Comms Dealer

NewVoiceMedia has been shortlisted in the final of the 2014 UK Cloud Awards in the 'Most Innovative Enterprise Cloud Solution' category, which recognises technology that enables scale change in the nation's largest businesses.

Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, said: "We are delighted to be announced as a finalist. We pride ourselves on the hard work, dedication and innovation involved in developing our cloud contact centre solutions, as they are revolutionising the customer experience. We look forward to hearing what the judges have to say."

The winners will be announced at a ceremony at London's City Hall on 26 February 2014.

Distributor Tech Data has named Jean-Paul (JP) Durand to the new position of vice president, chief ethics and compliance officer. Durand will report to David Vetter, the company's senior vice president, general counsel, as well as the Audit Committee of the company's board of directors.

It follows the lengthy investigation and removal of staff over discrepancies in accounts which cost the company millions of dollars. In this new global role, Durand will lead Tech Data's worldwide ethics and compliance program, including the company's policies and procedures designed to prevent and detect fraudulent conduct, encourage ethical behaviour and a commitment to compliance with the law, and ensure adherence to Tech Data's Code of Conduct.

"Tech Data is committed to sound corporate governance and ethical business practices, and this appointment reflects our continued commitment to legally and ethically conducting business around the world," said Vetter.

Durand has served as Tech Data's vice president, assistant general counsel since May 2011 and has been with Tech Data since 2000. He is also a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional under the Compliance Certification Board standards.

The company also announced that Wayne Hanewicz has been promoted to vice president, assistant general counsel and be responsible for the US legal organisation and report to Vetter.

The company has also appointed a deputy ethics and compliance officer in both its Americas and European regions, reporting directly to Durand. These two new positions will be responsible for managing Tech Data's ethics and compliance program in their respective regions. A new position of trade practice counsel, Europe, will report to Norbert Sourek, the company's general counsel, Europe.

Linksys has expanded its business networking line-up with the first of its business grade wireless access points, designed for businesses to deploy a fast, secure and reliable wireless network or to upgrade an existing wireless infrastructure.

The new access points can be deployed as an access point or range extender. "Many businesses are facing a rapid increase of connected notebooks, smartphones and tablets and an increase in use of multimedia on their networks," said Steven Lin, director of product management for Linksys Business.

"The Linksys Business Wireless-N Access Points use the widely adopted 802.11n wireless technology to provide a wireless network and support features such as Power over Ethernet for flexible placement, plus Rogue AP Detection and 802.11X supplicant for enhanced security.

"Wi-Fi is far more crucial to businesses these days. Wireless internet allows employees to work anywhere, have fast and free access to the web on mobile devices and enables new experiences such as voice over IP and video conferencing.

"At the same time hotels, retail stores and restaurants use Wi-Fi for hospitality purposes and in production, and logistics facilities it is used to connect handheld devices for real-time inventory control."

Channel Telecom has staged a roundtable dinner for a dozen key partners and guests at the Gaucho Grill restaurant in the City of London.

The event allowed the Channel Telecom team to get partner feedback on the latest additions to the product portfolio now being added to Channel Telecom's range of voice and data solutions.

Hosted by Clifford Norton, Managing Director, and other members of the Channel Telecom account management team the evening included presentations from two guest speakers discussing how evolutions in technology have created continuous opportunities for the channel and the importance of connectivity in the world of cloud computing.

Matt Donaldson, Sales Director, stated: "It was great to enjoy an excellent meal in relaxed surroundings with some of our channel partners. We have made some significant additions to our service offering and the Gaucho dinner provided us with the ideal opportunity to get feedback from some of our larger partners. This is just the latest in our ongoing series of partner consultations."

ShoreTel has signed up Calyx as a Champion Partner, authorised to sell ShoreTel's on-premises Unified Communications portfolio incorporating business phone systems, contact centre and mobile UC applications.

Calyx has focused on developing its portfolio in recent months and this is the latest step as it builds its reputation as a provider of end-to-end ICT solutions to businesses across the UK.

Steve Clark, CEO at Calyx, said: "As remote working and homeworking become more prevalent, so the business case for effective Unified Communications solutions grows.

"The ShoreTel portfolio provides the cornerstone of our UC portfolio, enabling us to provide a true end-to-end solution to our customers."

A new survey by Cerillion Technologies, polling the views of more than 200 senior IT professionals across a broad range of industry verticals, has revealed that more than half of all businesses today (53%) are still using either an in-house-developed system or manual processes to bill their customers.

At the same time, the results highlight a shift in the way products and services are sold, away from traditional one-off product sales towards a more flexible pricing model based on subscriptions and usage.

One-off pricing models are currently used by 84% of organisations but the research shows that this proportion is set to fall to 51% in the future. In contrast, new pricing initiatives built around an on-going service relationship are growing steadily, including subscriptions, pay-per-use and freemium pricing models.

"Today, we are experiencing a shift in the way consumers purchase goods and services as part of the subscription revolution. This is a fundamental change in the kinds of pricing models businesses are using in order to monetise service offerings and drive recurring revenue," says Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies.

"This process is set to accelerate as revenue models mature and the need for innovative pricing and product packaging to differentiate and create value in customer relationships becomes more acute.

