Comms Dealer

Jabra has advanced its campaign to secure greater market share in the UK & Ireland region with two high level promotions and a key hire.

The move sees Alan Quinlan promoted to Director of Corporate Sales and Stuart Nicoll to Global Accounts Manager. Meanwhile, Lee Harper joins Quinlan's team with a remit to drive business in the contact centre sector.

"This is a market where we have established good growth through adoption of IP Voice and UC platforms and see significant opportunities to work with our strategic partners and win a greater share of this market," said Nigel Dunn, Managing Director, Jabra Business Solutions UK & Ireland (pictured).

Dunn noted that Quinlan's influence has been strongly felt in pushing Jabra's direct touch into its target user base, nearly doubling business in key accounts last year.

And commenting on Nicoll's appointment, Dunn said: "Stuart has been promoted to handle our Global Accounts and worked on some of our largest international accounts last year to create an impact on our growth.

"This year we will continue our investment in the High Touch Sales Team and will work closer with our channel and Strategic Alliance partners to continue our acquisition of new accounts and drive up our market share."

Harper joins Jabra from Outsourcery where he gained a grounding in new technology driving the contact centre sector.

Dunn noted: "While the contact centre market is not set for huge growth, Jabra sees technology refresh in this sector as the driver for our sales.

"Our understanding of this market and how high quality audio solutions can drive productivity and reduce agent attrition will be crucial. It's an area where I believe contact centres have been badly served in the past and that has had an impact on customer satisfaction and staff retention."

Distributor Ingram Micro aims to cut costs by managing its core support centrally, while reducing its logistics centres.

It will consolidate from the Regional Accounting Center in Barcelona, Spain to its central support in Bulgaria. The Barcelona office was acquired as part of the purchase of BrightPoint, and will now be closed, Ingram Micro Europe President Gerhard Shultz told Comms Dealer sister publication IT Europa. 

By building a low-cost model, the giant distributor will be able to move quickly into new markets, both in technology and geography. He points to the German market, where the company has rapidly built up a 30% share of energy-saving device distribution. And it will life harder for the rising number of small, niche specialist distributors who will not have Ingram Micro's depth of resource or power of negotiation.

He expects the changes to be largely complete by Q3 this year and show an ongoing double-digit millions of euros in savings.

In essence it will no longer organise functions centrally in one location. Management support functions from European headquarters in Belgium will gradually transfer to various country-based and globally-based competence centres.

Standardising the go-to-market models in all European countries will  improve the international reach of Ingram Micro's commercial network, it says, maximising scale opportunities by managing centrally the business support functions, such as human resources, finance, information systems and operations, allowing the country operations to fully focus on their go-to-market initiatives. 

The Dutch organisation will be home to the European finance competence centre and Germany will be organizing the Advanced Solutions business whilst France will assume responsibility for managing certain European vendor management roles.

Ingram Micro's logistic footprint will change as it consolidates warehousing facilities in Germany and Benelux. The company's Trier, Germany warehouse will be integrated into the Straubing facility and the Belgian warehouse is planned to be consolidated into a single Benelux warehouse in Tilburg, The Netherlands.

Consolidating transactional support means expanding the use of the Ingram Micro Shared Service Center in Sofia, Bulgaria through the transfer of additional country business-support functions as well as through the consolidation of activities from the Regional Accounting Center in Barcelona, Spain. The number of employees in the Bulgarian operation will rise from 250 to over 500, but there will be losses elsewhere, particularly at the Brussels European HQ.

Gamma has gained 29th place in The Sunday Times 2014 list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. This follows the previous year's entry into this list at number 48 into and a Two Star Accreditation achieved earlier this year for Best Companies 2014, in the mid-size company category (250-4,999 employees).

The Sunday Times award lists the top 100 companies to work for in the UK based largely on employee survey and judged according to performance in eight key areas: Leadership, wellbeing, giving something back, personal growth, fair deal and how members of staff feel towards their manager, company and team. Gamma is the only communications services provider in the Top 100 list.

Bob Falconer, CEO at Gamma, said: "Our result of 29th Best Company to Work for is a fantastic achievement and shows a significant improvement in both the response rates and in the ratings given by participants over the previous year.

"Recruiting, motivating and retaining the best employees is at the heart of our strategy and is critical for our continued growth. As we continue to grow we are absolutely determined to avoid developing a corporate culture. It's both fantastic and humbling for the company to be recognised in this way."

Congrats to Eurolink Connect on reaching the 15-year milestone operating in the comms industry. The company celebrated at its Stonehouse HQ with a guest list that included staff, customers and suppliers.

Claire Maddox, Eurolink Director, said: "What a fantastic evening! I am so happy to be celebrating our 15th Birthday with all the people who have helped us get to where we are today. I am so grateful for all the support from everybody and it also makes me very happy that we are helped raise money for Winston's Wish last night."

The evening raised £360 for local charity Winston's Wish. The money raised at the event will be matched by Eurolink Director, Derek Maddox, raising a total of £720 for the charity.

Established in 1999, Eurolink Telecom originally offered international landline minutes for UK companies. It rebranded to Eurolink Connect in 2013 and have grown to be a nationally successful company with a multi-million pound turnover.

Cloud orchestration firm Ospero has appointed Tom Kelly as Chairman with immediate effect. 

The former Logicalis UK Managing Director aims to develop a 'robust strategic plan' for Ospero's next stage of development.
 
"There are fantastic market opportunities for the orchestration and management of cloud services, and Ospero is ideally placed to take advantage," said Kelly. 

"The impact of cloud adoption is creating complexity within the enterprise, as business managers and IT teams struggle to control costs and present effective cloud services to their users. 

