Comms Dealer

Hats off to Dawn Williams-Urch, Operations Team Leader at Yorkshire-based Lily Comms, who collected the top accolade at Bradford's Inspirational Women Awards (BIWA) staged at the city's Hilton Hotel.

Williams-Urch was selected by voters for her work for non-profit organisations and charities including organisations that support the armed forces.

She said: "I was shocked and surprised at being nominated for what I consider to be day-to-day things aside from my job. There are many inspirational women in Bradford and I am proud to be recognised as one of them."

Lily Comms MD Chris Morrisey added: "This is a fitting reward to a dedicated mother, great employee and thoughtful individual. Dawn is a highly valued member of the team, almost the company mum. She is always there to help wherever she can from first aid to raising money and organising anything that needs organising."

The BIWA was founded by Bradford's Fatima Patel, Editor of the Asian Sunday.

Pictured: Dawn William-Urch (second from right) with fellow award winners.

Masergy Communications has bolstered its cyber security credentials following the acquisition of Global DataGuard.
 
Masergy's CEO Chris MacFarland said: "In today's rapidly evolving threat landscape, discrete signature or rule-based security solutions alone are not adequate from a risk management perspective.

"And as seen in recent news, even when businesses invest in advanced security solutions, the lack of systematic sharing and correlation of subsystem data and vigilant 24/7 monitoring leaves them exposed to advanced threats.

"Cyber attacks are only going to become more intense and sophisticated - it's a new battlefield. The acquisition of Global DataGuard positions Masergy to deliver solutions engineered to address these advanced persistent threats."
 
Masergy's Security as a Service suite now includes enterprise security solutions with UnifiedEnterprise Security and Professional Services.
 

The Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) has launched its own anti-bribery and anti-corruption (ABAC) due diligence platform.

The platform, developed in conjunction with Hiperos and Thomson Reuters, will be delivered as a managed network to both GTDC members and other non-member technology firms.

The GTDC Anti-Bribery/Anti-Corruption Platform combines processes and best practices developed by GTDC members with Hiperos' third-party management software as a service solution and Thomson Reuters highly regarded screening risk assessment and due diligence services.

It follows the appointment of chief Ethics and Complinace Office Jean-Paul Durand at GTDC member Tech Data in February this year, after a probe into its business methods in some countries in Europe for which it had to set aside several million dollars.

The GTDC Anti-Bribery/Anti-Corruption Platform is designed to address the massive scale, as well as the current costs, complexity and redundancy of performing due diligence across tens of thousands of third parties.

In addition to eliminating redundant processes and costs, participating companies expect to create a consistent, best-in-class solution that will become the standard for the technology industry.

This is achieved by implementing processes and by eliminating the need to vet and monitor the same third party multiple times, while securely sharing the results with each participating firm.

"The vast majority of ABAC investigations involve illegal payments made by third parties on behalf of an organisation. This is particularly challenging for companies in the technology distribution industry whose business depends on third parties," said Tim Curran, CEO of the GTDC.

"During our research process, it became clear that traditional approaches to third-party due diligence for ABAC were inadequate and unable to address our members' needs. We are pleased to have joined forces with Hiperos and Thomson Reuters to create an innovative approach to due diligence that addresses the requirements of the technology industry."

The GTDC Anti-Bribery/Anti-Corruption Platform has been developed with the knowledge that every company participating in the GTDC platform has unique business requirements, opportunities, challenges and objectives.

As such, the platform allows each member to decide individually how they want to score risk and if and how they want to proceed with the third party while, at the same time, removing the burden of initial and ongoing due diligence and monitoring.

As Microsoft unveils a version of its Office 365 software suite for iPads, mobile airtime provider Daisy Distribution has made the service available to its O2 partners and has been holding a series of partner training days to promote its benefits.

Within the sessions, which have already seen more than 45 partners taking part, partners have been able to learn in detail about the software's advantages, how it works, how it integrates with their O2 customers and how it can help these organisations work smarter.

The meetings sit within a wider campaign from the Ipswich-based firm to enhance its partners' knowledge of the Office 365 package, and have therefore been accessible to the whole channel.

Alongside the launch of Office 365 through O2 devices, Daisy Distribution has also offered partners that take an O2 Nokia Lumia variant device a free year's subscription voucher for Microsoft Lync, to offer to an end customer.

The offer, which began on 1st April, has been created to enable businesses to realise the various collaborative and communication tools Lync possesses, including HD video conferencing and instant messaging features, and pass these on to their end customers.

Julien Parven, Marketing Director of Daisy Distribution, said: "As the Office 365 suite becomes more readily available on even more devices, we believe that the cloud facilities it brings are only going to increase in popularity.

"Now that we are also able to offer the package through O2, we have been running a series of training days designed to enable partners to effectively sell the benefits of Office 365 into their end customers.

"The bundled Lync offer will allow partners to see for themselves, first hand, how beneficial the service can be. We envisage that having exposure to the software will encourage them to come back at some point in the near future and take out the full Microsoft Office 365 package."

US-listed RingCentral is to offer its RingCentral Office cloud-based business phone solution to channel partners in the UK via Ingram Micro and the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace.

Ingram Micro began offering RingCentral to its resellers in North America in April 2013, and will now offer RingCentral Office to its base of cloud-focused channel partners across the UK.

RingCentral Office is a cloud business phone solution that includes voice, fax and conferencing capabilities and provides a mobile-centric, alternative to on-premise legacy phone systems.

KCOM Group has renewed its charity partnership with Sparks for a third year.

Sparks is a leading medical research charity dedicated to funding pioneering research for a range of conditions affecting babies, children and pregnant mothers.

Each year in the UK more than 3,000 babies die before their first birthday and one in 30 are born with an illness or disability that may affect them for life.

