Comms Dealer

Red Box Recorders has signed a reseller agreement with Linx-Networks, a provider of custom built technology and telecom solutions for a range of global customers with a strong presence within the City of London financial community.

Under the terms of the deal the Red Box Quantify Suite will become its preferred recording solution.

Gareth Malone, Director at Linx-Networks, said: "For our financial sector clients the Red Box solution meets the key requirement for a robust recording solution which can help them remain compliant with the stringent requirements of financial regulations."

Lee Jones, CEO at Red Box Recorders, said: "Linx-Networks is an excellent addition to our reseller network as it has the strong in-house knowledge and expertise to support our ongoing expansion in the financial markets.

"Our Quantify Recording Suite removes the compliance headache for financial institutions and Linx-Networks are well placed to take our products to market."

Herts-based 2 Circles Communications has retained its O2 JUC Wholesale Partner of the Year award for the third year in succession.

Steve McConnell, Sales Director, enthused: "Winning this award for the third year running is testament not only to the first class experience that we deliver to our customers, but also to the increasing number of channel partners who now place their O2 business with us."

Of particular note in 2 Circles' services offering is the Online Billing Information portal (OLI) which allows customers to manage their communications efficiently with features such as automatic Fraud Alert emails.

"This service has been instrumental in winning a number of key mobile deals and in attaining our 99.76% customer retention rate," added McConnell.

Bernie McPhillips, Head of Wholesale Partners at O2, commented: "2 Circles is a strategic Wholesale Partner for O2 with an impressive portfolio of clients, demonstrating best in class service to their customers. It was these attributes that led to it being ranked O2's Number One JUC Wholesale Partner in 2013."

Pictured: 2 Circles MD Steve Cook accepts the award from Ben Dowd, O2 Sales Director, and Jason Phillips, O2's Head of Partner Sales.

An expansion bid by cloud specialist Cirrus Response has been boosted by the appointment of two non-executive directors, Nigel Walsh and Royston Hoggarth, who have wasted no time in making their mark on the organisation.

Cirrus CEO Jason Roos stated: "Nigel and Royston's collective experience is already paying dividends for us."

Hoggarth, previously CEO of BT Global Services and Cable&Wireless, has worked in financial services, telecoms, software and services. He sits on the board of a number of UK plcs in executive and non-executive capacities.

Walsh is VP and head of UK insurance at Capgemini and was previously General Manager UKSI and Southern Region at Corizon. He has particular expertise in financial services business management and serves as a trustee for the charity Hertsmerre Leisure.

Yorkshire-based hosted telecoms provider Skyrack Telecom has partnered with Manx Telecom to launch a new mobile PBX service.

The SIM-based product, called Mobile-X, is exclusively available from Skyrack Telecom. Managing Director Gavin Sweet said: "Most companies are increasingly reliant on their mobile communication.

"They want their employees to be fully functional when out of the office, and that means enhanced mobile services. 

"We believed, that if we developed a product which offered a true and seamless PBX service over mobile - and do so on one SIM - we would have a market leading product on our hands. 
 
"We set about looking for a telecoms company who shared the same vision, and one that was willing to enter into a true technological and business partnership with us - and we found that in Manx Telecom."
 
In addition to offering traditional mobile connectivity for calls, texts, data, and voicemail, Mobile-X can also be configured to provide any service or functionality, which a conventional wired PBX can offer. 
 
Paul Craig, Chameleon Sales Manager at Manx Telecom said: "Chameleon's Smart SIM technology has helped Skyrack to meet one of the most difficult challenges of the FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) market, to offer a properly integrated commercial mobile solution that is easy to use, fully white-labelled and feature rich for business customers. It took 18 months of hard work to get where we are today."

Swyx' UC solution SwyxWare is now compatible with the globally recognised SIPconnect 1.1. standard, meaning that its IP-PBX software can be delivered immediately by service providers.

