expansion increases this to 18 points of presence and the potential for thousands more businesses to connect to the Venus Dark Fibre network. Now our network passes hundreds of thousands of London postcode locations."

The new expanded network not only brings Venus Dark Fibre to more businesses across London it also brings the potential for future higher speeds of up to 40 gigabits per second.

"The government recognises that businesses require fast connectivity to compete in today's IT dependent market," added Iddon.

"With faster connectivity comes operational efficiencies and increased competitiveness. The government's Superconnected Cities schemes are stimulating businesses to get better connectivity and our network expansion provides our resellers and partners with the opportunity to exploit this scheme to its full potential in London."

Venus also announced the appointment of Sean Brown-Coleman as Account Manager. He joins from Virgin where he was the region's top sales person and ranked one of the top ten in the country.

"I'm very excited to be joining Venus as they are a young vibrant company that has been growing rapidly over the last 12 months and have innovative products and services to offer businesses," he said.

"I'm looking forward to contributing to the further rapid growth of the business particularly in the financial and multimedia markets."

The European Union's Atlas of ICT hotspots has identified 34 regions in 12 countries across the continent with the highest activity and potential in ICT.

The study has taken a closer look at both big metros and smaller cities, however the top three spots belong to Munich, London and Paris.

The report is based on the three core elements that have been carefully analysed in order to identify the best-performing ICT regions across Europe. The components of analysis include the region's business activity, innovation as well as its research and development opportunities.

Additionally, this has been supported by factors such as the intensity, measured in business turnover, growth and headcount, the level of internationalisation and the region's networking ability.

Other key criteria include the access to top universities and capital along with funding opportunities, the study says.

The EU also emphasises that in order to fulfil the aforementioned criteria the regions do not need to be big which is exemplified by a German city with 150,000 inhabitants Darmstadt which ranks high in the report together with Leuven in Belgium or Cambridge in the UK.

The report also finds that the UK ranks first in terms of the number of the ICT graduates providing 8 out of the 10 top regions while Germany ranks first in research and patenting activity. The employment growth is the fastest in Lisbon, in Portugal, and in the south-west region of Poland (Rzeszow). All three top cities Munich, Paris and London also win in the category of the venture capital acquisition.

EU's atlas also says that there is a number of factors that each of the ICT winning regions do share. Most of the regions are the established industrial, educational and historical centres which play a leading role in its respective countries and have a long-term policy on R&D in place. Additionally, they tend to create the clusters and are located in a close proximity to each other.

"This is proof that digital success comes through a willingness to invest, an open mindset for innovation and planning. Europe needs to build these values today to be a global leader in technology," says European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes.

The second-tier regions include: Karlruhe and Darmstadt in Germany, Cambridgeshire in the UK, Stockholm and Uusimma in Sweden, Noord Brabant and Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Leuven in Belgium.

IBM shares fell 4% as it reported its lowest quarterly revenue in five years, hit by falling demand for its storage and server products.

Total revenue fell 4% to $22.5bn in the first quarter, below analysts' average estimate of $22.91bn. Revenue from the hardware business, which includes servers and systems storage, fell 23% to $2.4 billion.

IBM has been changing its business structure, cutting jobs and selling its x86 server business to Lenovo. It has a lot of hopes pinned on the cloud and its analytics side. Russia had been another growth area, but sales here fell by 11%. EMEA as a whole was up 4%.

Software was the only major business to show some growth, with revenue rising 1.6% to $5.66 billion, but the growth rate was slower than the fourth quarter's 2.8%. Even the Global technology services side was down -3%, although it fell -4% last time.

By Clive Jefferys, JMA Network: We've all been waiting for a few months for this to hit the headlines. Unemployment has fallen below seven per cent and even more importantly, wage rises have started to outstrip inflation.

So the Big Question is how this is all going to affect to the recovery and for many companies that don't get with the plan, the answer is... badly.

Of course you will say I have a vested interest in wages rising, but let us not forget that for five years all of us business owners have benefited from staff costs staying below the curve. So now the active jobseeker is entitled to see the benefit from his or her next job move.

The big problem is, of course, that there aren't many new candidates available for your channel, field sales, provisioning or billings team. Every employer and recruitment agent is saying they can't find the staff, yet placements continue and to be honest, are accelerating!

So where are these new hires coming from?

The answer is threefold: Niche focus recruiters, headhunts between rival companies and highly proactive job hunters finding their own job.

So here's my prescription to speed your recovery.

Pill Number One: Raise your salary offers. Our best clients have stopped worrying about throwing in a few extra thousand on basic salaries. They recognise that a job unfilled is already costing them £5k or £10k a month in lost sales or service failures.

Pill Number Two: Invest in training. Don't hold your breath for someone with perfect skills to walk in the door. If they are that good, their current employer has already given them a pay rise and is hugging them like mad. Instead you need to recruit from a level below. Look for the good honest, hardworking people that are frustrated by lack of promotion opportunities, bring them on board and train them.

Pill Number Three: Accept that sales ability takes years to develop and is far more important than current technical awareness. If you meet someone that has that sales ability, enthusiasm and sparkle honed through years on the phone or in front of clients, go for it! If he or she isn't up to speed about FTTC, Roaming or Union Street, don't worry about it. You can train those skills in weeks. They are black and white, people either pass exams or resit them until they do.

Pill Number Four: Add a new KPI to your business plan. Include recruitment as a key factor in your growth and link headcount to departmental performance. This will uncover the managers that deliberately keep their teams understaffed, and reward those who really do have the company's best interests at heart.

We are on the verge of substantial economic growth. Whether you need to recruit for front or back office, the most important skills you need now are selling and customer service. Hire people with those magical qualities and the rest will follow.

Openreach has boosted its high bandwidth optical capability with a UK-wide 40Gbps and 100Gbps service that is 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 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 will 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.

Jon Hurry, MD, Strategy, Commercial, Portfolio & Policy, Openreach, said: "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, VP Global Channels and Strategic Alliances, Ciena, added: "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, to be unveiled on April 29th, took just nine months to develop from concept to launch. "With the market growing at pace, and requirements for 100G solutions already evident, we wanted to offer a solution fast," explained 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 Cienna 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 having taken account of the customers' perspectives. "We received a full wish list from one customer at the oust," 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 (telecoms adjudicator) as an example on how Openreach should engage and develop products."

The overall Optical market is forecast to grow by a significant 135% over the coming years, representing a big opportunity for comms providers. The size of the opportunity and speed of 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.