Comms Dealer

Avnet Technology Solutions has announced the launch of its new CloudEnhance Programme in the UK aimed at helping business partners and managed service providers to maximise the opportunity around the growth in unstructured data.

Avnet will provide participants in the programme with a complete portfolio of simple, cost-effective and secure, service-based archiving solutions that reduce costs, simplify IT and minimise risk.

As part of the programme, Avnet will use its pivotal position in the channel to facilitate introductions between service providers and business partners to drive increased cloud opportunities for both parties.

Avnet's CloudEnhance Programme focuses on the largely untapped market for offering archiving as a managed service rather than the more traditional methods currently used to store large amounts of unstructured data, particularly in distributed and un-virtualised environments. As a result organisations will benefit from a non-disruptive, high performing approach to moving data into a cloud environment.

Sukh Rayat, senior vice president, north region, Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA, said: "As unstructured data proliferates organisations are re-evaluating their IT strategies. They need to deal with everything from increased performance and capacity requirements, rising power and cooling costs to regulatory pressures. More often than not, organisations are turning to cloud-based solutions to address their needs and with industry analysts predicting double-digit growth in the public cloud services market channel partners will need to act fast."

Nexus Telecommunications has been named Zen Wholesale Partner of the Year.

The award was presented to Rob Sims, COO at Nexus Telecommunications, by Zen's Managing Director Richard Tang.

Sims stated: "We are delighted to win Wholesale Partner of the Year for the second time. I believe this year's award is testament to how our two companies are working closely together having created a solid partnership".

Leanne Peasnall, Channel Marketing Manager at Zen Internet, added: "Nexus are consistently among our top performing partners, largely due to the way they have embraced our business connectivity portfolio to develop solutions for their customers."

The Cloud Industry Forum's (CIF) fourth annual research project into cloud adoption trends in the UK has revealed a lack of concern being paid to SLAs by end users when migrating to the cloud.

While this may be because they feel cloud providers are meeting their SLA commitments, a study by Queen Mary University has shown a myriad of problems with cloud SLAs. APM Group, the CIF's independent certification partner, has called on users to review SLAs with care, pointing to the CIF Code of Practice as a means to vet potential cloud suppliers.

The research, conducted in Q3 2013, polled 250 senior IT and business decision-makers to gain insight into attitudes, experiences and trends across the UK end user community.

Although concerns about data security and data privacy ranked highly among end users during the migration process, just one in five (20 per cent) stated that they were concerned about contractual liability for services if SLAs are not met.

According to Richard Pharro, CEO of APM Group, the CIF figures betray a lack of awareness as to the importance of cloud contracts when selecting a CSP:.

He said: "That just one in five of respondents cite concern over contractual liability for cloud services is a concern in itself. In the wake of recent service provider closures, such as that of Nirvanix, 2e2 and Doyenz, which were unexpected and left users and their data vulnerable, we would have expected this figure to be a good deal higher. As these cases attest, by failing to pay proper attention to cloud contracts, business may be putting themselves, and their data, at risk."

Organisations across the healthcare value chain are realising the potential of embedding machine-to-machine (M2M) technology into mobile health solutions.

Mobile network operators (MNOs) have already begun exploring this opportunity, developing M2M-enabled solutions for various applications including remote patient monitoring, medical asset tracking, and healthcare workflow organisation.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan studies the success of two MNOs to reveal how telecom can build a stronger presence in the healthcare industry.

The research finds that after North America, Europe offers considerable growth potential for M2M in healthcare. Most European telecom operators have now dedicated M2M business units that focus on R&D, service development, and delivery. Frost & Sullivan estimates that M2M revenues of telecom service providers in Europe will grow to €2.6 billion by 2016, from €600 million in 2010.

"MNOs are well placed to participate in shaping future healthcare delivery as they own the essential communications infrastructure needed for mobile communications to become a core tool in the industry," said Frost & Sullivan Information and Communication Technologies Research Analyst Malgorzata Filar. "They have also built trust with their customers and can supply user-centric services."

Outsourcery has been accepted onto the G-Cloud 4 framework, a government programme committed to the adoption of cloud computing and delivering computing resources to the public sector through an approved seller marketplace.

G-Cloud 4 will be the fourth round of procurement of the government's G-Cloud framework, and Outsourcery, now an established member of the list of suppliers, has noticed that since the beginning of the programme, public sector organisations have become more decisive about moving to the cloud.

Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery said: "Since we were first accepted onto the G-Cloud framework we have seen a huge increase in the number of public sector organisations looking to embrace cloud solutions and services.

"Through G-Cloud, the public sector has access to new efficient solutions without the huge capital expense. This means that they can make use of the most up-to-date solutions in the marketplace."

Along with other suppliers, Outsourcery is providing a range of cloud services and solutions, delivered from the Outsourcery O-Cloud, specifically full enterprise voice-enabled Unified Lync, SharePoint, Exchange and CRM, all via the G-Cloud's CloudStore online catalogue.

Linney added: "Being selected as a supplier for G-Cloud 4 is an important achievement for a number of different reasons - it helps us and our partners learn about the IT needs of the public sector and also gives us the confidence to know that we are going in the right direction in terms of the development of our offerings.

"This marks the next step for Outsourcery, our partners and all the public sector organisations which are taking a leap to better their IT systems."

