Comms Dealer

O2's Head of Partners Jason Philips is a newcomer to the Comms Vision stage but the operator has for the fourth time positioned its channel proposition as a CVC Platinum sponsor.

Addressing delegates on day one of Comms Vision Philips set out O2's stall as it moves away from being a 'mobile' company to emerge as a 'digital comms' organisation.

"We are focused on a digital future and M2M," he said. "It is estimated that by 2020 there will be seven times more SIM enabled 'machines' than people."

Comms pioneer Mitel upped the stakes this year, raising its Comms Vision sponsorship to Platinum level in a move that illustrates the vendor's commitment to building on its 40 year heritage as an agile channel-focused manufacturer.

Mitel's evolution has in large part been driven by hefty investments in R&D and now the company has built three pillars that form the core structure if its proposition - Cloud, Contact Centre and UC.

Simon Skellon, VP UK Sales, told delegates: "We now have 300,000 cloud users worldwide, 40 per cent of these are in the UK. We aim to show resellers how easy it is to build cloud propositions."

There is no advantage in treating software giant Microsoft as a threat, stated John Haw, Sales Director at serial Comms Vision Platinum sponsor Gamma, who in an introductory address urged delegates to embrace the Lync opportunity.

Gamma's Lync push is the latest in a long line of portfolio developments at the company. Rapid growth has seen the company hike its SIP and hosted business by 90 per cent and 80 per cent respectively this year, contributing significantly towards an impressive £145 million turnover, up £8m on last year.

"New value propositions make customers more sticky and resellers more margin," he said. "We are now introducing Lync as an opportunity, not a threat."

On consideration of Gamma's pedigree as a runaway winner in the new technology stakes, those partial to a small bet would no doubt give the company's race to Lync their full backing.

Just six years ago, 75 per cent of Gamma's revenue came from calls and lines. These days, SIP accounts for 25 per cent, Inbound the same proportion, ditto hosted, broadband and mobile, with the calls and lines business shrinking to 25 per cent.

It's clear where the growth markets are and with Lync in the mix Gamma's revenue generating profile is certain to continue its theme of transformation next year.

Senior executives of leading ICT companies have descended on the world famous Gleneagles Hotel for Comms Vision 2013, the channel's premier strategic business planning convention (November 6-8th). John Chapman, Content Director, set the scene by highlighting the 'new world' that is emerging from the recession, a world characterised by a new breed of application software and a new level of conversation with the customer.

A gathering head of steam-driven software development will provide a platform for channel parties to accelerate out of recession by enabling customers to be more agile, efficient and productive, according to Chapman

"The driving factors for change are new procedures and processes," stated Chapman in a keynote address. "With generation X and Y already in work and bypassing established systems like email and data bases in favour of Facebook and mobile, the channel's mantra now needs to be 'Make it happen and get things done'."

Despite the workplace revolution there is no conflict between staff and bosses as a shift in IT purchasing power illustrates, noted Chapman, citing research that suggests CMOs will spend more IT budget than CIOs by 2017. According to Gartner, CIOs are currently responsible for just 50 per cent of IT spend.

"Software application development is driving new buying behaviours," added Chapman. "The drivers include CRM, mobility - including M2M apps and BYOD - and Big Data. The biggest change for resellers is that they need to adapt to a new world where 'born in the cloud' rivals can successfully operate with no legacy issues to hold them back."

Team gteq got right down to earth in its latest charity effort when they got stuck into the notorious Tough Mudder challenge and emerged muddied from head-to-toe, but cleaning up with much needed funds for charity Sparks.

Tough Mudder events are exactly what they say on the tin, hardcore 12 mile-long obstacle courses designed by the Special Forces to test the durability of participants on a number of levels under extremely uncomfortable conditions that include getting electric shocks.

Karl McCaffrey, CEO, commented: " Everyone who takes part is highly motivated which helps you get to the finish line!"

Pictured - the gtech Tough Mudders before-an-after the mega-muddy endurance test

South West Communications Group has been awarded ShoreTel Gold Partner status a year after joining the vendor's Champion Partner Programme, becoming the only international reseller to move from Authorised to Gold status this year.

"South West Communications Group are an established, traditional, but also a progressive and future facing organisation. In its first year with ShoreTel South West Communications Group has been a committed and hardworking member of the ShoreTel programme. We are delighted at their rapid growth and success and we congratulate them on achieving gold status so quickly," said Adrian Hipkiss, vice president & managing director of EMEA at ShoreTel.

South West Communications Group has already been recognised as the fastest growing new ShoreTel reseller in the EMEA region since launching with the vendor in October 2012 and winning deals to install ShoreTel solutions for Farrow & Ball, Tomy, Centrax and Bradleys Estate Agents, among others.

