Comms Dealer

Union Street Technologies is hosting a customer roadshow on 20th March at Vinopolis, London's wine tasting venue located in Bankside near London Bridge.

The Union Street team plans to provide guests with demonstrations on some of the latest features in the aBILLity billing platform which recently won the 'Best Software Solution' category of the prestigious Comms National Awards for an unprecedented third year in a row.

Content for the roadshows will include details on the latest developments of aBILLity including recent upgrades to its end user customer portal WebaBILLity Pro and enhancements to the sales order processing functionality with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. There will also be an introduction to aBILLity's 'Contract Management Module', providing a wide range of functionality for managing tariffs, hardware assets and numerous other elements of a telecoms contract.

Following the demonstrations, clients will be treated to a wine tasting experience and tour of Vinopolis before a networking drink with the Union Street team.

Union Street's Managing Director Tony Cook commented: "The purpose of our Roadshow is to demonstrate how the innovative new functionality that's been added to aBILLity can be used to increase revenues, boost profitability and give our customers a competitive edge in the market. At the same time we're also looking forward to the opportunity to network with our customers and discuss ways in which we can help their businesses in a relaxed and friendly environment."

Juniper Networks has moved Gerard Allison up to vice president, partners for EMEA. He will be responsible for the structure, management and performance of Juniper Networks' channel partner and commercial business across the EMEA region, reporting to Sean Dolan, senior vice president, EMEA, Juniper Networks.

Gerard Allison was previously in a senior management role at the company as vice president of enterprise and area vice president, EMEA UK and Ireland. The partner job for EMEA was previously held by David Helfer, who was announced as Juniper Networks' vice president for worldwide channels and commercial in Q413.

"Juniper's Partner Advantage program continues to provide our partners with the tools they need to succeed. In 2014, with Juniper sales and partners working as one team, we will ensure our go-to-market structure remains strong and effective, particularly for our continued push into the security, mobility and data centre markets. Gerard is leading this evolution, across the service provider and enterprise sectors in EMEA. He is a proven, trusted leader for the team," says Sean Dolan.

Citrix has awarded Softcat the Citrix Service Provider (CSP) Partner Programme Distributor Award for its excellence in the overall desktop as a service (DaaS) approach.

According to Citrix, in 2013 Softcat delivered 100% on-time reporting and reporting accuracy and managed to sign a significant number of the new partners to the CSP programme. The company has been also recognised for expansion of its CSP partners' Citrix product selections, it says.

"We're delighted to receive this award, which demonstrates our commitment and expertise in driving growth in the Cloud and solutions for service providers. Softcat's Partner Services team has worked exceptionally hard to get us to this point, where, after 10 years of providing this particular service to this industry, we now deal with 50% of the UK's service provider hosting market," says Sam Routledge, who accepted the award on behalf of Softcat.

The award was presented at the Citrix Summit in Orlando, Florida, this month.

PC shipments in EMEA remained constrained in the fourth quarter of 2013 (4Q13) as consumer demand continued to be weak while commercial demand improved, says IDC.

Overall PC shipments declined by 6.4% compared to the same quarter last year. Total shipments have now declined for six consecutive quarters in the region but the pace of contraction slowed during the second half of 2013. The fourth quarter results bring total EMEA PC sales for the full year 2013 to 88.3 million units, and to a decline of 15.7% compared with 2012. Portable PC shipments contracted the most in 2013, declining by 19.0%, while desktops declined by 9.6%.

"As expected, the PC market contracted across EMEA in 4Q13. The holiday season offers were unable to inspire an upturn in consumer spending, which continued to concentrate on tablets. As a result, notebook sales continued to display negative trends in the last quarter of the year, with portable PC shipments in EMEA reaching a decline of 9% in 4Q13," said Chrystelle Labesque, Research Manager, IDC EMEA Personal Computing. "On the other hand, enterprises have been maximizing their budgets before year end, resulting in stabilization on the desktop PC market. Desktop PC shipments in EMEA posted a slight decline of 1.7% while in Western Europe there was a small rebound with growth of 2%."

In Western Europe, commercial shipments increased 1.9%, while consumer sell in declined 8.3%, leading to a regional overall decline of 3.5%. The end of Windows XP support and some aging of the PC installed base fueled enterprise renewals. For the third consecutive quarter in Western Europe, commercial PC shipments were larger than consumer shipments, following a disappointing Christmas season. However, a healthier inventory situation at the end of 3Q did stimulate replenishments in retail in the run up to Christmas and until end of December.

"For 4Q13, the overall PC market in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) recorded a year on year decline of 10%, which is in line with expectations," said Stefania Lorenz, associate VP, IDC CEMA Systems. "As predicted, the market remained constrained during the quarter, with 2013 proving to be one of the worst on record for PC sales in CEE and MEA in both the consumer and commercial arenas. Altogether, shipments plummeted by more than 17% year on year. The reasons are many: economic slowdown, political unrest, the build-up of inventory throughout the year, and the consumer switch from PCs to tablets. The good news is that 2014 should see some turnaround. Renewals in the commercial space along with an expected increase in consumer confidence should give demand a boost over the next twelve months."

