Comms Dealer

Phoenix IT Group has named Stephen Vaughan as the Group's Chief Executive Officer with immediate effect.

Peter Bertram, Executive Chairman, will resume his previous role of Non-Executive Chairman from 1 April 2014.

Vaughan, aged 53, has over 30 years of experience in the technology sector. During a 14 year career with EDS (UK) Ltd, he held a number of senior executive roles.

He was subsequently CEO of Synstar plc from 2001 to 2005, where he implemented a major change programme culminating in the acquisition of the business by Hewlett Packard.

In his position as CEO of Communisis plc from 2006 until 2010, Steve successfully launched a new strategy which gave rise to a significant turnaround in the company's performance. From July 2013 to February 2014, Steve was Chairman of Charteris plc and led its successful sale to French group Sword through an agreed cash offer.

The Group also announces today its intention to place 7,547,934 new ordinary shares of 1p each in the capital of the Company at a price of 114 pence per Placing Share representing approximately 9.99 per cent of the Company's existing issued share capital.

The Placing will raise approximately £8.6 million and will be used to accelerate debt reduction and to maintain balance sheet strength and flexibility.

Peter Bertram, Executive Chairman of Phoenix IT Group, said: "Steve has a great deal of experience in the technology sector. His strong track record and industry knowledge will be of great value to the Group."

Vaughan added: "Phoenix has a strong portfolio of service offerings, great staff and an excellent client base. I am looking forward to taking the ompany into its next stage of development."

Brocade has named Christine Heckart as its new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), responsible for the strategic direction of Brocade's global marketing organisation. She will report directly to Brocade's Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Carney.

"The data centre must transform to meet the IT demands of the modern era that are driven by cloud, virtualisation and mobility," said Carney. "Christine's marketing experience and expertise are well suited to help propel Brocade forward in the global marketplace to drive demand for our next-generation solutions."

With more than 25 years of experience in the high-tech industry, Heckart has held a number of senior marketing leadership positions at networking and other high tech companies.

Most recently at ServiceSource, a SaaS provider that helps drive recurring revenue she served as EVP Strategy, Marketing, People and Systems where she was responsible for establishing a new market around recurring revenue management.

Prior to that Heckart held CMO roles at NetApp and Juniper Networks, as well as being General Manager, TV, Video and Music Business at Microsoft.

Heckart serves on the Board of Directors at Lam Research, a leading provider of wafer fabrication equipment to the semiconductor industry.

"With the adoption of fabric-based networking, NFV, SDN, and cloud-based computing, end users are actively seeking technology partners that can help them drive business transformation," said Heckart.

IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty has stated in a letter to investors that the company did not meet its expectations in 2013.

IBM will continue to alter its focus to cloud services and data analytics while modifying its hardware products.

"While we continue to remix to higher value, we must also address those parts of the business that are holding us back," she says.

IBM's 2013 operating pre-tax income was down 8%. "We have two specific challenges, and we are taking steps to address both," added Rometty.

"The first involves shifting the IBM hardware business for new realities and opportunities. We are accelerating the move of our Systems product portfolio-in particular, Power and storage-to growth opportunities and to Linux, following the lead of our successful mainframe business."

IBM has agreed to sell much of the Intel-based x86 server business to Lenovo. Rometty added: "This divestiture is consistent with our continuing strategy of exiting lower-margin businesses, such as PCs, hard-disk drives and retail store solutions. But let me be clear, we are not exiting hardware."

The second challenge involves the world's growth markets. "While IBM's growth in Latin America and Middle East and Africa was strong, enterprise spending slowed in other key growth markets. We are intensifying focus on new growth opportunities," Rometty said.

To meet growing demand for greater speed, and legal requirements for compliance and data residency, IBM is expanding its global cloud footprint.

It currently has 25 data centres globally, and the new $1.2 billion investment announced in January will see the opening of 15 more, in the US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan and Mexico.

The Jabra PRO 900 series wireless headset has been expanded to include Bluetooth connectivity in a development that encourages workplace mobility and collaboration while reducing the number of missed calls.

In a recent survey among 11,900 office and mobile workers worldwide, Jabra and research company YouGov were able to document how 75% of all office workers would catch more calls by being wireless.

"We are excited that the Jabra PRO 930 and 935 solutions are optimised for Lync and give our customers the ability to choose a wireless device that enables them to work wherever, whether it is moving around the office or working outside of the office," said Giovanni Megzec, General Manager of Lync Product Marketing at Microsoft.

Users now gain the mobility to pick up any incoming Microsoft Lync call. Jabra's PRO 900 series supports the Microsoft Lync strategy to provide a consistent end-user experience while using Lync on their PC, Surface Tablet or Windows Phone.

