Comms Dealer

French integrator Atos has signed a five year infrastructure services programme with Kelway. It is estimated to be worth £150m over the five years and will deliver desktop infrastructure and datacentre hardware services in the UK and Ireland.

Kelway is now the primary provider of infrastructure and associated services to Atos' managed services business in the UK, and will offer end-to-end supply chain services, backed-up by a support programme.

"This new partnership with Atos showcases Kelway's ability to deliver key business technologies at the enterprise scale," commented Phil Doye, CEO of Kelway. "We're continuing to impress leading global brands with our comprehensive range of solutions and services."

Ingram Micro is to try the US collaborative partner model in Europe and is starting with the UK.

The idea behind VentureTech Network is a network of independent resellers who share ideas, resources, and technologies in a non-competitive environment. VTN makes it possible for members to easily partner with one another and to turn a local or regional business into a nationwide or multi-regional operation, it says.

Brent McCarty, Ingram Micro's Managing Director and VP for UK and Ireland commented: "Having participated in the VTN community for many years in North America, I've seen firsthand
how committed the partners are and how important VTN has been to helping build their businesses. Participation is the key to maximising the many benefits the VTN model presents and it's great to see how much our founding members enjoy taking part and the passion they feel for the programme."

As part of the community, VTN members have the opportunity to network with and learn from other successful resellers, share best practices, leverage capabilities and have greater visibility of vendors and market evolution. "With VTN, you get out what you put in and I look forward to seeing VTN become the premier partner community in the UK, as it is in North America," added McCarty.

Mark Williams, Client Services Director of Wavex, will serve as VTN UK's first council President.

The first chapter meeting will take place this month in Surrey and will be hosted by Ingram Micro's North America Vice President of Marketing, Jennifer Anaya and Senior Director of North America Channel Marketing and Account Management, John Fago.

The recruitment process for VTN UK started in 2013, with three reseller partners attending the North America VTN Invitational in Palm Springs, California to experience first-hand the power of what VTN brings to the VAR community of network members. These three partners are now the founding members of the UK community: Lan2Lan, Symitry, Wavex.

IT services group Computacenter recorded its fourth successive year of revenue growth, helped by a strong performance in the UK and more stability in Germany, although the smaller France division disappointed.

Revenues broke through the £3m barrier for the first time, rising 2.5% at constant currencies to £3.07bn, with adjusted earnings per share advancing 6.1% to 43.3p after July's cash return to shareholders.

A focus on expanding the services arm saw the significant growth in 2012 continue in 2013, with revenue up 3.7% to represent 31.4% of the group's total.
The larger supply chain businesses in the UK and Germany performed well, especially during the second half of the year, which management put down to the strength of customer relationships within markets that now appear to be showing the signs of a sustained economic recovery. Supply chain revenue grew 2%.

Group profitability was mixed, with profit growth in the UK and Germany being substantially offset by issues in France which became apparent during the course of the year, meaning group adjusted profit before tax increased by 3%.

While business conditions in France were challenging, 'most of the problems were of our own making', admitted Chairman Greg Lock as the group took a £12.2m impairment on the deteriorated French business.

"We took too long to implement the group enterprise resource planning system and this resulted in logistics issues that have depressed our profit and temporarily increased our working capital requirements, which have in turn negatively impacted our cash position in the short-term."

The board is taking "robust action" over the next 18 months in order to improve the performance of the business, including the extension of its new operating model into France, alongside a strategic shift towards a more services-based business model similar to those currently seen in the UK and Germany.

Analysis by Philip Carse, Megabuyte.com: The usually well informed Nic Fildes at The Times this morning reports that Virgin Media is in talks to acquire Daisy, but that the negotiations have stalled over price.

Such a move would be strategically sensible for Virgin Media Business, creating a near £1bn B2B business, while Daisy's 12x EBITDA target doesn't seem too ambitious.

According to the article, informal talks between Liberty Global/Virgin Media Business (VMB) and Daisy have stalled over price, with Daisy holding out for 220p a share (versus 188p close yesterday). The article also notes that Daisy has pulled back from a bid for Phoenix, since when Phoenix has installed a new CEO and raised £8.6m.