"Unfortunately, in-house systems are typically not agile or sophisticated enough to handle this transition and manual processes cannot scale.

"That's why these new business models are perfectly complemented by the rise of enterprise cloud billing solutions. This is an approach which can deliver flexibility and agility for businesses in mixing and matching service and usage-based pricing models, while enabling them to quickly set up and start billing for a new service without the need for any infrastructure or upfront licence fees."

In line with this, the survey results paint a picture of a cloud billing market about to undergo rapid growth. It is currently relatively small in the UK, with just 4% of survey respondents using a cloud billing system or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach today. However, a further 11% say they are using a managed service - and with cloud penetration generally on the rise - Cerillion foresees dynamic growth in the cloud billing market as businesses strive to meet the demands of the new subscription-based economy.

According to Hall, agility, flexibility and matching products to the market's demands are key. This is the same both for small businesses or start-ups looking to get a foothold in the market by introducing new services quickly and cost-effectively, and for more established organisations wanting to spread their wings and expand into new markets or geographies. "Working in the cloud provides that - and any smart business should be looking to bill in this way," added Hall.

ShoreTel has launched an integrated solution, named ShoreTel for Salesforce, offering integration between Salesforce and the ShoreTel on-premises IP-PBX system and ShoreTel Workgroups.

"Phone data is aligned with business data in the CRM system," said David Petts, senior vice president of worldwide sales at ShoreTel .

"By integrating the ShoreTel communications platform with Salesforce customers gain new insights, more effective collaboration, higher productivity and better business results.

"Automatic logging of all sales activity with call details and audio recordings tied into Salesforce customer accounts, together with prompts for agents to schedule follow-up actions, can lead to closing deals faster and higher overall sales team productivity.

"The merging of communications and business data allows companies to build custom reports within Salesforce that give them unprecedented insight into their operations." 

Lantronix, maker of smart IoT (Internet of Things) connectivity has signed with distributor Arrow to cover EMEA. The company had used Arrrow previously in the North America and Asia Pacific regions.

Guido Resch, vice president semiconductor marketing, Arrow EMEA, said: "We look forward to kicking off our expanded relationship at this month's Embedded World conference in Nuremberg."

Martin Poppelaars, vice president of sales for Lantronix EMEA, added: "We have a long and successful history partnering with Arrow in the North American and Asia Pacific regions, and we believe this agreement will enable us to better utilise Arrow's global distribution network to grow our business in EMEA."

Jabra's technical innovation and design supremos kept one eye firmly fixed on the future when creating the just-launched Jabra BIZ 2300, positioned as a device fit for the customer service requirements of tomorrow.

"The Jabra BIZ 2300 is a direct response to the changing face of the global contact centre industry," explained Nigel Dunn, Managing Director, Jabra Business Solutions UK&I.

"It completely rethinks the role of the headset and will play an even greater strategic role in shaping brand perception and maintaining customer satisfaction."

He pointed out that ccontact centres play an increasingly important role as the customer's first point of contact and the role of the contact centre agent is being redefined as brand ambassadors.

"This highlights that the battle to win and maintain customers is fought in the contact centre," added Dunn. "For that reason it is paramount that each call is dealt with as professionally as possible with crystal clear sound, no background noise and quick handling of the customers' needs through the channels of communication that the customer prefers.

"We can see that contact centre agents are major contributors in safeguarding brand perception and this will only increase in the future. With the Jabra BIZ 2300 we set ourselves the challenge of developing an audio device for brand ambassadors with an emphasis on sound performance, durability and comfort."

Linda Hartig, Avaya Vice President of Global Support Services, commented: "Today, companies like Avaya need to execute to perfection at all customer touch-points, with a crisp and clear voice. Our Services Desk in Westminster, Colorado, USA has piloted the Jabra BIZ 2300 and it is spot-on in terms of delivering that superior sound quality Avaya and our customers expect."

The Jabra BIZ 2300 is now available for channel partners to order via Authorised Jabra Distributors and is available for customers to purchase via their authorised Jabra Reseller partner.

A national property association based in Manchester has turned to a Lancashire telecoms provider to help manage a sustained period of rapid business growth.

The Residential Landlords Association (RLA) has experienced an increase of more than 50% in its membership in the last two years, now serving over 17,000 landlords across England and Wales.

The surge in membership has resulted in a substantial increase in inbound enquiries to the RLA's advice lines, and so the organisation has partnered up with leading North West installer Abbey Telecom to implement a new call handling system.

"Inbound calls to our advice lines have more than doubled in the last few years due to the huge increase in members and the increasing complexity of legislation faced by residential landlords," explained Andrew Goodacre from the Residential Landlords Association.

"We needed hi tech, rapid solutions to ensure that our callers are efficiently funnelled to the right person and can access the area of expertise they require at the first time of asking."

The new system comes with real time, intelligent reporting and management information which allows the association to monitor call volumes and deploy its professionally trained advisors to areas of greatest need.

Abbey Telecom managing director Tony Raynor added: "Tackling a change in call handling capabilities whilst continuing to serve its members involved a complete overhaul of the RLA's traditional phone lines, which we have replaced with a brand new server and call routing system.

"It's crucial for landlords' peace of mind to be able to access round-the-clock professional advice, information and services."