This means that tests for SIP trunking between manufacturers and providers are no longer necessary using the new version of SwyxWare 2013 R3.??"If a service provider already supports the standard, tests are no longer required and the UC solution can be immediately up and running," said Mathias Reidel, Director of business development at Swyx.

"Standardisation saves not only time, but also financial and human resource costs of deployment.

"In addition, compatibility with SIPconnect 1.1 paves the way for the growing demand for unified communications from the cloud and offers us a pioneering role as a leading manufacturer in this sector."

Mitel has the answered the call for contact centres to provide more customer engagement options with the launch of its seventh-generation contact centre solution.

MiContact Center 7.0 includes mobile chat and self-service features as well as outbound capabilities designed to boost sales and drive lead generation.

"Finding easier ways for businesses to engage customers via their preferred media and devices is a top priority for contact centres, with a growing focus on mobile and self-service features," explained odd Simons, Director of Product Solutions, Mitel.

"MiContact Center not only delivers on this, but also integrates communication across all channels to deliver a single customer experience. For example, organisations can post contact options on their website along with estimated wait times, empowering customers to decide how they contact the business."

Swanson Health is among several companies already planning to expand its customer contact options with the latest version of MiContact Center. A natural health retailer offering high quality vitamins, supplements and natural health products online and via direct mail, Swanson Health manages a high volume of calls, emails and live chat sessions daily.

"At Swanson Health, we count on MiContact Center to track and analyse all our calls, emails and chats. We are looking forward to the new features in MiContact Center, which provides even more options for our customers to contact us, including mobile chat. Furthermore, it provides new features to help our business run more effectively," said Patti Westland, director of call centre for Swanson Health.

In addition to more contact options, MiContact Center now enables quicker and more immersive service by equipping agents with richer customer information collected from across all media channels. Support for mobile supervisors using real-time management applications can further streamline customer service.

The new release also includes MiContact Center Outbound portfolio, a feature-rich offering that introduces new preview and predictive dialing capabilities, as well as campaign and agent scripting capabilities. With MiContact Center Outbound, businesses can boost sales, drive lead generation, and keep agents busy with outbound interactions and campaigning capabilities while facilitating first-contact resolution and business process compliance through agent scripting functionality.

"Contact centres are about providing great customer service for inbound calls and also enabling engaging outbound calls that can really add to the bottom line. MiContact Center Outbound is designed to greatly improve the outbound experience with features that can improve agent productivity for more prompt, informed customer service," said Simons.

MiContact Center is one of three flagship product lines for Mitel, along with MiVoice and MiCollab.

GVA Connect, the data centre specialist division of property agents GVA, has reported that UK take-up of data centre space amounted to 830,000 square feet (gross retail area) in calendar year 2013.
 
"This represented an 18 per cent jump in data centre space take-up over the previous year," said GVA Connect director Charles Carden, adding that the company expected take-up to remain at this level during 2014.
 
Confirming London's position as a leading international data centre hub, Carden revealed that over three quarters of the 2013 data centre take-up was within the so-called London Synchronous Locations (locations which deliver round-trip latency of under three milliseconds). The second most popular location was Manchester with the remainder of take-up spread across the UK.
 
"Not only does this research indicate a healthy increase in data centre activity, the average power requirement - at over 500kw - demonstrates that the majority of these new projects are of a significant size," added Carden.
 
"We continue to see an increase in serious enquiries from US operators for space in both UK and right across EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)," said Carden.

Unify has swooped on Channel stalwart Jon Pritchard to head up its global channel programme. As Unify's Executive VP of Worldwide Channels the former President of Comstor Worldwide will be responsible for all indirect channel activities, from SMB markets to large scale alliance relationships. According to Pritchard, Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications) has a 'tremendous opportunity' to grow its channel business.

"With a new brand, the OpenScape portfolio plus the new Project Ansible that will hit the market later this year, the time is now for Unify to take full advantage of the capabilities of its channel programme," enthused Pritchard. "I am excited at the opportunity to bring the indirect channel programme to the next level."

Dean Douglas, CEO of Unify, noted that growing revenue through complementary indirect channels is one of the vendor's top priorities.