Daisy CEO Matt Riley told us that he can't comment on press speculation.

A Virgin Media Business bid for Daisy would in many respects be unsurprising and strategically sound. While Virgin has steered clear of M&A in recent years, the arrival of Liberty Global last year will have changed the whole dynamic for the business, with Liberty Global being rather fond of M&A.

Daisy would add £350m of revenues to Virgin Media Business's £605m, taking the combined B2B group to within a whisker of £1bn and the broader Virgin business to nearly £4.5bn.

There would also be a good fit: VMB is strong in public sector, especially local authorities, and enterprise, where Daisy has growing ambitions, whilst Daisy is strong in SME, where VMB has historically been weak despite having a network passing millions of small businesses. Bringing much of Daisy's traffic on to Virgin's network would also presumably unleash significant synergies. Daisy also now has a reasonable data centre and hosting presence, where Virgin has hardly featured.

Meanwhile, a Daisy/Phoenix tie up had been rumoured for some time, which would have added significant revenues to Daisy (£230m), but a lower 50% EBITDA lift (about £30m versus Daisy's £56m).

It would however have presented Daisy with considerable integration challenges given Phoenix's well publicised problems (unclear strategy, poor business performance and accounting irregularities). One of the attractions of Phoenix to Daisy would have been its IT services business (engineers etc), but Daisy can also go for this market on its own, particularly given last October's Indecs acquisition.

A 220p price for Daisy would equate to about 12x EBITDA, which does not seem an overtly ambitious target given current Telecoms and Networks multiples of 8-12x, with Alternative Networks on 11.7x and Talk Talk on as much as 15.5x (reflecting EBITDA being depressed by investments in TV).

However, Liberty paid only 8.8x historic/7x expected EBITDA for Virgin Media just over a year ago, and is paying just 11.3x EBITDA for Dutch cable TV operator Ziggo, which comes with billions of network assets. However, Telecoms & Networks has been the best performing of the Megabuyte peer groups in share price terms over the last year, and VMB will have to stump up higher valuations anyway if it wants to buy sizeable companies.

If the two sides fail to reach agreement, Daisy still has a substantial M&A war chest, though some sizeable and obvious fits have gone elsewhere (for example InTechnology, acquired by Redcentric), while Updata may well fall into the hands of Capita.

Daisy Group has dismissed news reports on a possible £500m-plus takeover by US-based cable giant Liberty Global as no more than press speculation.

News reports suggests that talks broke down due to a disagreement over the price to be paid for Daisy.

The reported discussions about a possible acquisition come just weeks after Daisy secured a five-year agreement to provide services and engineering support to Virgin Media, which is part of Liberty Global.

In depth anlaysis by Megabuyte.com

Daisy Distribution has today dismissed rumours linking it with the acquisition of Avenir Telecom.
 
Following Jean-Daniel Beurnier's announcement earlier this week that Avenir is to exit the B2B airtime distribution market next month, Daisy Distribution had been rumoured to be in line to acquire the business.
 
However, Daisy Distribution Managing Director Dave McGinn has refuted these rumours and has confirmed that the company has no plans to acquire Avenir and is instead offering support to those partners whose futures have been placed in doubt by the news.
  
"We are sympathetic towards any partners who may feel they have been put in a precarious situation given the short timescales involved in Avenir's exit from the airtime market," said McGinn.
.

"While we are definitely not looking to acquire Avenir Telecom I can confirm that airtime is a major focus for Daisy Distribution and I am willing to personally speak to anyone affected by this news."

Nearly half of IT professionals think wearable technology will outsell traditional consumer electronics products within five years, according to new research by IT job board CWJobs.co.uk.

Over two thirds (65%) of respondents also believe that the rise of wearable technology will generate new types of jobs in fields such as design and human physiology, challenging IT professionals to diversify their skill base.

Respondents expected the skills most in demand by the burgeoning industry to include security, followed by sensor technology skills.

However, only 28% felt IT professionals in the UK are equipped to take advantage of the expected explosion in opportunities.

Furthermore, 74% felt the Government is not investing enough in research and development of wearable technology, with only 3% naming Great Britain as the country leading the field, lagging far behind Japan (34%) and the US (31%).

