Comms Dealer

Europe's online markets are showing growth over last year, but the UK is slipping. Computop, a payment service provider, has analysed payment patterns across its global payments network in Europe for the period 1 November 2013 up to 10 December 2013 compared to the same period in 2012.

The findings show a healthy expansion in the main Eurozone markets, but a slowdown in overall UK online sales in the run-up to Christmas 2013. Most significantly, for the period analysed, online merchants in Europe experienced a growth in turnover of 35% compared to 2012 - the comparative figure for growth in 2012 over 2011 only showed a growth of 16% - whilst the UK showed a decrease of 23%, but at the same time basket values grew by 22%.

The research, drawn from Computop's Paygate payments network, which handles 91 million transactions per annum, worth over $8bn, also showed that within these figures some retail sectors where doing better than others. For example, the biggest winners in growth were merchants in the consumer electronics market, which showed 18% more orders and average basket values that increased by 89%. However, the fashion industry was far less successful, with the exception of the large brands which continue to grow sales, and showed an overall decrease in turnover by 8 percent compared to 2012.

Speaking about the findings, Ralf Gladis, CEO of Computop, said; "These figures are good news for online retailers in Europe, even in the UK, the increase in basket values possibly means that a surge in last minute Christmas shopping can be expected as many retailers are predicting. The research also seems to suggest that the mood amongst consumers in Europe seems much more positive than in 2012, and reflects the more positive economic figures coming out of Europe this year. However, even in the weaker European economies, online sales for this Christmas are showing signs of growth over 2012. The interesting question will be to see whether the increasing online turnover in Europe this year is real growth or only a shift from mortar stores to buying online."

Q3 factory revenue for EMEA security appliances was $624.9m, up 6.6% over the same quarter a year ago, says IDC. Shipments declined by 1.8% year on year, with 171,158 units shipped. For 1Q-3Q 2013, security appliance market factory revenue totalled about $1.8bn, representing a 4.2% increase over 1Q-3Q 2012.

Cisco remained the top overall security appliance vendor with 18.7% market revenue share for 3Q13 and 19.5% for the first three quarters of 2013. In 3Q13 the gap between Cisco and Check Point, its closest rival, shrank to 0.7 percentage points.

Unified Threat Management (UTM) remained the largest and fastest growing security appliance segment. In 3Q13, UTM appliances increased by 37.7% year on year, representing 45.3% of total market revenue.
"The security appliance market in Europe, Middle East and Africa keeps on showing really good results quarter after quarter," said Romain Fouchereau, Security Appliance program manager at IDC. "The strong demand for security products is driven by the need to secure cloud access and deployments, the increasingly large demand for mobility, and the requirements from organizations for multipurpose and scalable solutions."

The Western European market showed similar trends towards security appliances, with $480.2m revenue in 3Q13, representing 7.9% growth over the same quarter in 2012. Total revenue generated in the first three quarters of 2013 reached $1.42bn, translating to yearly growth of 4.0% over the same period last year.

"In Western Europe, the two security segments driving the total market in 3Q13 were unified threat management (including next generation firewalls) and Web security appliances," said Fouchereau. "Unified solutions are the preferred appliance medium for delivering network security, regardless of the size of the organization. Easy deployment, central management, lower TCO, and scalability are the decisive factors in that success."

The security appliance market in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) showed moderate 2.4% year on year growth in 3Q13 reaching $144.7 million in factory revenue. CEMA factory revenue for the first three quarters of 2013 totalled $435.2 million and rose by 5.0% compared to 1Q-3Q 2012.

"In 2013 the share of firewall and UTM appliances continued to grow and reached 72.2% of the total revenue share, as CEMA markets are not yet saturated with essential security solutions," said Oleg Sidorkin, senior research analyst at IDC. "Moreover, demand for single-function IDP and VPN appliances is shifting towards multifunction Firewall/IDP and UTM appliances."

Tim Campbell MBE was guest speaker at the Institute of Telecoms Professionals Annual Awards night which recognised the rising stars in the telecoms industry.

Campbell was Lord Sugar's first hired 'apprentice' and is currently Mayor of London Boris Johnson's advisor for Apprentices. He gained his MBE for Enterprise Culture and also founded the Bright Ideas Trust to support young business people.

"The ITP Awards Dinner showed us some shining examples of what can be achieved with hard work, dedication, and the right environment. I met some inspiring young people on the night and was also impressed with the level of support and recognition they receive to allow them to thrive," said Campbell.

"There is clearly a real commitment to apprentices within the industry and within the ITP, and I am sure they will go on to achieve amazing things especially with two of the most passionate women in this sector, CEO Ann Potterton and Chairman Lucy Woods, driving it forward."