"We need to further increase our focus on being channel-ready and providing value to our partners," he said. "Jon brings global channel expertise to Unify to help lead this charge and take advantage of opportunities in the market."

Pritchard brings over 25 years of channel expertise to Unify with a track record of driving solid growth globally. At Comstor, he was responsible for global operations of Westcon's Cisco dedicated business practice, including operational and strategic sales programmes, marketing and business development initiatives, business segmentation planning and organisational development.

Pritchard also held previous positions at Ingram Micro UK.

Not so long ago the line between dysle xia and an aversion to writing to an expected standard at school was vague, and Paul Taylor, Sales Director at Voiceflex, found himself in this grey area. However, he spells out the SIP opportunity with ease and reads the market with his eyes shut.

Taylor's school days were at a time when tests for dyslexia had not been invented. "My school reports included comments such as, 'Paul's a lively member who is well liked but needs to spend more time on written work'," he recalled. "However, being lively and likeable were assets that helped me relate to people and I eventually moved into sales at the age of 19. Two years later I joined The Birmingham General Telephone Company selling internal telephones and PBXs, learning the hard way by cold calling in the morning and attending appointments in the afternoons. Fast forward to today, and to have been involved in the creation of a company with no products, no channel and no customers, and to have helped build it from scratch is a major achievement."

Few would disagree. Between 2005 and 2011 Voiceflex doubled turnover each year, and in 2012 the company saw a 50 per cent hike in revenue with expectations of a 25 per cent rise in 2013. "We have grown from two staff in 2005 to a headcount of 20 with more plans to recruit this year," added Taylor. "Growth will continue as our addressable market is the 10 million ISDN installed circuits."

The big gun in his armoury is SIP and Voiceflex was an early proponent and adopter of this disruptive technology, selling its first commercial SIP trunk in December 2005 soon after the company was established. "In 2005 I was UK General Manager for Swyx," explained Taylor. "In April of that year Swyx SIP trunk-enabled its system and was therefore seeking a SIP service provider. I couldn't find one, and a chance conversation with the Managing Director of Frontier Systems, which provided first line support for Swyx in the UK at the time, led to it building a SIP server that worked. I joined Frontier Systems in September 2005 and we set up Voiceflex."

Taylor had previously worked for Ascom when ISDN2 and ISDN 30 were launched. This experience gave him a clear insight into the potential impact of SIP on the comms landscape. "It has taken a long time for data connectivity to catch up with SIP but we are there now and reaping the rewards," he stated. "Data connectivity is key to the implementation and development of SIP trunking and hosted telephony."

Not surprisingly, the biggest trend Taylor is tracking in the market is the rise of data. "If you own the data connection you own the customer," he stated. "Not so long ago most companies had three lines of communication to the outside world - ISDN, the postman and a data connection. Now, telephone phone calls are diminishing, the postman's bag is getting lighter due to ordering and invoicing online, and companies are getting faster speeds for less money and better SLAs. Today, if you are not connected you can't do business."

Taylor noted that there are three primary triggers that prompt organisations to consider SIP - moving office, replacing the telephony application or replacing the data connection. "We are still in a recession and companies are still holding onto their cash and sweating every asset possible," added Taylor. "But as we come out of recession these companies will look to invest in technology to either secure their market position or increase market share."

Resellers are well positioned to help these companies make their technology investments, and Voiceflex is focused 100 per cent on enabling its partners. "We need to get closer to our channel partners this year," added Taylor. "We will continue to develop products to assist in the prime objective of selling more SIP trunks and hosted telephony - some chargeable and some free of charge. And as SIP becomes mainstream we will continue to develop our platform and service offering to make the whole experience of engaging with Voiceflex easy."

