Comms Dealer

The evolution of VMware's focus on hybrid and cross-cloud software and services has prompted the company to transition vCloud Air US and European data centres, customer operations and customer teams to cloud service providers OVH for an undisclosed sum.

The transaction is expected close in calendar 2Q 2017.

After the close of the acquisition OVH will operate the service as vCloud Air Powered by OVH and continue to leverage VMware's hybrid cloud technology. 

"We have enjoyed a long and successful partnership with OVH and view this acquisition as an extension of our partnership and a positive for our customers and partners," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware.

"Customers will have access to OVH's global footprint and high-touch customer support and still retain the VMware SDDC technology innovation that they are accustomed to."

OVH is a long standing VMware vCloud Air Network partner with more than 200,000 VMs from thousands of customers running VMware vSphere Private Cloud. It has more than one million customers and 260,000 servers deployed and was recognised as Service Provider of the Year by VMware 2011-2014 and in 2016.

A multi-channel data analytics solution introduced by IOVOX enables marketers to drive more inbound calls and make more informed marketing decisions.

"The new Multichannel Marketing solution applies a unique phone number to each referring domain that generates call traffic, whether it's paid, organic, social, email or even offline," said Carl Di Cicco, Chief Commercial Officer.

"Combined with analytics from IOVOX, marketers have insight into the performance of each channel and can tune spending accordingly. In early customer implementations the IOVOX solution has led to significant cost savings.

"Despite the perception that interaction is all moving online, business phone calls continue to grow and marketers are waking up to the need to track what marketing spend is driving the all-important call.

"The IOVOX platform allows multi-channel marketers to track which media channels and driving calls with 100 percent accuracy."

Identity services security company Centrify has appointed John Andrews as EMEA Channel Director responsible for building a core set of distribution partners and VARs across the region, including the UK.

One of his first jobs will be to evaluate 250-plus partners and focus on establishing a top 10 tier of VARs in each region.

Andrews joins from BeyondTrust where he worked for 18 years helping to build a channel presence in the Middle East and APAC markets.

He also spent three years as Marketing Director for Computerlinks Distribution, managing a portfolio of more than 25 security focused vendors.

MF Communications has sharpened its focus on the network services side of the business with the launch of MF Telecom Services.

The Tunbridge Wells-based company provides services such as business telephone systems, broadband, mobile contracts, inbound solutions, business phone lines and calls, VoIP, telephone system maintenance and cloud hosting to organisations throughout Kent and the rest of the UK.

"We have had huge organic growth and found that to ensure we continued to prioritise our UK telecom services customers we needed to launch a new company and separate this from the global telephone system supply side of the business," said Fraser Young, MD, MF Communications.

"We may not be as big as the telecom giants, but we can be every bit as competitive."

Ireland-based IT services company Version 1 has closed a round of funding to drive phase two of its international growth.

The €90m investment, which will enable Version 1's further expansion into the UK and Europe, will see London based investment firm Volpi Capital take a significant stake in the company, marking its first investment in an Irish company and its largest investment to date.

This is Version 1's second funding round which will see its first round investor, Development Capital, exit in this round and 40 senior managers in Version 1 become shareholders.

Development Capital exits Version 1 with a 250% return on its investment after a period of just three years.

The company will deliver in excess of €100m revenues this year and target more acquisitions and look to the European market as part of a three year expansion push.

Version 1 was founded in 1996 by Justin Keatinge and John Mullen who remain as Board members with former COO Tom O'Connor taking up the role of CEO.

O'Connor said: "As we look forward to the next five years we anticipate further strong organic growth in Ireland and the UK, together with more acquisitive growth.

"With much speculation abounding about the impact of Brexit, we firmly believe that there continues to be massive opportunities for well-run customer focussed Irish firms to expand and grow internationally."

Version 1's first round of funding enabled it to complete three acquisitions in the UK.

Volpi CEO Crevan O'Grady said: "Volpi will work with Version 1 to help it grow internationally and to provide the level of funding this growth will require."