Supporting companies at the Awards included Virgin Media, BT, Telent, Green Telecom and Level3.

The winners of the ITP awards 2013 were: Mentor of the Year - Dave Davis, iDirect; Higher Apprentice of the Year - James Mellor, BT; Advanced Apprentice of the Year- Kirsty Moir, BT; Intermediate Apprentice of the Year - Jekabs Dravnieks, Virgin Media; Christopher Mills Award - Christopher Akinlusi, BT.

Increasingly, network equipment is being purchased as part of a data-centre-in-a-rack or app-in-a-rack bundle rather than as separate best-of-breed solutions for servers, storage, and networking, says a researcher.

A study of data centres found that "improving application performance" is still the top driver for investing in the data centre, even as virtualisation continues. Survey respondents anticipate that over half the servers in their data centres will be virtualised by 2015.

Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2013 Data Centre and SDN Strategies:, which explores the current state of the data centre and mainly US enterprises' plans to evolve the data centre over the next two years.

"Physical networks continue to be the foundation for the high-performance connectivity that today's virtualised applications demand, and our latest data centre study bears this out, confirming that investment in data centre technologies remains robust as businesses seek to improve application performance, increase security, and reduce costs," notes Cliff Grossner, directing analyst for data centre and cloud at Infonetics Research. Speed tops the list of important criteria when selecting a fabric for the data centre, with 66% of respondents looking at support for 10GE, 40GE, and even 100GE.

"Virtualisation is unstoppable," adds Grossner. "With the average number of virtual machines per server hitting 30 by 2015, we look for virtual switches running on general purpose servers to become the new network edge."

SDN (software-defined networking) passes the "sniff" test: enterprises are seriously evaluating SDN, but most will wait to deploy it until they believe it's ready for prime time; Infonetics expects SDN to go mainstream by 2017 . When asked to name the top SDN vendors, various respondents named Avaya, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Juniper, Microsoft, Oracle and VMware - with Cisco receiving the most votes

The convergence of Ethernet and Fibre Channel (FC) networks using FCoE is going slow, with 46% of enterprises indicating they still plan to increase spending on FC technology.

Microsoft has named companies in the Cloud OS Network, a worldwide consortium of more than 25 cloud service providers delivering services built on the Microsoft Cloud Platform: Windows Server with Hyper-V, System Center and the Windows Azure Pack.

The list includes: Aruba SpA, Capgemini, Capita IT Services, CGI, CSC, Dimension Data, DorukNet, Fujitsu Finland Oy, Fujitsu Ltd., iWeb, Lenovo, NTTX, Outsourcery, OVH.com, Revera, Sogeti, TeleComputing, Tieto, T-Systems, VTC Digilink and Wortmann AG.

These organisations say they support Microsoft's Cloud OS vision of a consistent platform that spans customer datacenters, Windows Azure and service provider clouds. Service providers in the Cloud OS Network offer Microsoft-validated, cloud-based infrastructure and application solutions.

Nordic giant Tieto's set of cloud transformation services includes data security and control capabilities as well as in-country data centres. "Our customers are looking for the best delivery models for their Microsoft based solutions. Tieto can support the customers whether they have a dedicated environment, a hosted cloud solution with Tieto Productivity Cloud, or Microsoft's public cloud (Windows Azure and Microsoft Office 365) or a hybrid solution combining them. Tieto Productivity Cloud, based on the Microsoft Cloud Platform, enables full service delivery over different cloud scenarios and smooth transitions between them," says Mikko Pulkkinen, Vice President, Managed Services, Shared Services, Tieto.

Customers can select a combination of services like Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Lync, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft BizTalk, Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Dynamics CRM services to be delivered as a hybrid cloud solution, he says.

Outsourcery says it chose to join the network because of the significant advantages the Cloud OS Network provides in handling local market requirements, technical and performance improvements to services and cost savings - "with the ability to pass these benefits on to Outsourcery's partners and customers to gain significant service differentiation".

Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery says: "We have been offering cloud-based Microsoft solutions to organisations for many years now and as a world-leading pure-play CSP, we pride ourselves in our ability to further innovate our cloud services, whilst assisting businesses with integration and migration support. Being selected to join Microsoft's Cloud OS Network is an indication that we are heading in the right direction."

Andy Parker, deputy chief executive at Capita, said: "We are pleased to be working with Microsoft as one of the UK companies to offer their popular applications via private cloud. The security guaranteed by Capita Productivity Hub is crucial for many organisations in the public sector and highly regulated industries. For example, we offer a specific suite of applications to address key issues faced by the health sector."

Channel Telecom has held its end of year 'Reward and Recognition' evening for channel partners and suppliers at the prestigious Mayfair Hotel in London's West End.

