Comms Dealer

Ovum and Informa Telecoms and Media (ITM) Research, both divisions of Informa, are to combine under the Ovum brand.

The new company will offer customers analysis across the converging IT, media and telecoms industries and including a suite of new research, market data and consulting capabilities.

A multi-million pound investment programme will see all complementary product portfolios merged delivering 23 new or improved services across IT, media and telecoms.

IT and media research will also be bolstered through the introduction of new channels covering telco IT, customer engagement, enterprise mobility, telco enterprise services, digital media and music. A new state-of-the-art online delivery platform to house all research will also be launched.

The merged business, which will be fully integrated by the end of May, will be led by Steve Hotham, current MD of Ovum, who will become its CEO.

Spread across 23 offices in six continents Ovum will employ 275 staff, including 180 analysts providing a combination of global and local insight.

Steve Hotham believes this move will meet the growing need for actionable market insight by vendors, service providers and enterprises in the converging technology and media markets better than any other research firm.

Hotham said: "We are experiencing a time of tremendous change in the telecoms, IT and media sectors, with convergence reshaping markets and creating major new business opportunities and challenges.

"By combining Ovum and ITM Research we are assembling a team of readily accessible analysts, offering a portfolio of research, data products and consulting services across telecoms, media and IT."

According to IDC's EMEA Quarterly Server Virtualisation Tracker, 33.0% of all new servers shipped in EMEA in the fourth quarter of 2013 were virtualized, a moderate increase from 30.0% in 4Q12. Physical server shipments were flat this quarter, showing only a 0.3% decline year-over-year, totalling 606,400 units.

At the same time 200,300 server units were virtualised at the point of initial shipment in 4Q13, which is an annual increase of 9.6%. Virtualisation licenses distributed this quarter grew year-over-year by 12.0% to 282,300, while EMEA virtualisation software revenue increased even more significantly by 14.2% to $456.3 million.

The EMEA server virtualisation market continues its gradual but slow shift towards the use of paid hypervisors, with paid virtualisation software now running on 83.0% of all new server hardware shipments virtualised in 4Q13 compared to 82.4% recorded in 4Q12.

For the full 2013, 2.2 million physical servers were shipped in EMEA, representing an annual decline of 2.7%. 717,000 virtualised servers and 1.0 million virtualisation software licenses were shipped, showing moderate to strong annual growth of 9.6% and 13.5%, respectively. Virtualisation software revenue reached $1.6 billion, which means an increase of 14.6% on the previous year.

"Although the server hardware market is stagnating, virtualisation efforts are continuing across our region," said Andreas Olah, research analyst, Enterprise Server Group, IDC EMEA. "Many smaller businesses have already embraced these technologies, and the virtualisation topic is maturing. This is evident from the fact that discussions in European organisations have moved on from initial approaches that focused mainly on hypervisor choice towards management and automation tools that let virtual machines move seamlessly between servers, and even between clouds in a hybrid model.

"The leading virtualisation vendors are aggressively pushing holistic stack approaches that include various tools and links to their own cloud offerings, such as VMware with its software-defined data centre model with vCloud Hybrid Service, and Microsoft's extensive Cloud OS framework. Although clients were initially overwhelmed by the complexity of these approaches, their value proposition is becoming better understood, which drives wider adoption of these types of holistic solutions."

Western Europe continues to lead the way in terms of wider adoption of server virtualisation technology, with 33.8% of new servers shipped in 4Q13 virtualised compared to 31.1% a year ago, though emerging regions are catching up rapidly.

Despite the overall uptrend, a slowdown in virtualisation growth is becoming apparent in Western Europe which is down to technology maturity and the disruptive nature of replacing or virtualising outdated legacy machines. Moreover, growth on the server hardware side is increasingly shifting toward datacenter expansion by the largest tier 1 cloud service providers that tend to run on non-virtualised gear. This is most apparent in the Nordics, Benelux, and Ireland, where virtualisation rates are below other mature markets in the region as a result.

