Comms Dealer

tIPicall has mounted a credible challenge to become a main contender in the UK SIP and hosted market according to Sales Director Steve Harrington who has the bit firmly between his teeth. Here, he talks strategy and SIP education.

The comms industry's vaulted chamber continues to echo with analyst projections on demand for SIP trunks outstripping ISDN within two years, but Harrington takes a different line. He believes that such predictions should be taken with a pinch of salt, and bases his viewpoint on hard evidence gained from speaking to resellers on the ground. The market potential for SIP trunks is not in doubt, but the ability of the channel to deliver on the promise is far from secure. "Many resellers are still confused and wary about SIP," he said. "There is growth, but the take-up is less than we are led to believe."

With untapped market potential at stake this is no time for sitting on hands, noted Harrington, who has been busy developing and advancing a programme of education designed to bring resellers up to speed with all things SIP. "Education has been a big part of our strategy for years and we are driving high level SIP training through channel partners," he explained. "Resellers have to get educated. They must understand how to sell and deploy SIP or they will get left behind. It really isn't that complicated, but there is more to know compared to ISDN which is relatively straightforward."

tIPicall's channel education initiative includes two seminars this month, designed to inform senior management in telecoms on SIP, what it is, how to sell it and how it should be deployed. The company plans another event in May, and combined with its overarching long-term strategy these seminars are symbolic of tIPicall hammering a stake in the ground as a main challenger in the UK SIP and hosted market. Harrington estimates that the company is 80 per cent of the way towards realising its goal. "This is our year for being seen as the number two player in the SIP and hosted market," he added. "We know what we are capable of and what we have planned, and it's exciting."

As well as setting a strong agenda for growth tIPicall has also consolidated the structure of the organisation and bolstered its Board with key appointments, including the promotion of Guy Miller as Managing Director. Three of the four Board members have in the past been responsible for starting, running and selling their own telecoms businesses, and according to Harrington this inbuilt entrepreneurial flare will be invaluable as the company progresses over time.

"Our brand has become solid," added Harrington. "We were well known a couple of years ago for our international offering, but now we are just as renowned for our UK product set which still forms the majority of our business today. We have received strong industry feedback and built an equally strong reputation in all corners of the industry, but we will not rest on our laurels and always strive to be better and deliver better up-time, quality and products."

tIPicall's energy and verve to improve all aspects of the business is reflected in rising revenues which doubled last year, and Harrington expects a repeat performance this financial year. "We are now profitable and we have a strong financial base," he added. "We will be announcing big developments around the features for our SIP product in two months time including the launch of Super Trunk, and will confirm the completion of an 18 month project on our hosted platform - watch this space!"

Not surprisingly the company's engineering resource has grown significantly in line with developments within the business. "We have learned over the last few years that a great engineer can solve a problem much faster, so the payback on higher wages and running costs is that much quicker," commented Harrington. "Great engineers are the difference between success and failure with SIP."

tIPicall boasts 100-plus active partners split roughly 50:50 between resellers and dealers. "If a reseller is only interested in price rather than adding value and not working with us to get the deployment right, they are not for us," said Harrington. "Among the larger resellers we are 'strategically' happy to be the second choice and bide our time. Churning an incumbent, especially if they are a strategic partner, is hard, but if we can add value and variety and prove ourselves as a safe pair of hands our day will come."

Harrington pointed to a hands down statistic that underlines the robustness of tIPicall's core SIP trunk proposition, which during the last 12 months has not experienced a single minute's downtime. "It's all about reliability and added value," commented Harrington. "If we can give our partners an edge when they go up against rival SIP and hosted providers, as long as they get the pricing right they should win far more business. Our total focus is on helping our partners win more business, that is what matters."