Richard Nott, website director at CWJobs.co.uk, said: "Wearable technology was yet again the buzzword at this year's CES indicating it's more than a passing fad.

"This is an exciting field of IT, but IT professionals must be willing to skill-up in new areas to take advantage."

The majority of professionals (57%) indicated that they would be more likely to consider a job in consumer electronics because of wearable technology and over 60% felt there could be just as much opportunity for wearable technology in the enterprise market.

KCOM Group has raised more than £17,000 to help young disadvantaged people across the UK by taking part in The Prince's Trust Million Makers competition.

Million Makers is an entrepreneurial challenge in which teams from organisations across the UK compete to raise money for The Prince's Trust by creating and running an enterprising initiative for six months.

KCOM, a Prince's Trust patron since 2012, entered two teams in the challenge, with its Exeter-based Eclipse brand competing in the South West region and its Wakefield and Hull offices competing in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Sarah Church, Million Makers manager at The Prince's Trust, said: "We're delighted that KCOM Group has been inspired to go above and beyond to raise more than £17,000 for The Prince's Trust. Not only will it help us to continue delivering programmes to support young people, by giving them the skills they need to succeed, but it will also provide one to one mentoring for young people that will boost their confidence.

"We're committed to providing young people with a second chance and a positive future, and the KCOM Group's creative and effective fundraising ideas are key to making this happen. From backing our xl clubs, which support young people struggling in school, to our Enterprise programme, which helps budding entrepreneurs into start-ups, it's businesses like this which are helping us to transform even more lives in 2014."

Managing Director at Eclipse, Clodagh Murphy, said: "Throughout the challenge, I've been blown away by the dedication of the team and it's been a real pleasure to see them grow in confidence and develop their skills.

"The entrepreneurial flair from the team was evident - as well as developing an app for Eclipse customers, they carried out fundraising activities including car boots and a hugely successful Halloween Gala. This challenge has been rewarding for the whole team and I am excited to see what the next Eclipse team taking part will accomplish."

Chief Financial Officer at KCOM Group, Paul Simpson, said: "The Yorkshire and Humber team came up with some great ideas to raise money, including a silent auction and a Christmas party for employees, friends and business contacts. Million Makers is a fantastic initiative for us to be involved with and fits in with our business focus on innovation and creative thinking."

The KCOM Group has pledged £100,000 of financial support to The Prince's Trust over four years.

Azzurri Communications has lifted the curtain on ICON Communicate, the first in a series of ICON Cloud and Managed Services products launching throughout 2014.

ICON Communicate is a fully managed suite of communications services incorporating IP telephony, unified communications and contact centre offerings delivered from the cloud.

The City & Guilds Group, a global leader in skills development, has already signed up as a key part of its strategy.

Azzurri's ICON Communicate scales for organisations with 250-5,000 users and builds on a significant investment in its cloud infrastructure.

Rufus Grig, CTO, Azzurri Communications, said: "Organisations are increasingly focused on the task of better aligning IT services to business function. But this is leaving CIOs battling to shift their already stretched resources away from 'keeping the lights on' towards more innovative projects which drive growth and competitive advantage.

"ICON Communicate provides a flexible, managed service which allows them to focus their energy and budget into delivering differentiation."

Nimans has bagged the Outstanding Distributor Award 2013 from long-range wireless technology company Engenius.

Nimans is the exclusive distribution partner of various products including the Extreme cordless telephone that offers more coverage than any other consumer rated cordless device in Europe - up to 2km. Superior multi floor coverage can even penetrate concrete.

The accolade, for excellent performance and sales contribution, comes on the eve of the launch of a new wireless networking portfolio such as indoor and outdoor long range Wi-Fi access points.

"It's been another year of great collaboration between Nimans and EnGenius Europe," said Andy Winfield, Purchasing Director at Nimans. "Engenius products continue to grow in popularity. The latest network devices represent an exciting new chapter in our ever-closer partnership."

Malcolm Chng, Business Development Director at Engenius Europe, added: "With Nimans' ongoing commitment we strongly believe this success will continue throughout 2014."

Pictured: Malcolm Chng, Business Development Director at Engenius Europe, with Andy Winfield, Purchasing Director at Nimans.