Despite the 3.3% contraction in server shipments in 4Q13 compared with 4Q12, the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa witnessed double-digit growth of 10.3% in virtual server unit shipments, year over year. This reflects growing maturity in virtualisation adoption, with the aim to consolidate the infrastructure by using fewer servers to deploy more virtual machines (VMs), and exploit existing hardware capacities to a greater extent.

AV specialist Videonations, part of the Nycomm Group (which includes Nimans) has teamed-up with StarLeaf, a cloud video conferencing service provider to offer hardware and software video solutions that, claims the firm, are as easy to use as a smartphone with no requirement for end user training.

The partnership offers video conferencing services (scheduled and ad hoc) and a range of endpoints (hardware and software) managed via the cloud.

"StarLeaf consolidates our own value proposition and places us in a position to offer customers cloud-based solutions ideally suited to the mid-market sector," said Videonations MD Ian Carter.

"It delivers scheduled conferencing and a true on-demand, anyone-to-anyone solution that is as far reaching as the telephone and as easy to use as a smartphone.

"StarLeaf approached the video conferencing and collaboration market by starting with the user experience and a belief that if you can make a phone call then you should be able to make a video call."

StarLeaf works with Cisco, Polycom, Lifesize, Microsoft Lync and all H.323 and SIP devices.

The channel is at risk of missing out on SIP reselling opportunities because of a lack of understanding from IT managers.

A new survey by Timico, the business internet, hosting and communications service provider, showed that 68% of those surveyed are unaware of the benefits of SIP. A further 43% were unaware of whether they would be able to run SIP on their current system, with 34% unsure if their company planned to adopt SIP at all.

Darren Hilton, Director of Timico Partners, said: "The benefits of SIP are clear - reduced cost, greater resiliency and additional functionality. But if the channel is finding itself pushing a product the market doesn't understand, it is going to pose a significant challenge.

"Good partners will be educating their resellers on the benefits of SIP, underlining both the cost savings and the additional reliability in ways which both the channel and the end user will understand. It's not just the SIP channel technology that partners should recognise, but the end to end solution and the importance of having enough robust capacity with their connectivity."

As well as offering greater resilience, flexibility and cost savings, SIP models can now incorporate the use of business smartphones, by rerouting personal extension numbers directly to mobile devices, for example. The cost savings of SIP are substantial too.

Hilton added: "It is partly our responsibility to educate the market and remain as diverse and relevant to customer need as possible, which is why we're running educational seminars for our partners around SIP and how to create the most reliable and cost effective solutions for those prospective clients. SIP is a remarkable opportunity for the channel, but a lack of understanding from both parties would be a foolish reason to miss out."

To increase the number of public sector bodies procuring services from the G-Cloud there needs to be more knowledge shared in the wider industry, claims Cloud Services Provider (CSP) Outsourcery.

In a speech at the THINK Cloud for Government expo, Home Office Chief Technology Officer and former G-Cloud Head, Denise McDonagh, stated that she would like to see more education from the Cabinet Office to people who need to architect and buy solutions from the G-Cloud.

This comment was made after G-Cloud's current Head, Tony Singleton, said that approximately 90 per cent of local authorities in the UK have yet to procure a service from the G-Cloud.
 
"While take up figures may be low, there is real potential for the numbers to increase. Furthermore, there should be a focus on education across the entire cloud computing industry in order to grow the success of the initiative", commented Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery.
 
"Cloud education should be a priority not just for the Cabinet Office, but for all in the cloud industry if we are to see an increase in public sector companies making the leap to the cloud.

"Just as central government should make it a priority to educate local government, CSPs like ourselves, along with resellers, should focus on teaching end-users not just about the benefits of the solutions, but importantly the intricacies of the offerings and how they fit with existing infrastructures.
 
"Whether this means being more transparent about product and service offerings or taking the time to encourage end-users to ask more questions, the more widespread knowledge about cloud computing becomes, the more potential there is for public sector departments to make a well-informed, confident step towards the cloud.

"At Outsourcery, we're taking our own steps to encourage confidence in cloud computing within the public sector. We're currently working to design and deploy a high security IL3-compliant cloud platform for the UK government and we hope that knowledge of projects like this will increase confidence among public sector organisations, making G-Cloud the first port of call when public sector bodies consider IT changes or upgrades."
 

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.