The evening celebrated and rewarded those helping Channel Telecom to another year of growth and success. The Awards sponsor was Union Street Technologies, supplier of billing services to Channel Telecom.
 
Top honours for Overall Partner of the Year went to Vivo Telecommunications, based in Coventry. The award for Supplier of the Year was presented to BT Wholesale.
 
Clifford Norton, Managing Director commented: "It's great to share and celebrate our success with our channel community because their efforts make it all possible.

"We have had an exceptional year and the prospects for 2014 look even better. As ever our plans include an exciting series of partner incentives to motivate and reward the success of our channel."

Pictured: Ajit Jadeja (centre), Voice Sales Specialist for BT Wholesale accepting the Supplier of the Year Award from Matt Donaldson, Channel Manager and Clifford Norton, Managing Director of Channel Telecom.

New Zealander James Matthews has joined Westcon to drive the Virsae service management proposition as Business Development Manager. His previous experience includes stints at Telstra, NSC and Avaya.

Westcon is currently the exclusive distributor for Virsae in the UK which delivers a proactive management platform across Avaya's communications systems and applications, and will soon extend to other vendor portfolios.

Matthews said: "The Virsae solution identifies the things that directly impact and improve business performance, and is gaining significant traction among channel partners who have identified the revenue opportunities it creates and the ability to differentiate the service through white-labelling."

Ioan MacRae, General Manager UK & Ireland, Westcon Convergence, added: "The level of interest in the Virsae solution has been overwhelming as partners can see the solution fills a gap in the market and they can increase their bottom line.

"We are delighted to have James on -board and with his wealth of experience he will bring skills from a vendor, partner and end user perspective. He is the right candidate to drive the Virsae business forward."

Nimans and Unify have embarked on a training campaign to help dealers get to grips with OpenScape Business, Unify's UC solution for SMBs.

Webinars, online and face-to-face training give dealers an overview of product developments and installation techniques. Basic set-up, programming, licensing and configuration formed part of one four-hour course at Nimans' Manchester HQ.

Paul Burn, Nimans' Head of Category Sales, said: "As the official UK distributor for Unify we want all our customers to have the knowledge to maximise sales opportunities.

"Training is a key area for Unify and ourselves whether online or as part of classroom style courses. It's imperative resellers have the sales and engineering support to succeed and migrate into new areas of product innovation."

MDNX Group is to acquire the entire issued share capital of Easynet, a global provider of managed networking, hosting and cloud integration services, from LDC. The merged operations of the two businesses will operate under the Easynet brand.

The combination has been backed by Equistone Partners Europe, the mid-market private equity manager, which will hold a majority stake in the newly formed Group.

LDC has reinvested in the newly formed Group to acquire a minority stake alongside MDNX management.

The new group is focused on delivering network, cloud, applications management and hosting services to public and private sector customers.

All countries within the Easynet Group will be part of this transaction, with the exception of the business in Germany. The newly group will create a new company in Germany into which all the dedicated network assets from the former German branch of Easynet will be transferred.

Mark Thompson, Chief Executive and founder of MDNX, will also lead the new Group as Chief Executive, supported by Wayne Churchill as Chief Operating Officer and Mike Mulford as Chief Financial Officer. Former Easynet Chief Executive, Greg Clarke, will take up the role of non-Executive Chairman of the group.

Clarke said: "IT is driving huge transformation in businesses across the world, with data, cloud and applications management finding a place on the board's agenda.

"Now more than ever, these organisations need a reliable, customer-focused organisation with innovation at the heart of its business, integrated with a compelling carrier integration business model and back-office systems.

"Bringing together Easynet and MDNX has created scale in skills, knowledge and operational excellence.

"Combining forces with Easynet enables MDNX to benefit from the Easynet brand and to develop its business outside the UK, establishing a strong footprint in Europe. At the same time, Easynet benefits from the strength of MDNX in the public sector market in particular, as well as its structured back office automation, business systems and carrier integration business model."

Thompson added: "We can change the way in which global businesses experience and interact with data, information and applications. Easynet and MDNX are aligned in terms of customers, products and service strategies, so the coming together of the businesses creates a dynamic collaborative organisation. It's fantastic news for our customers."

Three charities are to share much needed funds raised by Rainbow during a Christmas telesales day. The effort raised over £2,230 for the The Brain Tumour Trust, Prostate Cancer and Save the Children.

To raise money Rainbow staff dressed up in Christmas clothes and took part in games during the day. "Even one or two key suppliers who were visiting us on the day took part by dressing up," said MD Dave Corgat.

"I was overwhelmed by the staff response and the money raised. All of the causes have a personal significance for our fantastic team at Rainbow."