Comms Dealer

Channel Telecom has launched a trade offer giving channel partners a free Polycom IP331 phone for every end user seat license sold for the Channel Telecom hosted telephony service on a minimum 24 month contract.

Matt Donaldson, Sales Director, said: "This is another example of Channel Telecom offering our partners that extra help to close sales that is so vital in a highly competitive market. There is a boom in the uptake of hosted telephony as customers realise the big financial benefits and the working flexibility the service offers. The offer of a high quality IP phone for every user license is a definite deal maker."

Phybridge has joined the Cisco Developer Network as a Registered Developer within the Unified Communications technology category. In addition, Phybridge's UniPhyer has successfully completed interoperability testing with Cisco Unified Communications Manager, 7.1.

The Cisco Developer Network unites Cisco with third-party developers of hardware and software to deliver tested interoperable solutions to joint customers.

Members of the program share Cisco's strong commitment to customer service and satisfaction and are required to undergo interoperability testing based on criteria set forth by Cisco.

With offerings such as the Phybridge UniPhyer, customers can more quickly deploy a broad range of Cisco Compatible business applications, devices, or services that can enhance the capabilities, performance, and management of their Cisco network.

Despite forecasts that users of mobile video calling services such as Skype will increase to over 130 million users by 2018, question marks remain over the potential for mobile video calling to generate revenues in its own right, a new report from Juniper Research has found.

The report observed that as with many OTT services, only a small proportion of mobile video calling users pay for the service directly. OTT mobile video calling players are therefore widening their service offering and opening their client bases to third games parties or developing their own apps in a bid to increase monetisation options.

"The role of mobile video calling is becoming clearer," said the report's author Anthony Cox. "With a number of OTT players having gained a critical mass of users through the provision of free video services, those players are now introducing an array of premium products or creating revenue-share partnerships to create a viable revenue stream."

The report also found that new standards such as WebRTC (Real Time Communication) will improve integration of mVoIP functionality into websites and mobile Apps, paving the way for the development of new services such as direct access to sales call centres from websites.

Logicalis has named Richard Aston as Vice President of Services with a remit to expand Logicalis' Services business in the UK as the company continues to align its service offerings under a single portfolio brand, Optimal.

Aston joins Logicalis from Fujitsu where his most recent role was Head of Solutions and Architecture. He has over 25 years experience in the industry with a background in all aspects of IT operations from data centre services, operations and management through to service delivery and solution development.

He said: "Organisations today want to gain maximum business value from their investments in IT and to have cost-effective and efficient services that will deliver real value to their customers and stakeholders.

"They are also looking to drive innovation and business advantage through the appropriate use of IT technology and services, and Logicalis has a capability that can be leveraged to help them achieve this goal."

Venus Business Communications has launched a support package for Voucher Scheme resellers operating under the Superconnected Cities initiative, a government grant scheme designed to incentivise SMEs to upgrade to high speed connectivity.

The scheme provides individual businesses with £3,000 to offset the associated installation of infrastructure and runs for just a year.

Venus Director Brian Iddon said: "This is a great government scheme that resellers need to be aware of. Venus is already one of the registered providers for the scheme and we would encourage other retailers to join. There are great opportunities for resellers to increase volume with good margins with infrastructure cost barriers being removed by the scheme."

The scheme invites businesses to get quotes from suppliers registered with the scheme. The business then applies to their local authority under the scheme for a connection voucher. Once the work is complete the voucher is redeemed for £3,000. The Superconnected Cities scheme facilitates installation of either Next Generation Access (NGA) technology or a Business Grade Connection delivering speeds of over 24 Mbps.

"We have designed a fibre leased line package specifically for resellers registered with the Superconnected Cities scheme that offers competitive prices," added Iddon.

"The package helps resellers to get the most out of the high anticipated volumes the scheme is likely to create across the UK. As a network operator we can support resellers registered on the scheme allowing them to deliver a high speed uncontended connection that will deliver a symmetrical service."

The Government predicts that the scheme will stimulate many SMEs to install the best connectivity infrastructure they can.

"As businesses seek to future proof their IT to deliver high speed connection, resellers and the supporting network operators need to be ready to deliver the anticipated high demand across the UK," added Iddon.

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