"In 4Q13 the CEE region reported an annual decline of just over 7%, with the portable PC market contracting by nearly 9% and the desktop by just over 4%. Thanks to some major deals in large markets such as Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic, the commercial space reported a less drastic decline," said Nikolina Jurisic, Product Manager, IDC CEMA Systems."

The PC market in 2013 was marked by ongoing evolution of the PC form factors with an acceleration towards mobility, social networking and cloud business. "Better results in the commercial desktop PC shipments and continued decline in the consumer space, particularly in portable PCs, confirm the trend we have been observing for several quarters that while PCs remain very relevant in the business area, consumers increasingly favour new mobile technologies, opting for tablets and smartphones as their preferred computing devices and extending the life cycle of their PCs," said Maciej Gornicki, Senior Research Analyst, IDC EMEA Personal Computing.

HP maintained its leadership in EMEA in line with slow market conditions. The vendor leveraged from stronger commercial demand and posted a good performance in Western Europe, gaining market share in that region. Key drivers to HP's success were innovation with the rollout of an extended product portfolio and a strong focus on strategy execution, says IDC.

Lenovo consolidated its 2nd position in the overall EMEA PC ranking, recording another strong quarter of growth in EMEA. The vendor gained shares across all subregions. Consistent strategy and execution combined with new product introductions were key to Lenovo's success and expansion across EMEA.

Acer ranked in 3rd place, outperforming the market in the portable PC area and gaining market shares in Western Europe. The introduction of Acer Chromebook was successful. Overall the performance was supported by seasonal retail replenishment and solid progress in commercial strategy execution.

Dell achieved another good quarter, gaining slightly in market share and ranked 4th in the EMEA PC market. Product innovation and partnerships with cloud and other software companies are some of the elements of the new end-user computing strategy that had great resonance for the company during the quarter.

Asus kept its fifth place thanks to growth in notebook shipments and gained market share in the region. The vendor launched a lot of new products in the PC and tablets area that were positively received by the market.

Outside the top 5 vendors, Toshiba gained sixth place with some product line refreshes but facing challenging consumer demand. Apple ranked seventh, supported by new product launches and benefiting from favorable YoY comparison. Sony declined by 22.8% in EMEA impacted by declining consumer PC spending. Fujitsu ranked 9th with good results in the desktop space. Samsung closed the top 10 ranking in EMEA, with strong focus on Chromebook.

CipherCloud, cloud information protection specialist, has snared CloudUp Networks, a privately held provider of SaaS application security.

According to CipherCloud, the integration of CloudUp Networks will broaden its capabilities to protect sensitive organisational information. Additionally, the new technology will provide integrated visibility capabilities into CipherCloud's platform to help customers detect data anomalies, it says.

"We continue to raise the bar for cloud information protection. The consumption of multiple cloud applications into the enterprise requires security to be in lock step with visibility. This acquisition reflects our strategy of growing our business with the tools our customers need to go to the cloud," said Pravin Kothari, founder and CEO of CipherCloud.

The Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report finds that not only is there a worldwide shortage of nearly a million skilled security professionals, but threats designed to take advantage of users' trust have reached startling levels. Overall vulnerabilities and threats are at their most numerous since 2000.

As a consequence, organisations worldwide are facing a struggle in their ability to address security gaps, monitor and secure networks.

The Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report highlights current security concerns, such as shifts in malware, trends in vulnerabilities, and the rising ferocity of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In addition it provides tips and guidance to keep enterprise technology environments more secure.

• An increased sophistication and proliferation of the threat landscape - simple attacks causing containable damage have given way to organised, well-funded and targeted attacks which are difficult to detect and capable of causing major disruption
• An increasing complexity of threats and solutions - due to rapid growth in intelligent mobile device adoption and cloud computing providing a greater attack surface than ever before
• Cybercriminals have learned that harnessing the power of Internet infrastructure yields far more benefits than simply gaining access to individual computers or devices - by targeting Internet infrastructure, attackers undermine trust in everything connected to or enabled by it.

Dean Douglas, the former CEO of Westcon Group, has begun his tenure as CEO of Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications) and he wasted no time in setting out his vision for the company based on evangelising the pros of working in a 'new way'.

"We're in a dynamically changing market, driven largely by trends around the rise of the anywhere worker, bring your own device (BYOD), and the role of millennials in the workforce," Douglas said.

"Users are demanding intuitive apps, instant gratification from technology, and the ability to work from anywhere with seamless collaboration across multiple devices.

"These big trends have created an environment where today's businesses are faced with the challenges, and opportunities, of meeting the demand for the new way to work. 

"At Unify, we see these issues moving to the top of the priority list for c-level executives as they seek improved productivity, manage for top talent and drive for competitive differentiation."

"I'm determined to strengthen Unify's position in technology and communications, where we already enjoy the benefits of great customers, our Siemens heritage, and our OpenScape platform.

