Comms Dealer

Incom's Corporate Sales Director Grant Counsell has completed his final Nova Great Run of the year and smashed his fundraising target for Cancer Research UK by a whopping 71% so far.

Back in early 2013, Grant set out on a physical quest to take part in eight Great Runs, from 10K to half-marathons, covering 98 kilometres across the UK. His aim was to raise vital funds to support the work of Cancer Research UK.

Grant was inspired to act after three members of his close family were diagnosed with cancer in the last few years; his father with prostate cancer, his nephew with brain cancer and his sister-in-law, who tragically passed away in April following her brave battle with both breast and liver cancer.

Grant also won Vodafone's Fittest Fundraiser 2013 competition, which saw the mobile phone company supply on-going training advice, cover the costs of his travel, accommodation and race fees and even provide a running buddy - in the form of their Social Media expert Dan Bowsher.

Grant said: "To raise £3,438 to date (rising to £5,000 once all pledges are collected) is more than I could have imagined at the start of my journey. I have received overwhelming support from my friends, family, colleagues, business associates and Vodafone throughout the biggest physical and mental challenge of my life.

"It's great to know that the money I have raised will be used to help fund research into new treatments or even potential cures, in the hope that other people affected by cancer don't have to experience the loss that my family has."

Nimans has teamed-up with Panasonic's Selected Gold Partner, Poltys to offer resellers access to a suite of call management, reporting and recording solutions, specifically designed for Panasonic systems.

Poltys provides bolt-on solutions that boost the performance of Panasonic systems. To date its product has been sold with Panasonic systems in North America and Asia/Pacific regions, and as a custom solution for Panasonic has gained a strong reputation in these regions.

Panasonic and Poltys are the main suppliers to the healthcare market in Canada.

"This new partnership further strengthens the power of Panasonic systems and gives resellers the opportunity to clinch greater levels of business by winning new customers looking for complete solutions," says Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales at Nimans.

"Poltys is a global player in the reporting and call management arena and we are looking forward to providing our Panasonic customers with more compelling ways to capture revenue opportunities and accelerate their PBX sales.

"Poltys solutions are designed to dovetail and integrate into the Panasonic system family with high end recording and reporting features, from dial out conference services to speech recognition auto attendant and appointment reminders - helping businesses perform smarter and more effectively across a range of vertical markets."

The team of industry veterans who played a large part in the success of Yes telecom have pooled their expertise to create a new company which was officially launched this month.

Zest4 boasts a number of familiar faces from the YES Telecom formula including Freddie Fazelynia CEO, Kevan Wakerley Finance Director, Mandy Fazelynia Operations Director, Rob Foster and Jon Reynolds in Channel sales and Nicola Bryan Head of Billing along with a number of additional industry experts.

Zest4 was awarded an O2 JUC (Joined Up Communications) partner licence at the end of July 2013 and an MVNO licence from Gamma entering the market with a JUC offering for the channel including Mobile, Fixed line, Data and Hosted telephony solutions for both traditional business partners and reseller partners.

"O2 are delighted to welcome Zest4 as a key strategic wholesale JUC partner. The team at Zest4 have an impressive track history in delivering world class service to partners and customers and we look forward to working with them,"
said Bernie Mcphillips - O2 Head of Wholesale Partners and Data Centre of Excellence.

Commission packages have been designed to allow partners and resellers to select their mode of operation on a per deal basis, thereby allowing partners greater control on their cash flow and the ability to transition over time to revenue share options.

Zest4 recently purchased the mobile base of Outsourcery, adding 1800 O2 customers to the base and are currently working with over 50 channel partners.

Jabra has named the former Azlan UK head Nigel Dunn as its new Managing Director UK & Ireland.

Dunn will commence his new role in December and will be based at Jabra UK and Ireland head office in Surrey, the company says. Also, in his new role he will replace Andrew Doyle who was recently promoted to a position of Senior Director, Channel Management EMEA.

Prior to Azlan UK, Dunn worked at Tech Data Europe in the consulting area. He also set up the European subsidiary of Enterprise Collaboration vendor PlaceWare and was UK Managing Director and VP Sales North EMEA at Genesys Conferencing.

"We are delighted to welcome Nigel to the Jabra UK & Ireland team. With Nigel in place as the new Managing Director for this sub-region I am confident that we have found a very dedicated and truly experienced business and people leader, who will further enhance the expertise and focus of the UK & Ireland team, in order to continue our business growth in 2014," says Joel Hamon, Jabra EMEA President.

