Comms Dealer

Maintel has been awarded a contract to deliver SCOPIA video conferencing solution to mental health care provider Partnerships in Care (PiC) across 23 sites nationwide.

PiC is one of the largest independent providers of secure and step down facilities across the UK, with 23 hospitals and 1,230 placements around the country.

The SCOPIA solution Maintel is to implement will reduce the need for patients to be transported between hospital and court rooms - a process that can be quite stressful for the patient involved. Additionally, PiC will be able to realise savings by reducing patient escorting costs for these visits. "

PiC will also save time and resource on meetings currently involving travel from one end of the country to another for meetings that may run for as little as half an hour.

David Ewing, IT Director, from Partnerships in Care said: "As well as improving our patients care pathways, this vital technology solution will create significant savings for PiC as it greatly reduces the need for inter-site travel and the staffing resource required to transport patients.

"SCOPIA will provide seamless communication between court room and our hospitals, as it integrates so easily with installed base solutions.

"The move to SCOPIA is a continuation of PiC's investment in Avaya and thereby complements our existing technology strategy."

Simon Culmer, Managing Director, Avaya UK, commented: "Our SCOPIA video conferencing solution enables people to participate in high-quality video-calls, from either their desktop or mobile device. Customers who are using SCOPIA report time and resource savings and Partnerships in Care will experience this too. In addition, for patients, the benefits of not having to travel to court are enormous."

3CX stormed through the last four quarters (Q4 2012 to Q3 2013 inclusive) as the fastest growing PBX vendor with call control license shipments growing by 52% year-on-year in Q3 2013, according to research from industry analyst MZA.

The developer of the Windows VoIP PBX 3CX Phone System outstripped the global PBX market which saw a 7% decline in the same period.

Will Parsons, co-reporter of MZA's Quarterly PBX/IP PBX Analysis, said: "3CX is without question a significant emerging player in the global market for PBX extensions and call control licenses. In a time where businesses budgets are often restricted due to economic constraints, the cost savings, the ease of maintenance and the full functionality of the 3CX Phone System has proved to have a wide appeal in the market place."

3CX CEO Nick Galea added: "3CX Phone System has successfully responded to the urgent need from businesses around the world for a cost-effective, software-based, Unified Communications solution.

"Our phone system offers a feature-rich, yet reliable solution, enabling companies to save money and time so that they can focus on their core business.

"In 2014 we expect 3CX to go from strength to strength as more businesses make the move from traditional proprietary PBX systems to VoIP."

According to Galea, 3CX's growth is indicative of the broader trend within the telephony market, which is seeing a shift away from traditional proprietary PBX systems to VoIP.

The research from MZA reveals a 3% increase in the IP extensions market in Western Europe in Q3 2013, with IP extensions representing 57% of the market.

Congrats to Maidstone-based Carefree Communications, winner of Channel Telecom's 2013 year-end incentive. Carefree's MD James Bradley collected a Sony PlayStation 4 games console from Matt Donaldson, Sales Director for Channel Telecom.

Donaldson said: "We're delighted to present James with the Sony PS4. Although Carefree Communications joined us as a channel partner only last year, they are doing a remarkable amount of business and I'm delighted to reward their efforts with this prize. We have other exciting incentive promotions scheduled for 2014 so now is great time to partner with Channel Telecom."

Team Plusnet is limbering up for this year's Yorkshire Marathon (October 12th) aiming to raise over £2,500 for the Jane Tomlinson Appeal. Eleven employees will line-up as part of a 7,000 strong field including elite athletes and famous faces.

The course is flatter and faster than London, Paris, Chicago and Berlin and takes participants past some of York's historic sites.

Julian Walshaw, who works as a Sales and Retention Advisor and ran last year's marathon in a time of 4 hours and 8 minutes, commented on his decision to run again: "Well I do love a challenge, so after last year's fantastic experience I'm more than happy to put myself through it again and beat my personal best. To top it off, it's a great charity this year so it's a win for everyone."

Chris Pettitt, a first-time marathon runner and part of the Digital Care team at Plusnet, said: "First off, I've never run a marathon before, or even a half marathon, so it should be quite interesting."

Richard Babs-Apata (pictured), a Technical Support Advisor based in Plusnet's new Leeds office, added: "Running a marathon is something I have always wanted to do. It sounds like cliché I know but the fact is, it's for a good cause. I want to prove that nothing is impossible and to be part of a team doing something to help make other people's lives better."

