Comms Dealer

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.

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."