KCOM Group has supported Sparks as its charity partner since 2012, raising £130,000 during that time to smash its original fundraising target by £30,000.

Madeleine Buckley, Corporate Partnerships Manager at Sparks, said: "We're delighted that KCOM Group have extended their support with us for another year. Their dedicated fundraising throughout the partnership has been fantastic.

"In the last two years they've come up with creative ways to fundraise like swimming the River Humber, skydiving and taking on the Three Peaks Challenge to name but a few. I have no doubt that they will reach their new fundraising target by 2015.

"The money the Group has already raised will help us fund research into a range of conditions such as cerebral palsy and childhood meningitis, as well as rare diseases such as Progeria, a devastating illness which causes children to age up to eight times faster than usual. Support from companies like KCOM Group will make the discovery of preventions, treatments and cures for these kinds of conditions possible."

Paul Simpson, Chief Financial Officer at KCOM Group, added: "Our two year partnership with Sparks has been incredibly successful, but this success would not have been possible without the backing of our employees from across the business. Extending our partnership with Sparks means we can continue making a difference and supporting the brilliant work they do.

"We've already had people signing up to some testing fundraising challenges this year including the London Marathon, cycling across Italy and our annual charity golf day. It's great to see people come together and dig deep to help this fantastic cause."

KCOM Group has a longstanding commitment to fundraising, having raised more than £368,000 during the last eight years since it introduced its Charity Partner programme. Charity partners are voted for by employees and supported for at least two years, with a goal of beating the previous fundraising target.

Demand for permanent IT and computing workers improved for the 55th month running in March according to the latest Report on Jobs published today by KPMG and the REC.

Moreover, the growth rate accelerated to the quickest since August 1998. Demand for permanent employees was also stronger than that for temporary/contract staff, as shown by the respective indices scoring 69.6 and 63.7.

Whereas March's reading for permanent IT workers registered above the respective index for all sectors (67.5), the index for temporary/contract IT professionals posted below the national average of 66.0.

Latest data indicated that demand for permanent IT & Computing workers came in third out of nine on the demand for staff 'league table'. The situation was less positive for temps, with the sector ranking seventh.

Heath Jackson, partner in the CIO Advisory practice at KPMG, said: "It's encouraging to note that the demand for permanent technology workers improved for the fifty-fifth month running, with more organisations offering contracts for permanent positions than temporary roles over the past month.

"The technology sector figure resonates with the national numbers, indicating employment is on the up. The next step will be for candidates to put themselves forward for the roles on offer to improve prospects - something they still seem unwilling to do.

"Time intervals are also a challenge. The lead time between roles becoming active and an employee becoming productive can be up to 12 months. The unanswered question is whether the workforce as a whole can feed the demand and meet employer requirements."

Billing software solution specialist Aurora Kendrick James (AKJ) has reformed its working relationship with former Modern Communications MD Adrian Barnard who has embarked on a new venture that operates under the Prime Networks banner.

AKJ supplied billing solutions to Modern Communications which was acquired by Elitetele.com in early February this year, and following the sale Prime Networks has commissioned AKJ's unified billing, provisioning and customer care platform as an outsourced bureau billing service.

AKJ's Head of Account Management, Sally Ainsley, said: "We are pleased to be working with Adrian again as he is a high profile figure in the communications industry, known for investing in fast moving, rapidly evolving businesses. Prime has already purchased additional capacity and services from AKJ."

Frost & Sullivan thought leaders will present their latest research on ICT: Helping Connected Industries Embrace Big Data Analytics at GIL 2014: Europe, that returns to London for its sixth consecutive year on Wednesday 14th May at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.

Businesses and consumers are navigating within increasingly interconnected systems of machine - and human-generated intelligence. The ability to capture relevant information from streams of 'Big Data' is essential to commercial success in this new, dynamic environment of connected industries.

Frost & Sullivan VP & ICT Director Ajay Sule explains: "The phrase 'Big Data Analytics' is often used together with, 'Internet of Things (IoT)' to encapsulate opportunities to commercialise new sources of business intelligence.

"Sectors such as financial services, retail and ICT are taking the lead in the use of tools, cloud and mobile technologies to improve productivity and customer satisfaction."

Nevertheless much more can be done. Companies in many sectors are working to understand the potential impact on their internal processes and competitive environments. The natural impulse of ICT is to emphasise technology, but it is equally important to help businesses identify the benefits in their respective markets.

"The future of big data analytics and its application in IoT, or connected industries in our language, is only limited by our collective imagination," said Sule.

"As Pablo Picasso once said, 'computers are useless they can only give you answers'. The ability to craft the right questions will determine the benefits from big data analytics."

The deal will see Openreach providing additional fibre capacity and diverse routing to meet growing demand from Next Generation Data's business and government customers.

NGD customers will have access to more than 200 communications providers selling Openreach Ethernet and Optical services to the end user business markets - including options from 10Mbps up to multiple 10Gbps services.

Tim Barclay, MD, sales, marketing and customer engagement at Openreach said: "This announcement continues our major push into the UK data centre market. By bringing our open access model to the NGD data centre in Wales, we're enabling them to offer their customers a wide choice of high speed Ethernet services. We're also speeding up the provisioning of our Ethernet services by building fibre links direct to major data centres across the UK well ahead of any customer orders."

Nick Razey, CEO, Next Generation Data, said "This agreement underscores Next Generation Data's long established and highly successful relationship with BT both as a point of presence (POP) and as a strategic data centre services provider.

"We are delighted that BT is increasing its high speed fibre capacity at our world-class carrier neutral NGD Europe facility which will further extend the wide choice of high bandwidth, low latency communications available to our customers."