Nigel Dunn, Managing Director, Jabra Business Solutions, UK & Ireland, said: "Efficiency and increased mobility are the key benefits we see for the users of wireless headsets. More and more workers are multitasking, handling phone calls while operating a PC or moving around the office at the same time.

"With a wireless headset you have an increased work radius, which makes the worker 'task centric' instead of 'phone centric'."I think 75 percent more calls taken by wireless headset users, speaks for itself."

Nexus Telecommunications received four nominations for the Leeds City College Apprenticeship awards, two for the first level apprenticeships, one for the advanced level apprenticeship, and an overall company nomination.

Nexus collected the Small Business of the Year award at the ceremony for fully supporting its apprentices and the apprenticeship scheme.

Rob Sims, Chief Operating Officer, commented: "The apprenticeships have given Nexus the opportunity to bring in new employees in a controlled, trained and supported way. We are already in the process of extending the scheme due to the positivity we received from the first year."

Gabrielle Jones, Marketing Communications Assistant has completed the first level Customer Service course and is now in the process of achieving the advanced level in Marketing.

Gary Smith, Apprenticeship Assessor at Leeds City College, stated: "The support at Nexus has been invaluable from director level right through to management and peers. Having this level of support and encouragement constructs a great working environment and highlights the importance of apprentices to the company."

Beds-based recruiter TTR UK is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its Flat Fee Recruitment proposition, which according to Director Gary Hammond is a proven solution with hundreds of success stories under his belt.

"We have 700-plus successful campaigns from Inverness to Exeter and over to Ipswich, across many industry sectors. We also have many customers employing two or more staff from individual campaigns," said Hammond.

Launched in April 2009 TTR's Flat Fee Recruitment solution offers a fully managed Internet recruitment campaign including anonymous advertising, copy writing, response handling and applicant telephone screening.

The solution also offers proactive applicant searching on job boards and targets technical, sales and support staff on a candidate database that holds 1,5000-plus telecoms, IT, VoIP, mobile comms, data and technology CVs.

"As recruitment demand increases, TTR is in a position now to provide any Company a realistic, cost effective and proven recruitment solution, using job boards and supporting it with candidate searching and vacancy eshots to matching applicants," added Hammond.

There's more to leasing than meets the eye, according to Tom Maxwell, Head of Dealer Sales at Nimans, who pointed out that offsetting payments against Corporation Tax is one of benefits that can get overlooked.

He said: "Sales aid leasing is fast becoming a major factor in any successful sales strategy.  "Adding a lease option with a reputable finance partner to a product can significantly enhance sales and overcome customer's budget restrictions.

"You have a great product and a customer who needs that product to expand, but what happens if the customer is not willing to make a large capital investment?

"Businesses can use leasing to reduce their tax bill. The Inland Revenue allows them to offset the whole of the lease rentals against corporation tax - which could be 20% each year - which makes the facility cost effective."

Nimans is planning to introduce new training courses over the coming months to help resellers capitalise on leasing opportunities.

Management software provider Matrix42 has appointed Robert Adlem as its new UK Channel Manager who will be responsible for the UK partners and channel expansion.

He joins from BT Engage IT where he was a Vendor Alliance Manager in charge with revenue growth targets. Prior to this, he was the UK Channel Manager at Numara where he was responsible for new channel programme.

"Robert has a proven track record of working with vendors and channel partners in order to identify new sales opportunities. He brings energy and enthusiasm along with business acumen and experience in developing strategic alliances. I am confident that Robert will make a rapid impact on our UK channel strategy and quickly become a valued member of the team," said Markus Baumann, Vice President Sales EMEA of Matrix42.

Distributor Northamber has reported a pre-tax loss of £690,000 in the second half of the year following a fall in sales from £41m to £30m.

It lost £390,000 in the second half of the year before and has been slashing costs and jobs, saving, it says, $770,000 a year. But, with margins falling from 7.7% to 6.7%, it has to move rapidly away from its traditional hardware business.

Chairman David Phillips said: "This has necessitated a wide-ranging and costly restructuring. The vindication of the changes we are making can be seen in the foundations of a return to a more worthwhile future."

Ricoh Europe has unveiled an enhanced IT services portfolio which includes on-site, remote and cloud based services which will be offered to customers across Europe.

The new portfolio has been designed to address the needs of both small and large organisations, it says.

The enhanced IT services will be provided through regional delivery teams and Ricoh's European network.

"With more technology-led change on the way and European businesses taking greater strides towards digital transformation the need for more advanced and robust IT services is essential," said Carsten Bruhn, Executive Vice President, Ricoh Europe.