Comms Dealer

Congrats to David Carroll, Customer Helpdesk and Technical Support Manager for Integra ICT, who bagged the Technical Person of the Year award at Unify UK's annual partner conference last month. More than 70 candidates were nominated for this award.

Carroll has worked in the telecoms and ICT industries for over 14 years and has much experience in legacy PBX installations as well as IP telephony.

He is-SOCA accredited in a number of Unify products including OpenScape Business, an IP based unified communication solution developed specifically for mid market organisations and HiPath 3000, a convergence communications platform for SMEs.

Integra ICT has recently been recognised as an important Go Forward channel partner by Unify to promote its Unified Communications portfolio to mid-market organisations and has already secured several new business opportunities, including Ramsay Rivers Hospital, one of the leading private hospitals in the UK.

Carroll said: "This award reflects the technical capabilities of our technical team and their knowledge of UC platforms. Many companies and looking to migrate legacy telecoms infrastructures to IP telephony and we look forward to continued collaboration with Unify to facilitate this."

Industry analyst MZA has been busy assessing the state of the global PBX/IP PBX market, and in its Q3 2013 report (July to September) MZA revealed that the market for PBX extensions and call control licenses (excluding Micro PBX products) fell by 7% year-on-year], although marginal sequential growth (2%) was witnessed when compared with Q2 2013.

On a year over year basis the <100 market suffered a 9% year-on-year decline, while the >100 market witnessed a 6% year-on-year decline, found the report.

For the second successive quarter the greatest influence on the global PBX market came from the largest regional market Asia Pacific which suffered a 10% year-on-year decline in Q3 2013.

The markets in North America, Latin America and Eastern Europe suffered significant declines year-on-year, impacting further on the global market downturn.

The Western European market saw some positive signs of recovery with year-on-year growth in the enterprise segment, however a 10% fall in the <100 segment brought the Western European market as a whole down by 4% year-on-year. Only the Middle East and African market witnessed growth, up 3% year-on-year, according to MZA.

"In the competitive environment, Cisco returned to the position of top global vendor PBX market in Q3 2013, just ahead of Avaya who led in Q2 2013 with both vendors holding 13% market shares," explained co-report author Will Parsons.

Against Q3 2012, Avaya gained one percentage point in global share driven by strong growth in the Asia Pacific and Eastern European SME markets.

Aided by share gains in both the Western European and Middle East and African markets, NEC returned to third position in the global market with an 11% market share, noted Parsons.

NEC supplanted Panasonic to lead the <100 extensions/licenses market (excluding Micro PBX products) with a 15% share, the same share as held in Q3 2012.

Co-report author Tim Gelardi added: "Cisco remained the clear market leader in the >100 extensions market with a 23% share, down three percentage points year-on-year; while Avaya strengthened in second position with a 14% share, up one percentage point year-on-year."

The global IP extensions market was flat year-on-year in Q3 2013. The lack of growth was came from a volume decline in the North American market where IP extensions account for the majority of extensions to the desktop.

North America witnessed an IP extension penetration rate of 70% into total extensions in Q3 2013, higher than the global IP penetration rate of 46%.

Cisco continued to lead the global IP Extensions market with a 25% market share, followed by Avaya who had an 18% market share.

Hants-based Peach Telecom has bolstered its growth ambitions with two key appointments to the management board.

Andy Miles joins as Development Director and will lead the company's new business programme and IT sales strategy. Meanwhile, new Finance Director Julian Handley Potts will be responsible for the company's growing commercial portfolio and investments.

Darren Scott-Healey, MD, said: "As a recent winner of the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 for the second year running, we have a proven track record of consistent growth. To sustain the company's performance and augment the business further across all products, the talents and experience of both new directors will strengthen the management board and provide a considerable boost to the commercial operation of Peach Telecom."

Miles joins Peach Telecom after more than six years at BT, leading high priority transformation programmes, qualified market opportunities and prioritised investments. He left BT Wholesale as General Manager.