Siobhan Curtis, Legacy Manager at the Jane Tomlinson Appeal, stated: "The continued support we receive from the staff at Plusnet is simply fantastic. It's great to see so many deciding to take on the Marathon challenge this year not only to achieve their own personal goals but in the process to raise money for the Appeal."

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After rising 19% yr/yr FQ3, Red Hat's billings rose 24% in FQ4 to $565m (well above revenue of $400M), as the company continues benefiting from Linux's server OS share gains. Booking from EMEA rose to 26% of the total, up from 25% last year.

While UNIX to Linux conversion may be winding down a bit, it still has some way to go, and Red Hat thinks Windows to Linux conversion is picking up. Another factor that is not talked about much is the embedded use of Linux and a whole lot of other technologies, it says.

CEO Jim Whitehurst said: "The main drivers of this growth in Q4 were the continued demand for Red Hat's fast growing core platform and application development offerings, including our broad portfolio of middleware offerings."

The channel is increasingly important: for the year, the channel business grew faster than direct sales resulting in an annual mix of 63% from the channel and 37% direct, up from last fiscal year and moving closer to the multiyear goal of 70%-30% split of channel and direct sales.

Red Hat's deferred revenue balance rose 18% yr/yr to $1.29B, after growing 14% in FQ3. Subscription revenue (88% of total) revenue +16% yr/yr vs. +17% in FQ3. Training/services revenue +8% vs. +9%. Opex rose 15% to $280.6m.

EnterpriseDB, provider of Postgres products and Oracle databases solutions, has announced an expansion of its partner programme to better support the influx of new software partners.

The new ISV programme will provide access to specialised resources for certifying products and special pricing packages. Also, the companies that can bundle Postgres with their own solutions will be offered extra support, it says.

"Our customer and partner profile has become more diverse and we want to foster a direct, collaborative relationship with other software vendors," said Ed Boyajian, CEO and president of EnterpriseDB.

"Our new ISV Program provides the resources that help vendors bring better applications to market faster. And by certifying our products with other vendors, end users have the assurance that all components of their infrastructure have been optimised for Postgres."

This year's European IT Excellence Awards shows just how diverse the IT supply industry has become with solutions ranging from construction site management to healthcare systems and government document control, and from all parts of Europe.

IT Europa, the leading European IT publisher and market intelligence organisation, has announced the winners of the European IT & Software Excellence Awards 2014 - the pan-European awards event for ISVs, IT and Telecoms channels. The finalists were honoured last night at a celebration dinner at the London Lancaster Hotel.

With strong, measurable returns, many of these IT projects prove that IT investment can make business, government and other organisations a lot better and more productive. The total payback from the projects in these awards runs into many millions of euros.

The European IT & Software Excellence Awards are the only pan-European awards which recognise the crucial role that Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Solution Providers have in delivering real-world solutions. It attracted entries from 25 countries, and these entries, while submitted by the ISVs and solution providers themselves, each had to be supported by an endorsement by the client. 81 companies from 16 countries made the finals. The winners were selected by an independent panel of consultants and editors.

There were several major success stories, with previous years' winners returning in force and carrying off further awards. A strong batch of entries from the UK, Eastern Europe, Germany, and many from Indian companies working in Europe shows how companies are competing to deliver real rewards to customers, which can only be good for the industry.

"We are finding a consistently high level of entries for each of these annual awards, and we had an impressively wide range of industries and solutions addressed," says John Garratt, Editor of IT Europa. "What impressed us this year was the quality and the measurable returns many of these projects delivered. Many have total paybacks many times the value of the IT investment, and we are seeing many of these projects delivered as part of a continuing expansion of productive investment. This shows what a great relationship these IT suppliers have with their customers, and how customers are keen to work with suppliers on a long term change to their organisations."

The awards categories were divided into several groups: the ISV categories were for software houses, app developers and integrators supplying systems for vertical markets, government or custom environments. The Solution Provider categories were for complete solutions, often delivered with a strong services element, and finally the supplier categories, for which channel companies nominated their distributors, service providers and vendors for the support provided through their channel programmes.