While flying the flag for reseller partners another aspect of the company's expanding portfolio is also spreading its wings. "Hosted is soaring," added Harrington. "I sold hosted in 2005 and it was not a good experience. Now, all of the constituent parts are there. We have an ADSL to 1GB private SIP and hosted offering and a state-of-the-art platform. Now is the time to be offering a differentiated hosted solution."•

Not yet 12 months old True Telecom has already displayed a remarkable knack for driving growth having already made big strides in the small business sector, and according to CEO Stuart Griffiths the company is aiming to make an even bigger stamp on the market this year.

Griffiths had fanned his entrepreneurial flame in a number of ventures before settling on telecoms having spotted a gap in the market to offer SMEs low cost business rates with hands-on service and support. Launched in late May 2013 True Telecom left the blocks in a cloud of dust and has grown from a standing start to approximately 2,500 customers, offering a range of telecoms services to the lower echelons of the SME sector. "Small businesses need the extra care and attention that they sometimes do not receive from the bigger carriers," said Griffiths. "But our investment in skilled staff alongside our enhanced offering enables us to position True as an alternative provider."

The company has grown its headcount from 25 to 100 in just 10 months and currently retails in the region of £150,000 each month. "Our projections include building the client base by approximately 30,000 next year and gaining an additional 7,000 business customers by the end of this calendar year, achieving over £500,000 turnover per month," added Griffiths. "We plan to recruit between 150 and 200 more staff members to support this growth."

These impressive figures will be augmented by a channel push this year following investment in additional infrastructure to support the launch. "Our channel strategy is simple," explained Griffiths. "We understand that the market can be a challenging environment and it is our job to ease businesses and partners along a natural progression towards the future, helping them to make these transitions as seamlessly as possible."

The evolving dynamics of the comms market is reflected in the way True has built its offering from the base upwards. "We have reacted at the right time to future proof the success of True, its customers and partners," said Griffiths. "We have added value to our products and portfolio while still doing what we do best. We have taken huge strides to drive the business forward which is demonstrated by our expansion into a new head office as well as our operations in Kent."

Data, big data and the delivery of data is defining the way not only telecoms but the world in general is now operating. "We live in a world where smart technology and applications rule, and new ways of communication such as social media and instant chat have taken the world by storm," added Griffiths. "It is the communications industry that has to react to this evolutionary spike in technology, finding new and innovative ways to respond to the huge rise in demand for data and data management. It's imperative that VARs and SIs continue to adapt by keeping up-to-date with the latest telecoms advancements and taking an intelligent look at which elements fit best with their existing proposition."

To align its portfolio with the evolving market True Telecom has also reviewed its broadband and mobile offerings and is adding value with new hosted and SIP services. "SIP is the gateway to enable future growth and value added applications and technology," commented Griffiths. "SIP and hosted are clear growth opportunities driven by the demand for value added applications and the management of data. With traditional products such as CPS and WLR in decline - last year 11 per cent and six per cent respectively - and IP telephony growing by 20 per cent per year alongside cloud growth of 44 per cent last year, these are growth areas that we can count on for some years to come."

Also in the mix is the creation of a winning culture, pointed out Griffiths. "A company without a culture is just a group of people," he commented. "We have always had a strong ethos and if staff come in smiling and leave at the end of the day smiling, you know you're on the right track.

"It is a great achievement to have been able to create such a great team which I am privileged to be a part of every day; and the energy and positivity that drives and flows through our business is a joy to see. I enjoy every day of my job, which is testament to the fantastic group of people we have at True, and is the biggest factor in our ongoing success."•

Few industry figures deserve the label 'seasoned comms veteran' as much as Robin Hayman, SpliceCom's Director of Marketing and Product Management, whose watchwords 'no direct sales, no trade distribution' continue to pay off for the innovative vendor and its channel partners.

SpliceCom was formed in 2001 by comms veterans Sean Harding, Frank Bretherton and Jeremy Cook. Their story began in the late 90s when SDX acquired a company established by Harding and John Birbeck, called Network Alchemy. Soon afterwards SDX itself was acquired by Lucent Technologies. Lucent's telephone system arm was then spun off as Avaya in early 2000 with the third Generation Network Alchemy Argent product family rebranded and launched by the new owners as IP Office. A previous venture, Scorpion Logic, was asked by Bretherton and Cooke at SDX to build the Data Router Cassette (DRC) for the INDeX telephone system. "That was my first real exposure to business telephony," stated Hayman.

