Comms Dealer

An unbeatable demonstration of significant added value to the EMC market generation campaign helped to secure Avnet Technology Solutions EMC Distributor of the Year in the UK.

The presentation was made during the EMC UK 2014 business partner kick-off meeting held at BAFTA headquarters, the home of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in London. ??Avnet received the accolade in recognition of its proactive partner engagement with EMC onboarding, its marketing campaigns and lead generation activities, and the recently launched Altitude programme.

Altitude is aimed at promoting EMC storage and back-up devices for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) and includes an online portal for new and existing Avnet business partners. ??Terry Beale, channel director at EMC, said: "Avnet continues to demonstrate value to EMC and our partners. The Avnet team made a significant impact on the launch of our new VNX technology and range of backup solutions.

"With Altitude, Avnet has created an easy-to-use portal for partners to configure and price EMC storage and backup solutions and help gain market share."??Lee Bushnell, EMC business manager, Avnet Technology Solutions, UK, added: "Avnet's EMC team works with business partners to drive demand creation initiatives and provide technical and commercial enablement throughout the sales cycle.

"The award recognises Avnet's commitment to accelerating the success of our partners and our longstanding partnership with EMC." ?

Jane Wheeler has joined Sennheiser as Reseller Sales Manager with a remit to work closely with resellers to improve their knowledge of Sennheiser products and promotions, including reseller training, events and focus days as well as supporting resellers with end users.

"Having sold Sennheiser for several years, I'm pleased and proud to take on the responsibilities of Reseller Sales Manager," said Wheeler.

"Sennheiser Communications is dedicated towards providing the highest quality Unified Communications headsets, and promoting such a growing market across our resellers is an exciting opportunity that I'm very much looking forward to."

Jane Craven, Sales Director, said: "Jane's track record in this sector makes us confident in her abilities to manage an area that is a strong focus for us in 2014."

Customer confusion is now rated as the biggest issue facing the video conferencing industry, claims new research.

The study found that 58% of channel partners believe customers are baffled by the many options available to them such as videoconferencing, web conferencing with integrated video, and unified communications.

In a bid to clarify the issues Wainhouse Research and Imago Group are to host the Business Breakthrough Events in London on May 29th and Paris on June 3rd.

"Deploying a new video communication service throughout an organisation involves significant investment in time and money, thereby making the decision of which service to go for incredibly important," said Wayne Mason, event director and head of group products and marketing at Imago Group.

"While it is positive that channel partners have recognised that businesses are confused about the wide range on offer, they must now take responsibility and act immediately to solve the problem."

Just four months after joining Peach Telecom as Development Director, Andy Miles has become Sales Director having already delivered over six figures worth of profit to the business.

Peach has also bolstered its marketing arm with the appointment of Lauren McManus as Marketing Executive. She previously worked in Paris for Alcatel-Lucent.

The appointments coincide with a rebranding exercise to incorporate the company's new managed IT offering. The company also has plans to push into larger markets and has appointed Tom Houston as Head of Mid-Market.

Peach CEO Darren Scott-Healey said: "It is an exciting time of transformation for Peach with its expansion and the development of the Peach brand."

Peach has been listed three times on the Sunday Times Tech Track league table which ranks Britain's 100 privately owned technology companies with fastest growing sales over the latest three year period.

The firm has also appeared twice on the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 list.

Pictured (l-r) Tom Houston, Lauren McManus, Andy Miles.

Former ATC Group chief Alex Tupman has led a MBO at Connect Communications in a bid to build a £100m managed IT services business. Tupman has backing from private equity firm Lloyds Development Capital (LDC). He will work alongside CTO Martin Cross and CFO David Rose and the existing management team and staff.

A previous Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year winner, Tupman takes the role of CEO at Connect.

From the company's base and network operations centre near Silicon Roundabout in London, and from operations around Europe, Connect supports high-profile global enterprises on a pan-EMEA basis such as Barclays, Coca-Cola, CSC and HP.