The European IT Excellence Awards 2014 - results:

ISV Categories:

Big Data, Business Intelligence and Analytics Solution of the Year - Tollring

Communications/Mobility Solution of the Year - MobiCloud

ERP/Supply Chain Management Solution of the Year - IBA Group

Government/Utilities Solution of the Year - Thomsons Online Benefits

Information & Document Management Solution of the Year - Software Innovation

Relationship Management Solution of the Year - ccapps

SaaS Solution of the Year - Cybertill

Software Innovation Solution of the Year - Vecta Sales Solutions

Vertical Market Solution of the Year - PureNet

Solution Provider Categories:

Big Data Business Intelligence and Analytics Solution of the Year - DevScope

Datacentre Solution of the Year - Green Fields Technology

Enterprise Solution of the Year - Consortium Hewlett Packard Romania - SIVECO Romania

Managed Service Solution of the Year - 4net Technologies

Mobility/Communications Solution of the Year - MobiCloud

Networking Solution of the Year - SolarWinds

Public Sector and Utilities Solution of the Year - Accellion

Security Solution of the Year - Prot-On

SME Solution of the Year - Vecta Sales Solutions

Storage/Information Management Solution of the Year - AirWatch

Vertical Solution of the Year - Birlasoft (India) Limited

Supplier Categories:

Distributor of the Year - Arrow ECS

Finance/ Support Services Provider of the Year - BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions

Hardware Vendor of the Year - Emulex

Software Vendor of the Year - Centrify

Service Provider of the Year - Outsourcery

Platform of the Year - Oracle

In congratulating the winners, Alan Norman, Managing Director of IT Europa says: "the overall quality of entries was extremely high and demonstrated the depth of talent in the ISV and channel communities across Europe. I congratulate all the winners and wish them and all the finalists every success in the year ahead."

Independent software vendors (ISVs) face a wide-open market with great opportunities, but will need to focus to get the best rewards in the longer term. Discussions at the ISV Convention recognised the rapid changes in the independent software business, but it was the nature of the change that most experts were concerned about.

Rob Craft, senior director of enterprise cloud at Microsoft said that the transition to cloud was not so much a toggle as a slider. HP's cloud portfolio director Hans Van Breda also said that it was an innovation journey. It was when the discussion tried to pin down how far along the slider the industry was, that things became less certain.

Rob Craft thought it was 50% of the way, but this was based on the enterprise nature of the business. SMBs will take while longer. And there is a strong role for the channel, all parties agreed. But it could be a very different channel. "End customers focus on outcomes; not hardware/software" so the channel becomes more like a consultancy says Ingram Micro's Advanced Division director Jason Beal.

The ISV Convention 2014 at the London Lancaster on March 26 heard experts from HP, IBM, Interoute, Microsoft and Oracle set out their ideas to several hundred invited ISVs from across Europe. The keynote from Mark Paine of Gartner talked of the nexus of forces - mobility, big data, cloud -combing to force new ways of thinking - and marketing.

Customers need to know who you are and how to find you, he suggested. And this means suppliers such as ISVs need to look beyond the product, re-evaluating routes to market. A key test for any supplier on this differentiation - can an ISV replace its sales messaging with that of a competitor? If this still works, the ISV needs to change and get more focus in its message.

With individuals and whole sections of in enterprises bypassing traditional IT departments, ISVs have to work out how to engage with these new buyers, Mark Paine said. The new buyers are tech-savvy, connected, but not from any particular department, and outcome-driven. This means, the Gartner expert told the Convention, that analytics systems bought outside traditional IT models is a real growth point; the new buyers seek rapid innovation and outcomes.

Another part of the nexus may not be so obvious in its attraction to ISVs. Big data is non-consumable for most business users, the Convention was told. Customers actually want developers to make big data small - then can tap insights, said BI specialist Jaspersoft. Oracle's VP Sales for ISV/OEM Laurent Zelmanowicz pointed out the huge growth in the Internet of Things, and the wall of data that all sorts of devices, from boats to consumer goods were going to be generating. It is a question of capacity, he said, and the management of these quantities of data. Interoute's CTO Matthew Finnie pointed out that there was still a need to build customer confidence after an era in which the IT industry had supplied solutions that didn't deliver against expectations.

Lauri Saft, director of the IBM Watson cognitive computing partner program was busy after her presentation now that IBM has opened up this powerful tool for development. She said "yes, you can buy a Watson", but a revenue share model also shows how it works for developers and ISVs.

The IBM Watson organisation, which offers this cognitive analytics package, is scaling fast and now with 700 employees, will grow internationally to over 2000 people. It was clear how Watson can benefit ISVs, she said - early movers have been able to leap-frog competition. The Watson program was now engaged in bringing all parts of its channel together - app and content developers plus those with the talent to recognise where Watson can be applied.

"IBM Watson gets smarter with every bit of data and every interaction," she concluded, saying it had had 1800 applications in a month on how it can be put to use.