"I also plan to make Unify a leader among communications software companies in the collaboration space with Project Ansible."
 

A new study by market analysts Plimsoll indicates that confidence is sweeping back into the UK telecommunication services industry.

Latest figures show that, despite only a third of firms increasing sales and one in three improving profits, opportunity waits for those that know where to look.

Leading this change are a group of 65 firms who are delivering growth rates of up to 8% with their market share also jumping from 5% to 6 % in just two years.

Plimsoll's findings concluded that 65 firms have seen their sales increase by over 8%. These 65 firms now sell on average £15 million per year up from £10 million two years ago. And of the 888 firms analysed, the average sales increase is only 2.7%. However, only 447 companies have increased their sales.

David Pattison, Plimsoll's senior analyst, said: "It is essential that businesses look for areas of growth in the market and see how they can keep up with the leaders.

"These 65trail-blazing firms are heading-up the new direction of the market and the other companies will take note of those 65 companies. With salaries up and gross margins down it's clear as costs grow then sales need to increase to pay for it."

Consolidation, new technologies, changing business models and skills shortages will create major challenges for established supply networks, according to ICT market researcher IT Europa in its just-launched 'Top 10 IT Europa European Channel Predictions for 2014' report.

Report highlights include:
• PCs continue to lose ground to other platforms, even in the enterprise - the impact of new form factors, falling prices and squeezed margins will continue to pile pressure on traditional resellers.

• Software and ISVs gain influence over platforms - increasingly it will be software that dictates the choice of technologies with more and more of it available as-a-service.

• Vendors seek new ways to gain customer influence, starting to use Big Data analysis tools - increasing use of business intelligence and marketing automation will move from enterprise sector into SME potentially threatening traditional lines of channel communications .

• Distributor consolidation and product area diversification continues, matched by emergence of new specialist players - continuing pressures on margin and the impact of the Cloud will further drive a race to scale, to expand coverage, grab niche players and reduce competition.

• Questions on how channels charge for knowledge and advice find few answers - further cloud penetration of the SME sector and the continued growth in Hybrid IT will increase the demand for integration skills but with increasing commoditisation of product and the continued growth in on-line ordering how will it be charged for?

• New types of server and server supply models emerge - growth in the supply of specialist bespoke servers, particularly for datacentre applications will cause problems for channels as they become marginalised.

• Security and mobility stay favourite areas for start-ups; expect plenty of issues and scares - growth and increasing penetration of mobile technologies is set to continue but the need to secure mixed networked environments will perhaps spur even greater growth.

• Machine-to-machine, particularly wearables, exhibit rapid growth but channel impact is limited - new technologies and applications will abound but few will fit easily with traditional channels and new routes to market will emerge.

• Enterprise apps and their marketplaces abound, but with uncertain quality - increasing mobile penetration will drive demand for apps to link corporate data but quality, security, licensing, management, payment systems and support will become issues.

• Demand for skills in the channel creates shortages, provoking more M&A activity across frontiers - investment in training has been hard hit during the recent recession, as growth returns it will highlight shortages in skills in such areas as application development, networking and integration.

"The pace of technological advance and changing supply and business models are combining to create a perfect storm of challenges for traditional routes to market," commented Alan Norman, Managing Director of IT Europa. "Further casualties, an increase in M&A activity and the emergence of new channels can all be expected in the year ahead."

Many of the issues behind some of these trends and predictions will provide the focus of discussions during some of IT Europa's forthcoming events including the European ISV Convention 2014 which takes place at the Lancaster London Hotel, on 26 March 2014.

ISVs wishing to attend the convention and vendors or service providers interested in sponsorship opportunities can find further information at: www.isvconvention.com

Channel Telecom has implemented its first 150 plus seat hosted VoIP telephony solution for a customer with a multi-site operation.

The implementation included data connectivity as well as voice.

Tim Nelson, Head of IP Voice for Channel Telecom, stated: "This is more evidence proving that the doubters who said hosted telephony wouldn't have appeal above the 20 extension market were wrong. We have now implemented multiple 100-plus seat hosted solutions, but this is the biggest to date.

"Customers are now aware of the technology and are asking about it first, and more dealers are promoting it. The general move to cloud services and the reliability of Ethernet connectivity is convincing everyone that hosted voice is a mature technology that can be deployed without risk. In fact there are positive business continuity benefits.

"Even dyed-in-the-wool PBX resellers are waking up to the fact that recurring revenue is better than a one off tin sale.

"Trends such as fixed-mobile convergence and UC collaboration are naturally better delivered via a cloud based solution. Customers now see the benefits of presence information across a multisite network and they want that technology.

"In fact customers are now running ahead of us and asking questions like, 'can we have a solution that automatically logs outgoing calls to our CRM system?'.

The typical customer wants more sophistication than a year ago. Hosted solutions are infinitely scalable, both up and down. They are simple to upgrade and they generate a valuable recurring revenue stream for our partners. The trend is irresistible."