Comms Dealer

Solar Communications has become ShoreTel's first EMEA partner to be presented with its Platinum Partner award.

This award is the highest level of attainment in ShoreTel's Champion Partner Programme, which rewards partners who show an outstanding commitment to selling ShoreTel's products.

The Champion Partner Programme offers infrastructure support to overseas partners that sell ShoreTel products and is divided into four tiers.

Datacentre Distribution, the dedicated distribution division of Gamma Global, has become a partner member of the Data Centre Alliance (DCA).

Datacentre Distribution says it will work alongside the DCA to encourage collaboration within the EU and amongst new, existing and growing international markets. Commenting on the partnership, Craig Newell, Business Development Manager for the company, says: "The DCA is committed to capturing the best expertise and experience from across the industry to develop standards for data centre design, construction and operation."

IT might be the wettest January on record in the UK but it's been the driest ever for Mark Riddell.

Mark, who heads up the indirect channel at mobile solutions distributor Abzorb and friend Leanne Curran have to date netted £709 for Cancer Research by abstaining from all alcoholic beverages during the first month of 2014.

"With the help of the affluent tycoons in our industry I am hoping we can get near to a £1,000 by the end of January so please give generously," said Mark who lives in Scotland and survived the traditional Burns Night celebrations by sipping sparkling mineral water as the whisky flowed around him!

You can support Mark by clicking on this link http://www.justgiving.com/teams/waterboys

Guy Miller is to helm tIPicall as MD effective February 1st.

The promotion follows a 12 month stint as Head of Hosted Services at the UK SIP carrier. Prior to joining he was founder of Liquid IT which was acquired by Elite Telecom in 2011.

Miller replaces Neil Linter who becomes Chairman of the enlarged board.

Miller said: "I am delighted to be instrumentally involved in tIPicall's future success. We doubled the size of business in 2013, we will double it again in 2014 and yet again in 2015.

"Having worked with the team at tIPicall throughout 2013, I have no doubt that we have the people and systems in place to make this happen."

Neil Linter, Chairman, said: "I have followed Guy’s career with interest for many years so I was delighted when he accepted the chance to get involved with tIPicall last year as Head of Hosted Services.

"It was always my intention to appoint someone to run the day to day operations of tIPicall as the business grew so that I could spread my focus around my other business interests.

"Guy is undoubtedly the right man for the job. He is truly driven with a passion for what he does, a successful track record and a wealth of knowledge of the market both technically and commercially.\" 

tIPicall's product portfolio includes white label SIP, hosted PBX and international numbers.

Channel Telecom treated key partners to all-expenses paid four-day skiing trip to Méribel, home of the 1992 Winter Olympics. Clifford Norton, MD, said: "We had a terrific time on the slopes with excellent snow on stunning pistes.

"We were also able to discuss our developments plans for the year ahead in a relaxed atmosphere with some of our most important partners."

Vim Vithaldas is to step down as Azzurri CEO at the end of this financial year in July for 'family reasons'.

He started as CEO in December 2011 and led the business through a phase of refinancing and repositioning. Steve Andrews, Chairman, said: "We will announce Vim's successor to take this forward during the coming months."

US-based cloud specialist 8x8 has followed up its acquisition of Voicenet Solutions late last year with the launch of 8x8 Solutions (formerly Voicenet Solutions), extending its reach into the UK and Europe.

The cloud communication and collaboration solutions provider has expanded its international footprint outside of the US and Canada to serve the global needs of its multi-national, mid-market customers and to capture the growing worldwide demand for cloud-based communications solutions.

UC market research firm Wainhouse Research says the European UCaaS market will witness 36% CAGR over the next five years.

"By taking advantage of 8x8's technological expertise and knowledge of cloud-based UC, 8x8 Solutions will be able to allay the security and reliability concerns of UK businesses and help them move their costly, out-dated traditional on-premise comms systems to cloud-based solutions with confidence," said 8x8 Solutions CEO Kevin Scott-Cowell (pictured above). 

"We look forward to working closely with our channel partners to deliver 8x8's UCaaS offerings to the UK and European markets."

The official launch of 8x8 Solutions took place at a London event for channel partners where 8x8 demonstrated its cloud business phone service, UC and contact centre services which have been widely deployed throughout North America.

Long-term 8x8 Solutions partner Barry Anns, Group MD at du Pré, welcomed the news. "8x8's proven cloud-based unified communication and collaboration services will put 8x8 Solutions and its partners in a position to deliver a service with the flexibility to match future expectations," he stated.

"Working together we will deliver cost-effective, robust cloud-based communication solutions to improve the business efficiency, productivity and the bottom line of our existing and potential customers, which opens up exciting new opportunities."

The product kit bag includes 8x8 Virtual Office, positioned as a flexible and cost-effective alternative to traditional business phone systems; and 8x8 Virtual Contact Centre, an integrated cloud-based call centre solution.

Channel focused Blizzard Telecom is introducing energy into its portfolio for new and existing resellers.

