Comms Dealer

The latest phase of SSE Telecoms' network expansion brings high performance services to key enterprise hubs as the firm lights up 30 new points of presence (PoPs) which offer up to 10Gb capacity.

Predominantly located in and around central London, but also in Birmingham, Cambridge, Coventry, Derby, Edinburgh, Leeds, Slough and Windsor, these PoPs will help meet the growing demand for SSE Telecoms' high performance networking services, said the firm.
 
This is the latest phase of SSE Telecoms' network expansion, dubbed Project Edge, and adds to the 24 new PoPs that went live in November 2013.

All 54 PoPs are located in central business districts and provide a deeper presence into the UK's busiest towns and cities.
 
The Project Edge investment also saw SSE Telecoms launch its LIGHTNOW service, a new high-capacity resilient optical networking service connecting 21 of London's busiest data centres with 10Gb Ethernet wavelengths that can be provisioned within seven days.
  
"The 30 new PoPs, which form the latest part of the Project Edge investment, are essential to ensuring our high bandwidth, high availability network services are readily available to our existing channel and growing enterprise customer base, in this case, mainly in and around London," said Chris Jagusz, managing director, SSE Telecoms.

"With more still to come from Project Edge, we are committed to our ongoing investment in our network, ensuring that we are able to meet even the most demanding requirements of businesses across the UK, without fail."

Vodafone is to open 150 new shops and create 1,400 jobs in a move that pushes its UK investment to £1bn in 2014.

Vodafone UK's 2014 capital investment programme is the largest in its history dating back to the company's foundation in the 1980s. Work is already underway to deliver on its commitment to provide indoor and outdoor coverage using 2G, 3G and 4G services to 98% of the UK population by 2015.

Vodafone UK Chief Executive Jeroen Hoencamp said: "This year we'll invest more than ever before. We're also committed to putting our brand and our people where our customers want us - right at the heart of their high street and shopping centre. Our £100 million retail investment this year will increase our ability to serve our customers better with highly skilled personal advice and support in 150 brand new locations."

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "This is a fantastic vote of confidence in the UK workforce from a company investing for the future to harness the next generation of digital services. It is a sign that our long-term economic plan to create jobs and build a stronger, more competitive economy is working, helping ensure a better and more financially secure future for Britain, for hardworking people and their families."

snom technology's new snom 715 phone has been rated interoperable with Schmooze Com's PBXact phone system and its open source counterpart FreePBX .

snom phones can be auto-provisioned via the Schmooze Endpoint Manager, available in both FreePBX and PBXact, which enables straightforward installation with management directly from the PBX Graphical User Interface.

Mike Storella, VP of snom Americas, said: "The ease of deployment and auto-provisioning via Schmooze's Manager is a real plus for both VARs and end customers looking for a simplified IP telephony deployment."

With over one million active production systems, and users ranging from small businesses to large enterprises, FreePBX is a VoIP phone system that has become the most widely deployed open source PBX platform in use today.

Preston McNair, VP of Sales and Marketing, Schmooze, addedL: "The PBXact business telephone system takes all the standard features provided by FreePBX, bundles them with advanced functions and puts them in a fully commercially supported turnkey platform available in on-premise, hosted and cloud options."

The snom 715 is its latest phone to pass interoperability testing for Schmooze. In 2012, the entire snom 3xx line, snom 7xx line, the snom 821 and the snom M9 wireless phone were approved for the platforms.

Pluribus Networks, a specialist in open architecture, has announced its expansion plans across Europe with new deployments in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Portugal.

The company, which brings together compute, network, storage and virtualisation into a single platform, hopes to approach clients across finance, aerospace, telco, energy and gaming industries in Europe.

Earlier this year it already signed its major European distie Big Technology, which in the past worked with Exclusive Networks.

As its next step, Pluribus is strengthening its presence in Europe with new channel additions which include four new networking resellers: IGX, LAN2LAN, LATO Networks and Telesys, it says.

Prior to its expansion to Europe, the company launched its Pluribus Freedom solution in the US. It specialises in server-switch product line, network services platform based on off-the-shelf and open components to help virtualise and automate the network. Additionally the Pluribus' offering is supported only by escalation engineers with no 'helpdesk', stated the firm.

Key targets for the Freedom server-switch include deployment of a cloud controller in an OpenStack implementation and according to a market consultancy IDG, over 80% of enterprises seeking to deploy private clouds will choose this path in the future.

Salesforce's (CRM) Industries Business Unit will use partners to deliver industry-specific cloud software solutions for six verticals - Financial services/insurance, healthcare/life sciences, retail/consumer products, telecom/media, public sector and automotive/manufacturing.

Salesforce's message is unspecific, but it looks like it plans to leverage its mobile-friendly Salesforce1 app development platform.

Thus far, Salesforce has generally left the development of industry-specific apps to partners such as Veeva.

Workday co-CEO Aneel Bhusri recently called industry-specific apps the least developed of what he considers the five key enterprise cloud software segments.

PSU Technology Group has deployed TalkTalk Business' SIP over EFM technology as part of a managed service for QVIS Monitoring's new UK surveillance control centre.
 
PSU will use a combination of SIP and leased lines to handle QVIS' voice and data within a high-availability and highly secure architecture. 

Key to that is the inherent security of TalkTalk Business' SIP solution, delivered using the part of the TalkTalk network dedicated to business SIP voice traffic and terminated on a secure, managed session border controller.
 
Over the course of the multi-year contract PSU will retain full control of the network configuration and set-up.

This allows PSU to self-manage the deployment without TalkTalk Business' input, controlling network capacity, number of concurrent calls, number presentation and the importing/exporting of DDI numbers in virtual real-time. TalkTalk Business assurance will be available 24/7, including a 9-hour service level agreement (SLA).
 