InTechnology has secured its place on the Government's latest Cloud procurement framework - G-Cloud IV. This comes as the firm extends its Cloud offering to include Platform as a Service based on Oracle Software and Systems.

As a G-Cloud Supplier since early 2012, InTechnology will continue to supply a range of Cloud infrastructure, platform and software services via the Government-approved 'Cloudstore' online marketplace. In addition to providing its list of G-Cloud services, InTechnology is now able to offer additional 'Database As A Service' and 'Test and Development As A Service' solutions via the G-Cloud IV framework.

These new offerings, which are the result of a close collaboration over several months, utilise the Oracle Database, as well as Oracle Exadata Database Machine, an Oracle Engineered System.

Mark Halpin, Sales Manager at InTechnology, said: "Over £50m of business has been transacted to date via the G-Cloud 'Cloudstore' and nearly 60% with SMEs such as InTechnology."

VanillaIP has announced City Lifeline as a new London data centre partner. This additional capacity is necessary to meet exploding demand for VanillaIP's Hosted UC and IP Trunking solutions, powered by their Uboss technology management platform.

Uboss is a web based portal that enables wireless, wireline and application service providers by consolidating and simplifying back office provisioning and billing functions.

In this way Uboss helps to maximise revenue and improve differentiation by getting Service Providers to market quicker with a more sophisticated product offering.

The new agreement is for two years and will see VanillaIP take two racks in Lifeline House, City Lifeline's flagship central London data centre facility. The high level of flexibility offered by City Lifeline was a deciding factor in meeting VanillaIP's demanding requirements. VanillaIP is also making use of City Lifeline's THN data communications interlink with Telehouse North, allowing it to easily share critical data across the two data centre sites.

David Dadds, managing director of VanillaIP, commented: "These new City Lifeline colocation racks were needed to meet unprecedented growth on our platform and ensure we have sufficient capacity following our launch into North America this month.

"Because we offer Uboss as a SaaS model to tens of thousands of businesses worldwide, there is no such thing as 'off-peak' and City Lifeline operations team gave us great confidence that we can meet even the most demanding customer requirement."

Virgin Media Business has linked up with with CTI Group to create a platform that will provide customers with up-to-the-minute billing information, reduced admin costs and improved efficiency.

Over 10,000 customer accounts have already been signed up onto the platform which enables businesses to access detailed billing information and options to analyse usage on calls yet to be billed.

These allow customers, for example, to keep track of costs across different parts of the business and at different cost centres - meaning no more surprises at the end of the month. It also provides the platform for Virgin Media Business customers to 'go paperless'. In addition, the new platform simplifies and streamlines internal Virgin Media Business processes, allowing for an overall improved customer experience.

The portal can be integrated with businesses' accounting systems and deployed quickly to support customers from the minute they sign up. Customers can also slice, dice and analyse their billing information in a way to suit them with a range of new features including:

Paul Mitchell, Director, Customer Operations, Virgin Media Business, said: "One of our top priorities over the last 12 months has been to reduce the administrative hurdles our customers face with an overload of paper-based invoices every day. As well as improving the look, feel and functionality of our business portal, customers are able to gain real insight from their data."

Liquid Voice has completed a successful project with Cheshire West & Cheshire Council to help it streamline its call handling procedures and improve accessibility to council services for the local population.

Cheshire West and Chester has a population of 329,500 over a 350 square mile region in the North West of England. The council covers the historic city of Chester and the industrial and market towns of Ellesmere Port, Frodsham, Helsby, Malpas, Neston, Northwich and Winsford. About a third of the population live in rural areas which makes contact with the council via telephone extremely important for citizens to gain access to critical services.

The council has adopted KANA Lagan CRM solution which is essential for quickly managing inquiries handled by the 80 agents at its contact centre at Wyvern House, Winsford. Every year the council receives over 500,000 calls and while the majority of calls currently get through to a member of staff in less than 20 seconds, during busy periods these wait times can increase.

The new Liquid Voice platform has full audit and reporting capability which allows the council to effectively maintain staffing levels within the contact centre and understand trends to help better plan its future communication strategy in line with on-going activities and expected demand.

"Liquid Voice has been both professional and flexible in the delivery of what has been deemed a successful project that will allow us to improve the customer experience across many aspects of council service delivery." Maria concludes.

Chris Berry, Business Development Director and Co-Founder of Liquid Voice, said: "The long term benefits of reducing call durations by 15% to 20% equates to shorter waiting times for callers held in queues and more cost effective use of public funded resources. CTI is an effective project that the public sector can quickly undertake to generate rapid cost savings and quantifiable service improvements."