Earlier the debate livened up when the issue of measuring outcomes for customers was raised. The idea of profit sharing had been considered by some people, but was viewed as too hard to control once marketing effort and the like were considered.

Cisco is transforming its existing channel partner and services programme into new Cisco Partner Ecosystem to better support partners on their way to cloud and help them benefit from market opportunities, it says.

The upgraded Cisco Partner Ecosystem strives to win a broader set of partners, in particular ISVs, consulting firms, technology and Internet of Things partners, it says.

In general terms Cisco Solution Partner Programme, which is a key tenant of its Partner Ecosystem, has been designed to focus on 'solution partners' and approach them in order to bring a wealth of solutions they offer into Cisco's ecosystem.

Though this new scheme the prospective partners will be offered a number of benefits such as an opportunity to develop Cisco's market solutions, which cover hardware, software and service, and an access to Cisco channel and its go-to-market designations.

Also, Cisco sees its channel partners in a new role of trusted advisors focused on business outcomes, new market opportunities with horizontal/vertical solutions and services for solution platforms that will strengthen further partner differentiation.

The new programme will also emphasise the connection between channel partners and solution partners via a dedicated marketplace solutions catalogue.

On top of this, Cisco has also introduced some major changes into its certifications, specialisations and incentives structure.

"The next generation channel program will enable and reward partners for adopting new consumption models and reaching new buying centres, with an emphasis on solutions, hybrid IT, and architectures. Channel partners will see changes across Certifications, Specialisations and Incentives. Partners will generally have 16-24 months to transition to the new requirements," explains Edison Peres, SVP of Worldwide Channels.

The certification structure has been streamlined to help partners better differentiate and invest in their Cisco practice, it says.

Cisco will keep its strongest brand Gold certification as well as Premier and Select, however the company has announced plans to retire its Silver designation starting from April, 2016.

All Gold, Premier and Select will expand and require partners to include hybrid IT business model. As far as Gold is concerned, partners will still need to prove that they sell a minimum of four cloud/managed services offers as well as they will need to have a Cisco Business Value Practicioner on staff and hold four Cisco Advanced Architecture Speclisations, it says.

Premier partners will be required to have one cloud/managed service offer and a Cisco Express or Advanced Architecture Specialisation while Select will remain Cisco's entry level for partners who intend to grow their businesses in the midsize market.

At the same time, Silver partners will be offered to choose between an increase in breadth to become Gold Certified or increase their depth in order to earn Master Specialisation. They will also get an option to move to Premier Certification.

Additionally, Cisco has introduced global and multinational certifications and changes to its Global Partner Network programme to simplify transactions with global customers.

Cisco will continue to focus on 'depth' which is reflected by keeping three levels of specialisations: Master, Advanced and Express. However, the partners will be encouraged to enhance their portfolio to include two new Master Specialisations and new solutions specialisations.

Additionally, in the second half of the year, Cisco plans to launch its Deal Registration Programme which brings discount incentives under one umbrella. The other enhancements involve Registered Deal Differential which offers to partners who register deal with Cisco to qualify to receive a discount differential of up to 8%, a 60% growth. Although the incentives will remain to be based on the investments and value partners add, it says.

"I'm excited about the changes and the opportunities we have ahead. The future is bright for Cisco and our partners - we are making the Internet of Everything possible. As we have in the past, I'm confident our partners will make the necessary transitions to evolve their business models successfully, and together we'll bring even more value to our customers" says Peres.

Technology giant Cisco has pledged to invest $1bn over the next two years to build what it claims will be the largest global Intercloud. Cisco's investment will be in building up data centres to run the new service called Cisco Cloud Services, to be delivered with and through partners.

Cisco's network of clouds will also rely on data centres operated by partners and the company says its global Intercloud will offer an expand- ed suite of value added application and network-centric cloud services to drive forward the Internet of Everything.

The move is fresh evidence of a shift in customer preferences towards renting external services rather than buying hardware that resides on site.

Robert Lloyd (pictured), President of Development and Sales, said: "The time is right for Cisco and partners to invest in an application-centric glob- al Intercloud to offer broader reach and faster time to market.

"Together, we have the capability to enable a seamless world of many clouds in which our customers have the choice to

enable the right, highly secure cloud for the right workload, while creating strategic advantages via innovation, and ultimately business growth."

Cisco is already working with global partners to focus on big corporations and government agencies while optimising its services with software from companies such as SAP, Microsoft and VMware.
Cisco is also expanding the Cisco Powered programme to include Cisco Cloud Services.