Tupman said: "It has taken a time to find such a high quality, well respected and differentiated business as Connect.

"The business has invested heavily in intelligent infrastructure and toolsets within its service centre that can support enterprise clients on a global basis.

"We aim to invest further in Connects' asset light but technology-rich capability, expanding our global reach, our channel and our penetration of the enterprise space, as well as expanding our service portfolio."

Arman Khan who, in conjunction with Andy Thomas and Martin Cross has led Connect's growth, will consult for the business for a short period.

He added: "Martin's perceptive technology direction has enabled Connect to build a well differentiated and profitable business.

"Adding Alex's experience and leadership gives Connect a strong management team, plus the additional financial firepower from LDC to deliver on its strategy."

Exertis Micro-P has signed a contract with O2 to provide O2 airtime on partner platform, Conect.

One year on from the launch of the platform, Conect channel partners will be able to offer O2 airtime to their customers.

This new partnership means all the major UK mobile networks are now available through Conect. O2 joins Vodafone, EE, Orange and T-Mobile on Conect from 1 April.

Conect enables resellers of mobile, IT and comms to connect services including mobile airtime, hosted services, employee benefit schemes (including BYOD), managed print services and video conferencing via a simple to use, unique and intuitive connections portal.

Fridolin Engel, Head of Sales for Conect, commented: "Having O2 on Conect completes the full portfolio of major networks available to Conect partners."

Exertis Micro-P also announced it is now able to provide Microsoft Office 365 with O2 connectivity on Conect. Office 365 covers the desktop to a user's mobile device offering an easy to manage office anywhere.

Over the second quarter 2014 Exertis Micro-P will be hosting O2 and Office 365 Boot Camps for partners around the UK. Conect partners will be invited to attend as the events hit their region. Each Boot Camp will be supported by both O2 and Microsoft.

There is a growing discrepancy between IT technicians' potential billing time and what is actually billed according to a new report.

In a new Autotask survey, just over 46% of UK IT companies say the optimal target for billable time is 70% to 90%, and another 16.5% said it should be 90% or greater.

But when asked how much of technicians' time is currently billable, 27% of respondents put that number at 50% or less. An additional 20% said between 60% and 70% of their technicians' time is billable.

According to respondents, between one and 20 hours of lost time each month stems from staff conducting manual tasks across multiple systems, an issue that also complicates tracking and reporting.

More than half of respondents said they lose one to 20 hours per month due to an inability to accurately capture billable time or to optimally schedule technicians to balance their time.

The Autotask 2014 IT Service Provider Benchmarking Survey was conducted by the research firm Decision Tree Labs and included responses from 1,300 IT service providers globally, 10% of which are in the UK.

IT companies in the UK predict that managed services will remain their largest growth area this year. Managed services ranks as the top business model, and providers believe client renewal rates will improve as a result of increased managed service contracts.

From that growth will come new hiring - 45% of respondents plan to hire additional workers this year. The improved economy, new client requests, the need for new skills and geographic expansion are also driving new hires.

Those new hires may help companies focus on service levels, an area of concern for UK providers. The survey found that only 41.7% of companies achieve top service level agreement (SLA) response time compliance (91% to 100%), leaving more than half at less-than-optimal levels.

The survey also found that the expansion of cloud services is the biggest factor driving demand for IT services, surpassing the headline-grabbing but less critical areas of mobile connectivity and 'always-on' environments.

Forrester forecasts that spending on cloud software, platform and infrastructure services will grow from $28 billion today to $258 billion in 2020, reaching 45% of total IT services spend.¹

"With the expansion of cloud services, there is a real opportunity for managed service providers to offer clients more than just IT support," said Mark Banfield, Vice President of International at Autotask.

"Offering managed services, increased security and acting as a trusted advisor to clients will be at the forefront of priorities for MSPs to take advantage of the tremendous growth opportunities around cloud."

Distributor Nimans has introduced a series of discounted demonstration kits to help resellers capture more sales of an IP solution from Phybridge.