QVIS is a subsidiary of Adata, an established CCTV distributor. The new surveillance control centre will be used to monitor, manage and react to incidents on behalf of its customers across the UK.
 
"Given the nature of their work, QVIS' situation demands absolute security", said Jon Nowell, Head of Product Management at TalkTalk Business. "With that in mind it's fantastic to see our SIP over EFM technology sitting at the heart of what PSU is offering.
 
"The UK SIP market is already worth £100m per annum, growing at an annual rate of 20%. Now the market has matured it's no longer enough merely to talk about cost-savings over traditional ISDN. The real value to a business comes from introducing SIP as part of a converged network strategy."
 
Michael Lounton, Managing Director, PSU Technology Group, added: "The flexibility that TalkTalk Business' one-stop-shop approachenables us to self-manage service capacity and configuration, which helps us to respond almost immediately to any changes in QVIS' requirements."

Advanced Computer Software Group has bolstered its commercial back office product portfolio with the acquisition of ConsultCRM, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM practice.

This acquisition means that Microsoft Dynamics CRM will now be available to Advanced's customers as part of the Advanced Business Solutions commercial product suite, which includes accounting, payroll, HR, document management, supply chain management, and membership and fundraising solutions.

ConsultCRM, based in Camberley, Surrey, provides a range of implementation services to support businesses at all stages of the CRM process. The business is one of the top 5% of all Microsoft partners globally and in 2013 was awarded Microsoft President's Club status for the second year running.

Vin Murria, CEO, Advanced Computer Software Group, said: "The acquisition complements Advanced's existing back office product portfolio, providing customers with a broader solution set and single point of supply. It strengthens Advanced's CRM expertise and enables the group to provide a complete end-to-end solution in vertical markets such as the not-for-profit sector."

ConsultCRM has clients in a range of sectors including finance, professional services, construction, technology, manufacturing, defence and membership.

Its consultants work with businesses to help them develop more profitable customer relationships, improve operational metrics and streamline the client management cycle.

This year's Welcome to Yorkshire annual conference, staged in Harrogate on March 27th and said to be the UK's biggest tourism event, saw headline sponsor Plusnet release details of new research that underlines the importance of connectivity to businesses in the region.

In the study, over three quarters (77%) of businesses name connected technology as one of the most critical elements of their business. Surprisingly, having good technology achieved 23% more than securing the right staff, which only scored 54% among the 100 surveyed entertainment, leisure, hospitality and retail businesses in Yorkshire.

Over the past year, 68% of businesses noted an increase in tourism in Yorkshire, with 70% expecting this to increase again this summer with the arrival of the Grand Départ. Alongside upgrades in technology, businesses in Yorkshire will be looking to extend their opening hours (43%), increase the number of staff they employ (40%) and offer discounted rates to drive custom (27%). 

Nearly two thirds (64%) of businesses are going to be upgrading their technology ahead of the predicted influx of tourists this summer. And 65% agree that being online has improved people's awareness of their services.

Nearly 9 out of 10 businesses (87%) gain revenue via online sales or bookings, with half (49%) agreeing that a strong online presence for all Yorkshire businesses will help encourage more visitors to the area.

Nick Silverwood, Head of Business at Plusnet commented, "It is encouraging to see how the Yorkshire business community is benefitting from bringing more of their services online and how forward thinking they are in embracing connected technology to further improve their income. 

"It highlights that a business' connectivity is critical to its success. At Plusnet we work hard to provide reliable, affordable business broadband solutions with around the clock support to keep things running smoothly at the busiest of times."

Gary Verity, Chief Executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, added: "It's great to see that our diverse tourism and hospitality businesses are harnessing technology and using that to drive up business and spread the word about what they do.

"Yorkshire will be the focus of global attention when the Grand Départ of the Tour de France begins right here and communication technology will play a key role in making the most of this worldwide advert for the county."

The majority of UK businesses are being sidelined by service providers according to a new report by benchmark-it which suggests that the self-employed and organisations with an owner manager are 'largely ignored'.

Report author Rob Pritchard commented: "The UK population of enterprises has grown to a record 4.9 million as we recover from the recession, 75% of which are one or no employee businesses, and many of them still use consumer products when they could benefit from improved productivity and efficiency with the right ICT packages."

The report also finds that BT continues to dominate the £14 billion market with an estimated 45% share.

"Competition is already fierce, but it is going to get tougher for BT as the market continues to embrace the cloud and mobility propositions," added Pritchard.

"BT's new mobility strategy has to work this time to help it protect market share and move back towards revenue growth."

The 1,010 page report profiles and compares 60 representative providers of enterprise telecoms and related services in the UK.

M12 Solutions has welcomed Leslie Spiers to its Board of Directors as Non Executive Chairman with a particular remit to establish best practice governance. He has a strong track record of helping businesses to operate in line with best governance practices.

He was Director of Consultancy with Mecca Leisure at the time of the management buyout from Grand Metropolitan and the subsequent flotation on the Stock Exchange.

Andrew Skipsey, M12 Solutions MD, said: "We've been a successful growing business and now it's time to embark on our next stage of business development.

"Leslie will help ensure that we have all the best practices in place for corporate governance to clearly demonstrate to our existing and prospective clients we are exactly the right kind of business to work with."

Spiers added: "M12 Solutions is a forward looking and innovative business that has the customer at the heart of everything it does.

"I am delighted to be appointed to the board at what is a period of significant growth and to establish best practice governance."

Pictured: Skipsey (left) welcomes Leslie Spiers to the board