"Ospero cuts the complexity of cloud consumption, reducing risk, driving innovation and empowering IT to become an internal cloud services provider to the business."
 
As well as providing added impetus to Ospero's strategic direction, Kelly's role as Chairman also includes the remit to forge relationships with partners and extend the capabilities of the Ospero cloud orchestration platform. 

"Partnering with best of breed technology providers is a key strategy," added Kelly. 

Union Street Technologies has added an SQL training course to its customer training programme.

Microsoft SQL Server is the relational database management system on which the aBILLity billing platform is based.

The course has been developed by Union Street's training and consultancy team to cater for complete beginners to the world of SQL, although it assumes a basic level of IT literacy and familiarity with the telecoms industry.

The course's itinerary includes an introduction to what SQL is, how it works, how to extract and view data, and how to create bespoke reports. This is ideal for any aBILLity users that might need to create specific reports that go beyond aBILLity's core reporting tools.

In addition, the course demonstrates the best practices to deploy when using SQL, providing tips on good housekeeping and maintenance, including how to back up databases and schedule backups into automated daily routines.

Union Street Managing Director, Tony Cook, said: "We're continually developing our training programme to ensure our clients have access to all the knowledge they need to use aBILLity to its full potential.

"We're proud to provide more than just basic product training but also advice on best practices and the significant benefits of advanced training."

IT consultancy and solutions provider Northdoor has entered into a new franchise partnership with Colt.

Northdoor will now offer a broader range of services to its customers, including Colt's Ethernet, IP VPN, IP Access and Voice services.
 
Northdoor will also benefit from a dedicated account team, marketing support, technical training programme and partner tools. 

The agreement enables Northdoor to represent Colt at every stage of the customer relationship from selling the service portfolio through to order handling, implementation and billing.
 
David Ballard, CEO, Northdoor, said: "Entering into a partnership with Colt brings many advantages to our customers, helping them to continue to achieve their business objectives through IT enablement."
 
Carol Alexander, Director of Franchise Channel at Colt, added: "Offering Northdoor the opportunity to sell integrated network and communications services under the Colt brand will accelerate the reach of our services."

Cheltenham-based Total has renewed its sponsorship of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club for the 2014 season, as official Club Partner.

Total first became shirt sponsors of the Gloucestershire Cricket squad in 2009, further increasing its support as the official Club Partner from 2011.

This new agreement will see Total continue as official Club Partner and as Shirt Sponsors of the squad for 2014, with their company logo appearing on the back of all LV=CC, Royal London One-Day Cup and NatWest T20 Blast shirts worn by the players.

Their logo will also appear on the front of the LV=CC and Royal London One-Day Cup shirts and on replica shirts available from the club shop.

Total MD Stuart Baikie said: "2014 looks set to be an exciting season for Gloucestershire and we are very pleased to continue as official Club Partner and Sponsor.

"The new Pavilion is a fantastic facility and with the completion of the Mound Stand and the return of International cricket to the County Ground, we are looking forward to working closely together and sharing in the Club's successes both on and off the pitch."

Communications service provider Timico has launched a new channel business, Timico Partners, as the 2010-acquired NewNet rebrands under the Timico banner.

Timico Partners will form a new but distinct organisation with channel expertise from across the Timico group and a 100% focus on providing converged Internet and communications services to MSPs, IT VARs and telecoms resellers.

The launch will see a dedicated partner team based in Fareham, offering a technical helpdesk, technical engineers, project management, technical pre-sales support and assistance from channel business development managers.

Timico Partners also offers a dedicated partner portal.

Timico Partners' Director of Partner Services Darren Hilton, said: "As well as creating bespoke partnership arrangements which reward growth with exclusive incentives and initiatives designed to add real value, we are also passionate about training our partners.

"We have invested more than £600k in our PartnerEye portal, which makes life easier for our partners by helping them manage their own bespoke ordering, billing and reporting."

Partners can leverage Timico's own national 10Gbps MPLS network, carrier-grade VoIP/SIP platform and Tier 3+ data centre, combined with in-depth expertise to support every technical discipline.

Hilton added: "Timico is a specialist in Ethernet, broadband, VoIP, SIP and managed hosting solutions, so we will be able to gather all of this knowledge in one place and pass it on to help our partners grow and develop alongside us."

Cloud and SaaS specialist intY has signed an agreement with Microsoft that sees Office 365 made available in a recurring revenue resale model for the first time to its high volume strategic partners.

The announcement enables selected intY strategic partners to resell rather than recommend Microsoft Office 365, bringing with it new margin and service opportunities for these partners who are now able to directly bill all services supplied.

Chris Baldock, CEO of intY, said: "To date many of our major partners struggled with the existing referral-only model for Office 365, with one sticking point being the billing relationship owned by Microsoft or the Syndication Partner making it difficult for complementary services to be provided by the channel on one bill.

"This agreement puts our larger channel partners firmly back in the driving seat - they become a reseller with margin and value-add as opposed to a recommender with a commission payment. Ultimately, they own that all important customer relationship."

Within intY's aggregation platform, intY CASCADE, selected partners can set their own price, be in control of margin, and bundle other complementary products and value-add service functionality with Office 365, all whilst billing the customer directly.

"This will spur a further migration towards Office 365", said Baldock. "The next phase of customer adoption is highly reliant upon channel partners for migration, support and integration, the path is now clear for rapid uptake.

"With Office 365 being available in a resale model for intY CASCADE strategic partners, plus the guarantee of the latest Microsoft capability and service, we expect this market to accelerate at pace."

Mark Herbert, Business Development Director and Founder of intY, added: "This is the shape of things to come. We've been in the SaaS space since the start, and we've always believed that the right combination of Microsoft and the cloud would be a game changer for channel consumption."