Dubbed 'the simple route' to IP telephony the demo kits are on offer for less than 50% of the RRP, and free if agreed targets are hit.

Phybridge can help resellers identify and eliminate customer barriers to IP telephony, shorten the sales and deployment cycle and eradicate data network dependencies, claims the from.

The Phybridge PoE switches deliver power over a single pair of telephony grade wire with up to four times the reach of traditional data switches.

They are designed to allow businesses to maximise their existing voice infrastructure and turn it into an IP path for IP telephony.

The solution has been certified with many leading manufacturers including Aastra, Avaya, Broadsoft, Mitel, NEC, Unify - and now with Cisco Call Manager 9.1.

Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales at Nimans, said: "The Phybridge success story continues to grow. The discounted/free demonstration kits (subject to terms and conditions) will help pour more fuel on the fire.

"Acquiring a demonstration kit is highly recommended but is not mandatory for Bronze accreditation. However it is a requirement of silver, gold and platinum sales accreditation."

Kirsty Dawe, Marketing Director of MarketMakers (pictured) - one of the UK's top telemarketing companies - has joined the panel of judges selecting finalists and winners for this year's Comms Dealer Sales Awards. "We are delighted to have Kirsty on board as a judge and she joins a panel of experts who all have a high pedigree of experience across the channel sales and marketing spectrums,"  said Nigel Sergent, Chair of Judges.

"This is a great line up of judges and we are delighted that they have freely given up their time to fairly and professional judge the awards. Once again we have received a record entry which has demonstrated how many companies in the channel value the work carried out by their sales and marketing team. We are looking forward to recognising their efforts at the Awards Luncheon at The Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in London's Mayfair on May 8th."

The full line-up of judges is as follows:
CHRIS HARRIS

Chris is well known in the telecoms channel having held a number of senior positions for vendors and distributors - most notable being Managing Director of Inter-Tel Europe and also MD of Contact Centre specialists Zeacom.  Chris is passionate about delivering outstanding customer service, and appreciates that in today's competitive market, it is only outstanding individuals who will deliver outstanding results.

GARY MAY
Back in 2001, Gary May became a Sales Director for a telecoms company to which he helped grow from less than £4m to £40m in just 5 years. Gary is now the Founder of a highly successful training company, Salesology Ltd, which is a professional sales training approach that combines two crucial selling elements, the Art of Sales and the Science of Persuasion.

JEREMY COOKE
Jeremy Cooke was Sales and Marketing Director for telecoms distributor Rocom between 1984 and 1990. In 1991 he co-founded SDX Business Systems, where he helped grow revenue from £8m to £60m. The company was acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1998, returning 29 times original investment over the seven years since inception. Since then Jeremy has held numerous non-executive directorships for a range of technology based businesses.

JOHN MASSEY
John Massey has been in the telecoms industry for over 30 years and has previously been CEO of Actimax and Chairman of the Callback Group. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Marketing and also of the Institute of Management. John has built up two companies from scratch into successful enterprises. Over the years he has won over 30 awards and accolades for his companies.

KIRSTY DAWE
Kirsty is co-founder and director of award winning B2B marketing agency ReallyB2B. She is also Marketing Director for the MarketMakers group. Prior to this, Kirsty headed up marketing for leading IP tracking software firm Lead Forensics., Kirsty is passionate about the measurability of B2B marketing and delivering campaigns that are completely accountable, providing results right through to the bottom line.?

Nimans has produced a guide to Microsoft Lync end points, targeted not only at Lync resellers but also non-lync dealers who still have an opportunity to supply end points such as headsets, telephony and audio and video conferencing.

"Microsoft Lync is a complete Unified Communications platform that provides effective communication and significantly increases business performance and productivity," says Head of Category Sales, Paul Burn.

"It's being adopted by UK businesses at a tremendous rate which in turn accelerates demand for high quality optimised end points.

"Helping customers choose the most appropriate devices is one of the most crucial components of any Lync deployment. It's why we've just launched an informative guide that combines advice with a product overview, focusing on all the key areas."