These early experiences proved pivotal in shaping the formation of SpliceCom and its direction. "We aimed to build on what we had learnt in our previous venture and create a super-scalable, pure IP-based telephone system ready to take advantage of the convergence of voice with web-based and native IT apps which we viewed, even back then, as inevitable," said Hayman.

Foresight is a wonderful thing but Hayman's past experience in the IT and comms sector ensured that his future vision was based more on science than educated guesswork. After graduating, he studied Electrical & Electronic Engineering at what is now Coventry University and started his working career at DPCE, a large third party computer maintenance company in the early 80s. "At this time PCs were just starting to be used in business," recalled Hayman. "Mainframes and Minis were the order of the day for 99 per cent of serious computing. Then I moved into data communications and got into LAN interworking during the late 80s, and then into voice in the late 90s when Sean Harding and John Birbeck started Network Alchemy.

From the outset SpliceCom's go-to-market strategy was to concentrate on the UK and sell exclusively via direct relationships through the channel. No direct sales, no trade distribution. "As a new entrant we saw reseller profitability as key to us gaining initial traction," explained Hayman. "The slide into over distribution of competitive products was already underway. A close channel relationship was also important to us because we could see that the fast evolution of voice products and services was unlikely to slow down, with ongoing education being key to identifying and closing new business opportunities as well as ensuring happy customers post-install. It's a testament to Jeremy Cooke's vision that the channel strategy he put in place on day one still underpins everything we do to this day."

Barry Edwards took over from Harding as CEO in mid-2011 and has taken SpliceCom from the entrepreneurial, technical tour-de-force it was when he joined and steered it towards the market focused operation it is today. "He's worked hard to put in place the systems and procedures needed to take the business forward to the next stage of development, as clearly demonstrated by the 30 per cent year-on-year growth we're currently enjoying across the board," said Hayman.

Over the past 12 months SpliceCom has also concentrated on developing new products to expand its portfolio, allowing it to deliver a wide choice to channel partners and customers. "We now offer a range of soft, hard and virtual IP PBXs, all running the same operating system - Maximiser OS - which can be deployed to fulfill on-premise, cloud, hosted and hybrid requirements," commented Hayman. "In particular, we have witnessed an impressive take-up of our soft/virtual IP PBX family since its introduction. With the ability of these systems to grow seamlessly in both size and capability simply through additional licences, we expect to see sales accelerate for the foreseeable future."

According to Hayman, this extended product portfolio positions SpliceCom as an independent advisor when it comes to meeting the differing needs and requirements for PBX deployment. "As with all new technology cycles, the new entrants, in this particular case cloud service providers, will decry any need for premise-based capabilities and continuity of service," he added. "The truth is that there is no one-size-fits all. Each customer's unique requirement, both technical and commercial, will inevitably dictate the best solution."

Hayman believes that a general consensus of opinion on the benefits of hybrid deployment - probably the best solution for a high percentage of SMBs, he says, is growing. "Encompassing elements of both cloud and on-premise equipment, a hybrid solution offers convenience alongside total resilience," noted Hayman.

SpliceCom's smartphone and tablet integration has also been giving customers what they want from BYOD mobility, according to Hayman. Phase one has seen smartphones and tablets running the firm's iPCS IP Softphone app, replacing traditional DECT devices and even recently installed SIP/Wi-Fi phones. "The main driver is convenience coupled with the fact that this combination delivers more system features than legacy systems, so much so that we're witnessing the emergence of a second phase where the need for any form of deskphone is totally redundant," commented Hayman.

"This requirement alone is causing companies to migrate from their existing PBX and hosted solutions. With BYOD still proving to be a major driver we will continue to build on the benefits our technology design gives us to service this demand."