Ericsson's Mobility Report reveals that mobile subscriptions are expected to reach 9.3 billion by 2019, and more than 60% of these - 5.6 billion - will be for smartphones. To support the smartphone user experience, WCDMA/HSPA networks are predicted to cover 90% of the world's population by 2019. Moreover, almost two-thirds (65%) of the world's population will be covered by 4G/LTE networks.

Currently, smartphones represent 25%-30% of all mobile phone subscriptions, yet they account for the majority (55%) of mobile phones sold in Q3.

Douglas Gilstrap, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy at Ericsson, says: "The rapid pace of smartphone uptake has been phenomenal and is set to continue. It took more than five years to reach the first billion smartphone subscriptions, but it will take less than two to hit the 2 billion mark. Between now and 2019, smartphone subscriptions will triple.

"Interestingly, this trend will be driven by uptake in China and other emerging markets as lower-priced smartphone models become available."

Smartphone traffic will grow by 10 times between 2013 and 2019, reaching 10 exabytes. Video is growing 55 percent annually, and will represent more than 50% of the mobile data traffic, while social networking and web services will account for around 10 percent each in 2019.

This edition of Ericsson Mobility Report includes further analysis of app coverage - a new approach to evaluating network performance and user experience - with particular focus on indoor and city environments. Radio signals attenuate rapidly as they go through buildings and the high concentration of users, building material and height all pose additional challenges. Having good mobile coverage is an important aspect of life for many; it is now ranked among the top five satisfaction factors of life in a city. As the majority of mobile traffic originates from cities, Ericsson compares three different strategies to provide indoor coverage using simulation software to predict the extent of app coverage in high-rise buildings in this issue.

To accompany the Mobility Report, Ericsson has created the Traffic Exploration Tool, for creating customized graphs and tables using data from the report. The information can be filtered by region, subscription, technology, traffic and device type.

French technology consultancy Capgemini kept its full-year sales and profitability goals on Thursday as revenue returned to positive growth in the third-quarter amid improving demand in Europe, notably in its core French market.

Capgemini reported a 1.6% rise in like-for-like sales to €2.45bn, an improvement from a 0.4% decline in the second quarter.

"This year, we have reported steady improvement in our performance, quarter after quarter, a trend that should continue in the fourth quarter," Chief Executive Paul Hermelin said in a statement. Outsourcing services returned to growth in the third quarter, while Asia and Latin America posted 14.6% growth, and North America, the second-largest contributor to revenue after France, grew 1.3%.

France, which had returned to growth in the second quarter, posted a 3.5% increase in revenue in the third, but Britain and Ireland contracted 2.5% due to a fall in public sector revenue. The rest of Europe grew 0.1%.

Market conditions are gradually improving in Western Europe, where overall IT spending is on course for growth of 2% this year (1% excluding phones), and where economic momentum has taken a turn for the better in many countries. IDC assumes that this gradual recovery will continue next year, translating into IT spending growth of 3% driven mainly by strengthening sales of commercial software.

"Momentum in developed economies has been broadly positive since the start of 2013," said Minton. "The gradual turnaround in Europe is restoring business confidence, leading to a strengthening of our assumption that next year will be better than this year for most IT vendors. In Japan, some sectors have performed stronger than previously expected. But while the news from developed economies has been mostly positive since January, the drag on overall industry growth this year has been the slowdown in emerging markets."

The IDC Worldwide Black Book, just released, shows that worldwide IT spending is expected to accelerate next year after dipping to its slowest pace of growth since the financial crisis in 2013. Overall tech spending is on course to increase by 4% this year at constant currency, reaching $2.04 trillion, down from last year's growth of 5% due mainly to the slowdown in key emerging markets including China and Russia. IDC forecasts that in 2014, a rebound in China and continued momentum in the US and Europe will see a return to overall industry growth of more than 5% (reaching $2.14 trillion).

Cloud comms and collaboration solutions provider 8x8 has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Voicenet Solutions for $18.4 million in cash.

Voicenet Solutions provides a range of UC services supporting both SMB and mid-market businesses, including fixed mobile convergence applications.

"The acquisition of Voicenet clearly demonstrates the execution of our international expansion strategy as well as our move up market," said Vik Verma, Chief Executive Officer of 8x8.

"With its existing operational footprint, team of skilled and dedicated employees, solid mid-market and distributed enterprise customer base and reputation in the UK, Voicenet provides 8x8 with an opportunity to replicate in Europe the successful, profitable SaaS communications and collaboration business we've built in North America.

"We view this expansion model as a key component of our global reach initiative and, including this acquisition, we continue to target non-GAAP net income as a percentage of revenue in the high single digit range."