The global IT managed services market is forecast to expand from €120bn in 2014 to €215bn in 2020 demonstrating a CAGR of 8.61%, with the UK being the largest market in Europe.

Hammer has signed an EMEA-wide distribution deal with software defined and hyper converged storage vendor StarWind.

While being EMEA-wide, the agreement will see Hammer acting as the exclusive StarWind distributor in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy and the Benelux and Nordics regions.

Hammer said it will support StarWind in the SMB, remote office/branch office and low- to mid-tier enterprise markets.

StarWind is a one-stop shop for full-stack virtualisation infrastructure, providing all the solutions required for a software-defined data centre for primary and backup purposes.

Optimised for Microsoft Hyper-V systems, StarWind appliances are also VMware compatible, enabling customers to migrate from traditional architecture to hyper-converged technology.

Hyper-converged integrated technology offers operational simplicity and scalability and the potential to cut costs.

Gerard Marlow, GM for OEM and Whitebox Storage at Hammer, said: "This relationship will allow us to provide additional, complementary products to our existing customers, but will also give us the ability to engage with new resellers in the SMB and branch office hyper-converged space that our portfolio has not enabled us to reach in the past."

Exertis has completed the integration of Medium UK and is rebranding its AV division as Exertis Medium.

Medium, a specialist audio-visual distributor of projectors, flat panel displays, interactive systems and digital signage was acquired by Exertis last November.

Ian Sempers, said: "Retaining the Medium name recognises the reputation the company has gained in the market for providing AV solutions and is a clear message to vendors and customers that we will continue to offer the same services and support enhanced by the additional products, resources and reach of Exertis.

"Our concept of 'AV for all sizes' demonstrates our ability to provide our customers with anything from a simple cable to a large format display, or a single product to a complex AV solution. All of this from an enviable line-up of small innovative vendors to large commercial brands."

Excalibur's acquisition of Berkshire-based Ntegra's IT support services is the final piece in the firm's strategy to become a 'complete communications and IT partner', according to CEO James Phipps.

"This purchase adds extra strength and depth to our technical support team, as well as gaining important customers in the education and charitable sectors," he said.

Ntegra's provides outsourced IT support to a range of SME customers in and around the M4 corridor.

Its co-founder and CEO Andy Jefferies added: "Our core focus is providing consulting and Enterprise Managed Services to a strong portfolio of FTSE 100 and 250 clients.

"With this in mind we took the strategic decision to find a home for our support services. Excalibur specialises in this area and shares the same values as we do."

The Ntegra deal follows Excalibur's acquisitions of Chippenham-based IT firm Devision, Bridge Solutions and Emnico Enterprises.

IPCortex has lifted the curtain on a new hosted PBX communications platform, IPCortex Hosted Suite, based on the core IPCortex PBX platform used by over 80,000 business users.

IPCortex CEO Rob Pickering said: "Contextual and embedded communication is redefining the value that resellers can expect from hosted services, moving the conversation away from dial tone and increasing the size and spend associated with every deployment.

"Our existing service providers, who have already been deploying the IPCortex platform as hosted, are seeing the benefit of this and reporting growth of 100% year on year. We are facilitating this shift in demand and unlock the opportunity for more partners."

Chess has upped its cyber-security credentials with the acquisition of Sophos's top UK education partner Foursys. The Bury St Edmunds-based company adds £11m annual turnover bringing Chess' run rate to over £120m. Chess founder and CEO David Pollock stated: "Cyber security is of upmost importance for any modern business and this acquisition enhances our security offering to our customers.

"With Foursys we have the talent and technology to deliver integrated solutions across enterprise, mobile and cloud environments."

Foursys MD James Milleradded: "Being part of a much larger business brings new supplier choice, opportunities, expertise and skills in a range of ICT disciplines to our customers and partners."

Johnathan Bartholomew, Channel Sales Director at Sophos, said: "Chess will provide Foursys with the platform to deliver the Sophos security solutions to even more organisations in the UK."

Richard Btesh, Director of Chess, added: "We continue to diversify our product range by making strategic acquisitions of quality businesses."