The company's Flexible Licence Programme (FLP) is also driving growth. From new departmental initiatives to seasonal call centres, companies are seizing the ability to only pay for the facilities they need to use, increasing or decreasing their investment as business demands. "This pay monthly scheme, with its ability to flex numbers up and down, has always been positioned as a major USP by hosted service providers," said Hayman. "By applying a similar plan to soft/virtual PBXs, licences and apps, FLP allows CPE equipment to be treated in the same manner. This eliminates the opex versus capex argument and puts the focus back on what's operationally best for the customer."

Security is becoming evermore important in the voice space, even though, claimed Hayman, many suppliers continue to hide their heads in the sand. However, SpliceCom claims to be the only PBX vendor to offer built-in protection against freaking. "We provide protection against call hacking utilising Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology for remote, mobile and home working device connectivity," he added. "And, in an increasingly litigious society, protection of our customers through integrated call recording is fast becoming a must. It no longer matters if an organisation is required to record all calls for regulatory purposes or otherwise."

SpliceCom's go to market approach insulates partners from the 'me too' price squabbling and margin damaging approach of the over-distributed big brand manufacturers, claims Hayman. "We firmly believe that to deliver high quality solutions and services the channel requires quality product margins and a professional approach," he said. "We are constantly vetting potential resellers, identifying those best suited to promote our solutions to their customers. We look at their business goals and direction to evaluate how SpliceCom can best service their business growth.

"To help us achieve this, the launch of ProVision Services allows new channel partners to get up to speed quickly and successfully deliver their first few customer installs. Our new website features a reseller-only microsite which allows us to tailor an effective supply of information on a reseller-by-reseller basis. This means we can maximise our personal contact with each channel partner, working with them in true partnership to deliver measurable marketing initiatives."•

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: One of the first questions I am asked when meeting a prospective client for the first time is, 'How do you ensure my adverts will not look the same as the other adverts in the same publication?'. The answer is 'brand'.

Brand is one of the most fundamental elements of marketing and vital in the promotion of your company. First impressions do count and repetitive brand reinforcement softens up prospects. I see many companies in the channel start out with a quickly thrown together logo and have never invested the time to take a step back and think about how their image and character is perceived by others.

How can companies take their logo and branding to another level and define their corporate personality? Brand identity is a mixture of vision, design, focus and detail. A brand needs to be well thought through as it has the purpose of communicating your corporate personality and values and also your business focus. A flash image is no good if no one has a clue what you specialise in or what your USPs are.

Establish a corporate personality and ensure this is present in all your communications, but be realistic. Just because you like a TV advert showing a gimmick it does not mean it is right for your company or the team that represents it. Ensure that you have full buy-in of the brand with your staff - their interaction with the client needs to further reinforce your image and message.

Detail is key and constant branding really helps to push your company into the forefront of your prospects minds and reinforce existing client engagement.

Finally, make sure your revitalised brand image is present in all corporate material. I often find there are sneaky documents hidden away in hard drives that are used regularly without others knowing!

Productisation and specialisation are a blazing contradiction in terms but paradoxically their coexistence could be the key to unlocking sales in the future, according to delegates who took part in a round table debate hosted by Comms Dealer and supported by Entanet.

Nothing distances a sales person from a done deal as much as a lack of knowledge about what they are selling and no insights into the real needs of their prospects. Consultation is the one area that the ICT channel has not yet come close to conquering, but a strategic approach that prioritises productisation and/or specialisation could be the key to achieving positive results. This is perhaps one of the comms industry's biggest ironies: We talk endlessly about the widespread need for sales people to become consultants but what we really need are product kings.

According to research by consultancy firm Larato, ICT business leaders rate just seven per cent of their sales staff as competent in selling next generation products and services. Eighteen per cent are deemed 'quite effective'. This is no ringing endorsement of the ICT industry's ability to grow. But thanks to productisation we are not doomed by circumstance.