Handley Potts has been a financial advisor to Peach Telecom for the last five years and brings business management and strategy skills.

He is a Chartered Accountant and for the past 15 years has been serving as non-executive Finance Director to a range of SMEs principally in the IT and telecoms industries.

In addition to winning the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 for the second year running, the company was also listed for the third year running in the 2013 Sunday Times Tech Track league table which ranks Britain's 100 private technology companies with the fastest-growing sales over the latest three years.

Pictured left-right: Andy Miles and Julian Handley Potts

So the stunning news about UK unemployment provided an apt close to 2013. Within just three months of Mark Carney's forward guidance linking bank rate rises to unemployment, the gap to his trigger point has halved as unemployment fell from 7.8% to 7.4% over the last quarter, writes Clive Jefferys, JMA Network.

With unemployment at its lowest point since 2009, this news was no surprise to the recruitment industry and I get the satisfaction again of saying, I told you so!

However, most employment gains have been at the lower end of the market, and in white collar professions there has been little change. The shortage of skilled workers in IT, manufacturing and of course telecoms, is a direct result of the lack of training and investment made in people over the long years of the recession.

It's no accident that apprenticeship schemes have gained massively in popularity with employers over the last 12 months - good news for young people and those seeking retraining.

However, the skills gap is widening in the middle of most businesses. New recruits are being brought in for basic training and senior staffers are on hand to steward the business and impart some knowledge to the lower echelons. However the greatest number of unfilled telecoms vacancies are in the £25,000-£35,000 salary range, so where are the experienced people you need for despatch, billings, support, or the sales team?

Results from recruitment advertising have hit a 25 year low. 95% of applications seem to come from people so ill qualified for the role, that we can only suppose they are using failed job applications to justify their benefits claim.

So how are people solving their employment needs? I cannot answer this without being self-serving. The answer is simply to use recruitment agencies, as only we can draw the depth and breadth of candidates or vacancies to balance the equation.

It's precisely because we recruit for a multitude of companies that job seekers are drawn to us, and their first call usually produce several good job options.

Equally, our clients benefit from the candidates drawn to other employers' jobs, and then our expertise to spot a good cross match makes its impact. Sounds simple and it is, you just need to put in a hundred man hours in the middle to secure each placement!

Recruitment isn't complicated, unless you make it so!

Swift Managed Services has advanced its channel growth strategy with the appointment of Jonathan Sheridan as Channel Director.

Swift works with partners across the IT and telecoms sectors and Sheridan is central to the company's plan to boost partner numbers this year.

He brings much experience within the reseller community and aims to form white labelled Managed Services partnerships that offer Microsoft Lync design and implementation, IT support and data storage and back-up expertise.

Sheridan said: "I am excited to be joining the team at Swift, their growth over the last few years means that now the reseller channel can have a partnership with us to offer a comprehensive IT service to their existing telephony customers.

"This in turn gives them the capability of capturing more of their spend and adding recurring revenues to their businesses."

Mobile airtime provider Daisy Distribution in partnership with BlackBerry is to host an interactive event to promote the new evolution of BlackBerry products and solutions for its Partners next month.??

The 'Evolving Solutions' event is to be held at Whittlebury Hall & Spa on 23rd January 2014, providing an opportunity for Partners to learn about, discuss and engage with the evolving solutions and services offered by Daisy Distribution and BlackBerry and to develop the new revenue stream opportunities that can add real value to Partners' businesses.
 
Mike Gibson, BlackBerry Senior Director, Enterprise UK and Ireland, will be the keynote speaker, delivering a BlackBerry business update as well as sharing BlackBerry's vision of collaborative relationships and the future of evolving end-to-end solutions.
 
A series of interactive workshops will also run for attendees, presenting content including  customer engagement, enterprise mobility management, cloud services, technical end-to-end support and devices. Workshops will not only present the new solutions available in 2014, but they will also teach the skills needed to build long-term profitable relationships with customers.
 