Resellers are also attracted to Voiceflex' engineering pedigree. The company employs 15 staff in support, provision and engineering, but despite this watertight pool of expertise there remains a bugbear that persists to this day. It's an issue that Taylor aims to address. "Our biggest pain point is market education," he said. "Not all SIP service providers are the same. We have different platforms with different features and different fraud provision. The sales process used to be sell yourself, sell your company and sell the product. Now, sales people should be selling the SIP provider and the ISP which are integral to the sales process. When sold correctly, this approach can turn a 50/50 sale into the high nineties."•

Red Box Recorders has notched up 20-plus per cent annual growth over the past five years and counts itself as one of the most established and fastest growing voice and data recording companies in the business, according to CEO Lee Jones.

Comms historians can trace Red Box Recorders' roots back to 1988 when an organisation called Origin Data Realisation was launched as an outsourced software development business. The company was responsible for developing the frame-based recording engine that powered Racal Recorders' flagship voice recorder. Red Box Recorders itself was founded in 2000 by Iain Worthington to build and market Origin Data's already successful range of voice recorders and software, which had previously been sold under license by some of the leading voice recording vendors of the 1990s.

These days, Red Box employs more than 80 people worldwide and boasts an annual turnover of over £11 million. Headquartered in Nottingham the company has regional offices that include London, New York, Singapore and Dubai along with a worldwide reseller network of more than 300 partners. "Our primary partners cover all key technologies in the marketplace and our mission is to build on these successes while still looking after the partners that put the company onto the map," commented Jones.

Early last year the firm undertook a management buyout which was backed by a £14 million investment from ISIS Equity Partners with Cavendish Corporate Finance advising on the deal. "The MBO was designed to facilitate the continued development of the business, which has achieved annual growth of more than 20 per cent for the past five years," noted Jones. "This includes taking advantage of new business opportunities within overseas markets, in particular North America and Asia Pacific, and extending Red Box's global workforce by almost 50 per cent. There is no doubt that the business has come a long way and is now a highly credible choice in the market, and a valued partner for an increasing number of financial sector organisations that are able to benefit from our smart, scalable and forward thinking technology."

The banking and finance sectors are a key focus over the mid-term and contact centres in this sector will play an increasingly important role, believes Jones, as good agent training is vital to ensure the best possible service and to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction sought by financial firms. "We are continuing to develop new applications with more features to address all of these requirements," added Jones. "We will continue to work within the sectors that can most benefit from our solutions - organisations within the contact centre, financial services, healthcare, government and emergency services sectors."

A key component of Red Box' product kit bag is its Quantify Recording Suite, an intuitive voice and data recording software solution designed for companies and organisations of all sizes. It can be tailored to meet precise customer requirements and incorporates a range of functionality including quality management, PCI compliance, call management and billing, event reconstruction and audio analytics.

Compliance is a key driver as financial sector customers face more regulations meaning that robust record keeping and storage solutions are increasingly vital. "In the US the ability to address Dodd Frank requirements is a main focus, and companies are able to benefit from Red Box's functionality which includes a number of features such as event reconstruction and the ability to archive information safely and efficiently," stated Jones.

The advance in technologies for cloud and hosted environments are driving opportunities for hosted recording to be delivered as software as a service. "Our flexible architecture and smart approach to recording communications lends itself well for supporting multi-tenant capabilities, and enhanced reporting enables the pay-as-you-go model for managed services," added Jones. "Customer choice remains firmly at the heart of everything we do, whether opex, capex, on-premise or hosted, we deliver our solutions to fit their demand."

In a fast moving industry characterised by advances in technology , methods of communication will continue to evolve and become more accepted across markets. New tools for the interrogation of data and delivery of business benefits will be a key focus, observed Jones. "Red Box Recorders solutions solve often technical and complex business challenges in a simple and effective way," claims Jones. "This helps ensure that organisations within the contact centre, financial services, healthcare, government and emergency services sectors are not only fully compliant, but also become more competitive, productive and efficient.

"Our smart and scalable technology is backed by an established global infrastructure, and our software solution enables the capture, authentication, analysis and evaluation of multi-media communications from a wide range of data sources including fixed line and mobile calls, radio, screen, SMS and instant messaging." •