Julian Andrews, Director at Virocom, believes that non-basic sales pitches in many instances are inapposite and likely to fail. "Not all sales people can cope with complex solutions," he commented. "In the past we lost sales because we didn't have the basic product, so our approach has been to productise. By selling one product we secure the customer and work on up-selling more complex solutions."

Sales professionals today work in an environment where unstructured demand dominates. Compared to the traditional purchase, end user requirements are now far more fluid and buyers could be more than 50 per cent of the way through a sales cycle before contacting a supplier. "The traditional good quality solution sale is becoming a rare breed," said Andrew Skipsey, Managing Director, M12 Solutions. "These days, buyers do research and they know what they want, so getting close to them is harder. The old guard of comms buyers are a dying breed, superseded by Generation Y who want quick decisions on value, price and contract terms. We have to accept that this is the reality now. But our best sales come from getting close to the customer."

The majority of sales people are only able to sell products confidently, however the technology environment is moving towards greater complexity and solution selling. Furthermore, a new breed of knowledgeable buyer wants quick decisions, all of which adds weight to arguments in favour of simplification. "If you want to sell services through the channel you have to sell products," stated Campbell Williams, Group Strategy and Marketing Director at Six Degrees Group. "You have to go through a productisation exercise that makes the proposition easier to understand, easier to buy and easier to mark up, sell and make a margin. But productisation doesn't mean commoditisation."

As many modern buyers are close to a buying decision even before they talk to a sales person, they are at a point when a sincere demonstration of relevancy towards their business would count most. But this requires consultancy, making it more important than ever to close deals quickly and effectively. Yet in the main, a product push could be the only way to secure an early foothold within a customer's organisation, so the case for productisation seems unassailable.

Jon Walters, Director at Solar, noted: "We started out as a traditional PBX reseller but now we are moving into different silos like mobility and the cloud. This means sales people need to ask the right questions. It's no longer a case of price and product comparisons. It's now about what the solution runs on. This consultative element is a challenge. That's where productisation helps. If sales people have stock answers it gives them a fighting chance. Productisation on key products such as DIA is fantastic, before adding more value and growing the opportunity."

Frontier Voice and Data's Managing Director Michael Thornton believes that channel companies would be doing themselves a big favour if they pursued a revised strategy based on the notion of 'productise to specialise'. "We've productised heavily in the way we appear to the channel," stated Thornton. "We created five silos, with a sixth soon to be added, that cover all of our products. Partners simply visit the product pages and price up. Then prompt questions direct them to other pages for relevant options such as connectivity. By using this managed piecemeal method partners are able to build solutions."

Resellers also need to productise for the customer because buyers need to understand the product silos and how they fit together at every stage of the process. "Productisation soon becomes a matter of evolution," added Thornton. "Our 60-plus channel partners are fast becoming specialists because they are able to pick the product they want to sell and then specialise in their selections. As a channel business, productisation morphing into specialisation is key."

James Byles, former Managing Director at alwaysON (which merged with DCG last month), also has a strategic vision for the delivery of solutions based on a mix of productisation and specialisation. "In the mid-market cookie cutting is everything," he said. "Seemingly complex customer requirements can be boiled down to small packets of easily understood information. Applications like ERP and CRM, along with propriety elements, when migrated to the cloud can be delivered as a productised and bespoked bundle. It's about how you take it to market."

The mechanics of selling are straightforward, agrees Campbell, who said the penny will drop when the idea of sales people being 'coin operated' is fully realised. "If products aren't selling there has to be an issue with the productisation or the commission structure," he said. "Tweak the incentive plan and watch the behaviour change."

Traditional selling techniques have become time-worn but the rise of productisation could not be more timely. As well as helping to unlock product-based deals that open up more opportunities with the customer, productisation also enables ICT resellers to align their businesses with trends towards hosting and new business models. With more customers asking for hosted solutions, a sales process founded on the principles of productisation could both encourage the move towards an opex model while also qualifying more complex deals at the same time.