Mike Gibson, BlackBerry Senior Director, Enterprise UK and Ireland, said: "This visionary event, hosted in partnership with Daisy Distribution, will provide the perfect opportunity to introduce Partners to the new and exciting BlackBerry products which will be launched in 2014.
 
"We are happy to have joined forces with an experienced provider to the mobile distribution channel for the event and hope that all those who attend benefit from the collaboration." 
 
Julien Parven, Marketing Director of Daisy Distribution said: "We hope that everyone who attends gains something worthwhile from it and can use it to develop additional revenues and margins.
 
"This is an exciting time for Daisy Distribution and we want to share our experiences with our partners. The event will provide the opportunity to network with other partners as well as learning skills needed to improve productivity."

IT Europa has released more details of the 7th Annual European ISV Convention which will be staged at the Lancaster London Hotel on 26 March 2014.

It also revealed the identity of some of the companies that have already signed up to support the event as sponsors.

Under the overall umbrella of Innovation, Intelligence and Integration - driving better business outcomes, the conference will feature sessions on key issues set to drive application development in Europe over the coming year.

Many of the leading platform technology companies and distributors who are driving application development in the European market have already signed up to sponsor and participate in the convention.

These include: IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Ingram Micro, Jaspersoft, SafeNet, and Avnet. ISVWorld, the world's most comprehensive database of software products and vendors, has also signed up to support the convention as a partner.

"Over the years the European ISV Convention has become established as the main forum at which leading European ISVs can meet at director-level and discuss key issues amongst their peers and with leading vendors, platform technology providers and distributors," commented Alan Norman, Managing Director of IT Europa.

"Software development is critical to the success of Europe. The challenge for Europe's software industry is to ensure that it harnesses the power of new technologies and innovation in such areas as data analysis and integration to deliver better value for the businesses it serves."

Sennheiser Communications has launched a series of promotions intended to help maximise sales for its reseller partners.

These promotions are available until 31 March and include offers of free headsets, as well as other accessories such as handset lifters and cabling when purchasing headsets.

Resellers purchasing any multi-award winning DW series wireless handset will qualify for a free Handset Lifter (HSL 10) or an Electronic Hook Switch cable.

There is also a promotion of a free standard bottom cable with any Sennheiser wired headset. Also, for every ten Sennheiser wired headsets purchased a free Culture series SC 30 USB headset sample is offered for unified communication applications.

The Culture series free sample can be used to make conference calls via the soft phone app on a PC and is optimised for integration with Microsoft Lync.

Coms plc has launched of a new subsidiary, Coms Media Ltd, following the acquisition of the media, design and animation specialist companies Clicks Media Studios
and Darkside Animations.

The move strengthens Coms' abilities to produce new content in its established markets of cloud based solutions, hosted telephony, broadband and mobile, business infrastructure, smart buildings and IT support services.

And the fir is to make its in-house creative capability available for customers. Among the services that can offered are CGi (Computer Generated imagery), augmented reality (AR), branding, video production, media services, radio and TV advertising expertise, digital applications, merchandise implementation and presentation production.

Dave Breith, CEO of Coms, commented: "The establishment of this subsidiary certainly offers us more dynamic, complementary services to use for clients and wider industry.

"With a strong brand already in place, this guarantees our growing marketing team access to the very skills in order to produce the first class content that has proven to differentiate many market sectors, including IT and telecoms."

Staff from Nimans showed their festive spirit by getting on the ball and taking part in a charity Santa dash around the home of Manchester United FC.

Five members of the Nimans 'team', including Sue Niman, the wife of Chairman Julian, took part in a 2km run outside Old Trafford to raise hundreds of pounds for a local school. Nimans doubled their fundraising exploits.

Sue Niman, Scott Davies, Chris Widocks and Rebecca Wilson (pictured) along with Callum Brookes were dressed for success.