This area is not new to the company as it has been providing large-scale energy management services through sister company Blizzard Utilities for the last six years and currently manage over £100m of annual spend.

Its blue chip customer base includes Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports, Eversheds Solicitors, Electrolux and Thorn.

Mark Jones, Director at Blizzard, said: "This is something we have been planning for the last six months and have made significant investment in our Utilitytrak online quoting and contract sales tool for resellers.

"We have the backing of the UK's largest energy suppliers allowing resellers to add significant revenues to their businesses."

Kirsty McGrath, previously Eon third party manager and now heading energy channel sales for Blizzard, added: "The initial response from our existing partners has been fantastic and business is coming through. Resellers are finding that providing both gas and electricity contracts to their customers is easy and fast using our Utilitytrak software.

"Resellers can create quotes and get e-signed contracts back from their customers in minutes, and are ideally placed to succeed in this market."

Avnet's Q2 earnings beat management's guidance range and were also up 11.3% on a year-over-year basis. Revenues came in at $7.42 billion, up 10.8% from the year-ago quarter.

The year-over-year increase was primarily due to strength in the Asia region. However, the company recorded strong organic growth across its business segments, it says. EMEA sales by Avnet Technology Solutions were down around 3%, however.

On a segmental basis, revenues from Electronics Marketing (EM) grew 13.1% from the year-ago quarter to $4.15 billion and came ahead of management's guided range of $3.80 billion-$4.10 billion. The year-over-year increase was primarily boosted by high-volume fulfillment business in the Asia region. Organic growth was 11.4% year over year.

Revenues from Technology Solutions (TS) grew globally 7.9% from the year-ago quarter to $3.27bn as the US did particularly well. Segmental revenues also came ahead of management's guidance range of $2.85bn-$3.15bn. The year-over-year growth was mainly due to continued strong demand in America and Asia, it says while organic growth was 4.1% year over year.

Guidance was less-than-encouraging due to seasonality in the western regions and below-normal seasonality in the Asia region due to a possible slump in the high volume fulfillment business, it says.

The UK tech sector shifted up another gear during the fourth quarter of 2013 with strong inflows of new work driving the steepest expansion of business activity for almost a decade, according to the latest KPMG/Markit Tech Monitor UK report. As a result, the UK tech sector ended the year on a much firmer growth footing than it started, with a cyclical upswing first emerging in the spring of 2013 and picking up sharply since the autumn.

In December, the index measuring UK tech sector business activity posted above the crucial 50.0 no-change threshold for the 16th successive month - at a healthy 61.0 - which highlighted a continued strong rebound in tech growth since the soft patch reported through the summer of 2012.

Tech output growth has now accelerated to its fastest since that reported in February 2004.
Commenting on the latest Tech Monitor UK results, Tudor Aw, Head of Technology at KPMG, said: "These figures prove once more that the UK tech sector is going from strength to strength. The last quarter of 2013 saw the sector's best growth performance in almost a decade with a sharp increase in business activity, a rise in new orders and an increase in profitability despite higher costs. More importantly, the sector showed again solid rates of job creation, well above the rates in other sectors of the economy.

"UK tech companies are also more confident about the business outlook than firms in other industry sectors, with growth expectations at tech companies well above UK private sector average, underlining the impact the sector has on the country's economic performance and the important role tech companies play in the burgeoning recovery.

"Our report also shows that contrary to the popular belief that the UK lags behind the US tech sector, as trends in UK tech business activity closely match the performance of the Nasdaq. These results show that we can be very proud of our tech companies and the strength of the sector in the UK."

Looking at job creation patterns over the course of the past few years, the survey data highlights that tech companies have been on a sustained staff hiring spree since the global economy started to emerge from recession in late 2009.

In December, the index measuring UK tech sector employment was comfortably above the neutral 50.0 value (at 53.9), despite slipping to its lowest reading since August. The latest figure extends the current period of continuous jobs growth in the tech sector to just over four years. Meanwhile, the index measuring UK tech sector profitability rose to 55.3 in December, indicating the fastest pace of growth for six years (when the index hit 56.2 in December 2007).

The latest Markit Global Business Outlook Survey, which was conducted in October 2013, showed that 43.9% of UK tech companies plan to raise their staffing levels over the next 12 months, while only 7.0% forecast a drop. The resulting net balance of +36.8% is a reading unsurpassed in the four-year series history.

Strong hiring intentions for tech are accompanied by plans for increased investment spending. Around twice as many firms (27%) forecast a rise in capex as those that anticipate a decline (13%).

More report highlights
• UK tech companies report their fastest improvement in profitability for six years
• Solid rate of tech sector job creation maintained at the end of 2013
• Almost 44% of UK tech firms plan to hire more staff over year ahead, while 7% expect a fall.
• Around twice as many UK tech firms (27%) intend to increase their capex in next 12 months as those that anticipate a reduction (13%)
• East of England ranks third out of 1 regions for the concentration of tech jobs. The Silicon Fen area of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire is a major hub within this region