Andrews added: "We pay commissions upfront according to a recurring profit model and based on the order value. But we have established stringent checks and balances that enable us to qualify the sales. Productisation allows us to carry out checks such as the workability of the solution. Our systems won't allow sales to progress unless the selections are positively checked, compatible and complete, enabling us to deal with the variables confidently. With this mechanism we are confident to pay upfront, but without these checks it's too dangerous."

With a note of caution, Elsa Chen, Entanet's CEO, pointed out that productisation could have an unwanted flip side and widen the scope for price comparisons. She said: "Breaking a solution down into its component parts makes it easier to understand, but are we putting ourselves under pressure by exposing the pricing structure to customers? Entanet prioritises protecting our partners' margin in a competitive environment. How we achieve that while delivering a simple sell is a fine balance. And if the network solution is an absolute given, the challenge is also to differentiate between good and bad connectivity."

Fraser Ferguson, Director at Kube Networks, commented: "The Generation Y gamers are now buying connectivity and they don't want to meet you for a discussion about what they see as an absolute standard component. Productisation is about allowing the channel to understand how they sell and deliver it, and how sales people get paid.

"But as we try and push our value up we meet a different type of competition from large companies that now see the value of networking, like IBM and Google. How do we meet the challenge of big American organisations wanting to come into our space? Is it through the productisation or specialisation of solutions?"

Selling in the comms channel has become an art form that many sales people are struggling to master, and the scope for doing bad business, or no business at all, is widening. But a relationship-based truism that remains constant could save the day, especially if supported by a robust 'productise to specialise' strategy. "There is always the 'people buy from people' scenario," commented Andrews. "If a customer likes and trusts the sales person, that's a big tick in the box. By placing a perceived value in front of the customer and not competing on price, they buy into us and we get over the hurdles. The whole market is built on relationships."•

The UK is witnessing a superfast broadband surge but challenges remain to address speed mismatches, according to Ofcom's just-published data on UK Broadband speeds.

According to the research one in four UK residential fixed broadband connections is superfast (connections offering headline speeds of 30Mbit/s or more), up from 5% in November 2011 to 25% in November 2013.

The report reveals that at 17.8Mbit/s, the average actual fixed-line residential broadband speed in the UK is almost five times faster than it was five years ago when Ofcom first began publishing the data (up from 3.6Mbit/s in November 2008).

And the average superfast connection speed has continued to rise, reaching 47.0Mbit/s by November 2013 - an increase of 47%, or 15.1Mbit/s since May 2010.

While the growth in average speeds show that investment in broadband technology is delivering benefits for most consumers, the UK picture is uneven. A significant number of households especially those in rural areas, can experience considerably slower speeds.

Communications Minister Ed Vaizey said: "Ofcom's report confirms the remarkable transformation of UK Broadband currently underway.

"The UK has the best superfast coverage of all five leading European economies, and the news that average speeds continue to rise is tremendous news for homes and businesses alike.

"We are working hard to close the digital divide between urban and rural locations and are investing £790m to ensure that 95% of the UK will have access to superfast speeds by 2017."

Read the full report

A Barclays survey of 100 US and European CIOs says nearly half (46%) expect their company's IT spending to rise in 1H14, with 20% expecting it to drop, and 34% expecting no change. Those figures compare with September survey levels of 43%, 27%, and 30%.

At the same time, the firm cautions that spending growth is uneven: Software, networking, security, and cloud services demand is healthy, but servers, storage, and IT services remain soft.

IT spending growth is seen accelerating in the second half in both the US and Europe. Barclays thinks larger budgets, macro stabilisation, and a need for equipment refreshes (due to high utilisation rates) could be helping out. Interest in the concept of a software-defined data centre is gaining traction, but big data (hyped considerably last year) is losing it for now.

The survey stated, 'We note that many responses from the survey likely occurred before some of the recent volatility in the stock market. In terms of end markets within technology, application and infrastructure software as well as networking showed an improvement in sentiment vs. our prior survey. However, servers and storage noticeably down-ticked as well as IT services (however server spending growth improved)'.