This acquisition provides 8x8 an operational presence in Europe to support its US customers with multinational offices and at the same time enables Voicenet to market a broader range of services to its installed base of customers.

"We look forward to welcoming our new Voicenet employees to 8x8 and providing their UK customers with our comprehensive, secure and reliable cloud communications and collaboration services," added Verma.

Kevin Scott-Cowell, CEO of Voicenet Solutions, added: "Voicenet has an established base of over 1,000 business customers and is well respected in the UK market.

"8x8 has a suite of cloud communications and collaboration services that will strengthen and extend our existing portfolio of services among our growing base of UK and multinational customers."

Mitel and Aastra are to merge creating a billion dollar company with one of the largest global footprints in the industry, number one market share in Western Europe, a $100 million cloud business and a global installed customer base ready for upgrade as the $18 billion business communications market prepares to migrate to software-based cloud services.

The agreement, unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies, sees Mitel acquire all of the outstanding Aastra common shares for $6.52 in cash plus 3.6 Mitel common shares per each Aastra common share.

Using the Mitel closing common share price on November 8, 2013, and a CAD/USD exchange rate of 0.9531, this amounts to CAD$31.96 per Aastra common share, a total value on closing to Aastra shareholders of CAD$392M and represents a 20.9% premium to the 30-day volume weighted average price (VWAP) of Aastra common shares as of November 8, 2013.

The combined company will be headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, and will operate under the name Mitel while continuing to leverage Aastra's strong brand recognition in select European markets. The executive management team will continue to be led by current Mitel President and Chief Executive Officer, Richard McBee.

"The business communications market is ripe for consolidation and on the cusp of a mass migration to cloud-based services. We believe that small competitors with narrow focus and limited global reach will quickly be marginalised," said McBee. "Aastra's solid financial structure, complementary portfolios, geographic reach, and large installed-base immediately augment and expand Mitel's market footprint, enabling us to capitalise on a unique opportunity to leap-frog the competition and lead the market."

Reporting to McBee will be Chief Financial Officer, Steve Spooner, and Aastra's Co-CEOs, M Francis Shen, who will assume the position of Chief Strategy Officer, and Tony Shen, who will assume the position of Chief Operating Officer.

Mitel will increase the number of directors on its Board from eight to nine. Two existing members of the Mitel Board will step down and Aastra will have the right to appoint three new board nominees to fill the vacancies.

"Our two organisations are tightly aligned culturally and financially with little product, geographic or channel overlap," said Shen. "We are stronger together, and combined we will be a major global player. We are confident that this merger will create value for our shareholders, customers, partners and employees."

The combination of Mitel and Aastra will enable the companies to significantly expand their organisational scale and scope with a combined market presence of over 60 million end users in more than 100 countries and a global network of more than 2,500 channel partners, ideally positioning the new company to immediately capitalise on several key strategic growth opportunities.

High tech home environments are outpacing technology adoption in the workplace where incoherent IT strategies have created a state of apparent bedlam, suggested panellists during a Comms Vision debate.

But according to Gamma CEO Bob Falconer the discussion should not dwell on the challenges faced by CIOs but focus instead on delivering to the channel a set of bundled products and services that are relevant and easy to sell.

"There has been much talk about the challenges faced by CIOs but the majority of the channel sells to companies with no CIO therefore we can't realistically position ourselves as a consultancy business or a trusted advisor," he said.

"The lower end is about selling packaged bundles, so our focus is to provide a comms service that can be taken to SMEs in a transactional way."

The channel must work hard to reinstate its control over IT procurement and management, believes David Hatley, General Manager Indirect Sales, BT Wholesale. "I've seen my family overtake in technology many of the businesses I work with," he stated. "Our challenge is to join the dots for our customers. The power lies in bringing IT together and engaging with our customers and their employees."

Jacob Morgan, Principal at Chess Media Group, urged delegates to be proactive and lead by example. "Many organisations make an investment but don't know what to do with it," he added. "You've got to focus far beyond the technology to make it work."

Kcom's response to harnessing and reining-in corporate IT bedlam is optimistic and clear in its outlook. "Technological development is like the growth of an unruly teenager, unpredictable and hard to control, but now it's more manageable, enabling us to pull together digital tools that create platforms to collaborate, share knowledge and engage," commented Sally Fuller, Director of Strategic Propositions.

"This is the new world we are moving into, and to open doors the conversation must begin at this level, offering trials that can be scaled up. It's about partnering and focusing on the customer in the context of an adaptation strategy."