Wholesale connectivity provider Entanet has embarked on a promotional campaign to drive up sales of new FTTC connections and customer migrations for reseller and wholesale partners.

The move is an extension of a zero cost activation promotion on FTTC which ran for a defined period, but with the time limit removed Entanet believes its latest promotion removes a 'critical pricing barrier'.

Entanet has also introduced a promotion for service provider partners that take its EWCS (Entanet Wholesale Carrier Services), offering reduced costs for new connections and migrations to FTTC to help wholesale customers expand their business.

The free connection and migration promotion for resellers applies to all Entanet's mainstream FTTC broadband packages for businesses and home users and to both 12 and 24 month contracts.

Partners can take advantage of the offer for customers either activating an FTTC service for the first time or migrating to it from any other provider's conventional copper-based broadband services.

It can also be applied to migrations from another provider's fibre broadband and to migrations from LLU to Entanet's FTTC connections.

The separate wholesale promotion runs until 30th September 2014 and aims to help partners buying 'tails' and aggregated bandwidth (as opposed to predefined allowance packages) to increase their sales of FTTC connections, both to new and existing customers.

Paul Heritage-Redpath, Product Manager at Entanet, said: "FTTx already represents 20% of broadband subscribers globally and we see this as a growth market for UK resellers.

"Our previous reseller promotion for packaged broadband products, which we ran until the end of January this year, was successful. We have now evaluated the feedback and decided to extend the offer scope and to also provide additional incentives for our wholesale customers to drive FTTC sales."

Elitetele.com PLC has completed the acquisition of Qualitel Voice & Data, adding £4m in revenue to the Elite Telecom Group.

This is Elite's second acquisition of the year, following Modern Communications in January. It is also Elite's tenth acquisition since 2008, bringing over 600 customers and 20 members of staff.

Matt Newing, founder and CEO of Elitetele.com, said: "The acquisition of Qualitel was of particular interest to us because of their great customer base and strong mobile offering including workflow applications, which we see as a huge growth area.

"This is our second acquisition of a premium Vodafone partner, strengthening our mobile offering to business clients and reinforcing our significance to the mobile networks."

Stoke-based Qualitel was founded in 2003 and has a team of mobile, Mitel, Avaya, hosted and connectivity sales specialists.

Newing added: "With offices in the north, south and midlands we are building on our national presence and going from strength to strength."

Mike Ridgway, MD and founder of Qualitel, added: "Our products complement Elite's existing solutions and services so we can now bring even better communications and mobile services to UK businesses."

Jabra has lifted the lid on its new Jabra MOTION Office wireless headset which delivers triple connectivity for mobile, softphone or deskphone through Bluetooth technology.

The headset has been created specifically as a solution for knowledge workers, remote teams and employees sharing an office workspace, offering seamless and stable connectivity.

"The main objective with the Jabra MOTION Office has been to let knowledge workers and remote teams gain the full benefits from their mobile devices and collaboration technologies," said Nigel Dunn, Jabra Business Solutions Managing Director, UK & Ireland.

"The Jabra MOTION Office is the headset which bridges the gap between the users and the promise of productivity and innovation, allowing the free flow of information.

Dunn also noted that more companies are adopting the hot-desking philosophy in which people share workspaces and laptop docking stations native to this type of office environment.

"The Jabra MOTION Office base can serve as a community desktop docking station, pairing with any other Jabra MOTION headset and creating an instant workspace for the visiting user," he added.

Louise Harder Fischer, Research Partner at Jabra and external Associate Professor at CBS, said: "The new knowledge worker belongs to a fast growing group of employees with a need to tap into the knowledge and expertise of their professional network, inside or outside the company, 24/7,".

"The Jabra MOTION Office is an example of how devices and technology can be centred around the user's actual behaviour and give them the freedom to work from anywhere, anytime."