Contact centre software company IT Sonix UK has added GeoDialing to its portfolio for contact centre management and appointment setting services.

The new tool has been designed to make it easy for users to book appointments in a routed, efficient way, said the firm.

When used with predictive dialling software GeoDialing allows contacts to be called automatically based on geographic location.

This means that the routes that are generated are efficient, smart and as closely routed as possible. Saving travelling time - sales people can be assigned more appointments per day, reducing fuel costs and your organisations carbon footprint.

The IT Sonix PredictiveDialer is geared to help businesses improve efficiency, the introduction of GeoDialing is a key benefit for users and businesses to increase efficiency rates by 20%", says Philip Moran, Sales Director for IT Sonix.

"This technology helps sales people manage their diaries more effective, attend more appointments, save time and fuel with the added convenience of it all being linked in real-time to their smart phones."

tIPicall and Virtual1 have formed a strategic partnership aimed at bringing down the cost of private SIP by using tIPicall's SIP infrastructure and SIP Exchange, Virtual1's plug-and-play SIP interconnecting platform.

With this agreement, the cost of deployment for resellers and end users will significantly reduce enabling SIP to be delivered over Virtual1's Ethernet network privately to tIPicall.

Neil Linter, Managing Director of tIPicall, said: "One of the barriers to mass SIP deployment has always been the lack of a guaranteed end-to-end underlying network to deliver the voice traffic.

"We've been working with Virtual1 since it created SIP Exchange and it has proven to be the best way to deliver SIP to end users.

"With this commercial tie-in, we can bring the benefits of their award-winning solution to our combined client base and significantly reduce the cost of deploying quality SIP."

Both tIPicall and Virtual1 are channel-only carriers with no direct sales teams and Tom O'Hagan, Managing Director of Virtual1, sees this as the natural progression of the Channel offering.

"If our partners want to offer a true replacement for ISDN, the quality has got to be as good and the pricing has to be better. With the tie-in between tIPicall and Virtual1 - this has been achieved."

Daisy Group has snapped up Indecs Computer Services and Indecs Computers for a cash consideration of up to £18m in a move that significantly extends Daisy's play in the IT services market.

The acquisition brings technical maintenance and support services for IT server and data cloud storage facilities and introduces multi-vendor specialisms for brands including HP, IBM, Cisco, Sun, Dell and Oracle.

In the 12 month period ended 30 June 2013, the combined unaudited management accounts of Indecs included revenues and EBITDA of £10.6m and £2.6m, respectively.

Approximately 80% of the revenues related to recurring maintenance revenues with strong free cash generation.

Indecs is expected to have in excess of £1m of net cash at completion and the balance of consideration will be funded from the Group's existing borrowing facilities.

Headquartered in Redditch, the business supplies services to a diverse customer base, from leading blue chip household names and public authorities to SMEs across the UK.

Daisy Group CEO Matthew Riley said: "Indecs represents a strong strategic fit and clear growth opportunity for the Group.

"Its multi-vendor specialist maintenance and support services further expand Daisy's IT services offering and give the Group the ability to support businesses on legacy IT systems as well as those investing in cloud solutions and cloud based data storage.

"I believe this exciting expansion of our Group's service offering, together with the cross selling opportunities for both Indecs and our existing customer base, enhance the Group's ability to deliver sustained growth."

In a shock move O2 Wholesale has told partners it will be shutting down its fixed network on February 28th next year and will stop taking new orders from November 14th this year. O2 sent an email to partners on October 24th explaining that its wholesale and reseller channels had undergone a root and branch review following the sale of the consumer home phone and broadband business to Sky.

As part of the review a decision was made to move away from fibre broadband and focus on 'digital services and experiences', meaning that partners are required to migrate their DSL connections away from O2 Wholesale before the end of February.

In an official press statement O2 said that the move formed part of a wider strategy, 'We can confirm that as of February 2014 we will no longer offer wholesale broadband services. The delivery of fibre broadband currently requires a level of scale and investment which does not fit with our strategy to focus on digital services and experiences'.

Just one day after the announcement JUC partner Nimans moved fast to offer a solution to resellers affected by the move.

The distributor's Head of Network Services, Mark Curtis-Wood, said the company immediately rolled out a migration strategy enabling resellers to connect with its broadband and data service network.

The reason Nimans acted so quickly was due to a combination of foresight and preparation for such an event, explained Curtis-Wood. "We started making plans when O2 sold its network to Sky," he said. "In doing so it sold the crown jewels and we saw an opportunity to capitalise on a gap in the market.

"We recognise the general consolidation of wholesale services in the channel and the move away from aggregated services. O2 made a decision to focus on 4G mobile and digital services with a huge push for M2M. This has created an opportunity for Nimans to advance its strategy to become a full MSP and offer resellers an equivalent service with added value."

Alarm bells also rang for O2 Wholesale partner Entanet when news broke of O2 Home Broadband and BE Unlimited customers moving to Sky early this year.

"Entanet is fully prepared to continue serving O2 Wholesale's broadband customers as it withdraws from the market," commented Elsa Chen, General Manager, Entanet.

"We've had plans in place since the announcement of the Sky acquisition to ensure our existing and new customers have suitable alternative options that meet their requirements.

"O2 Wholesale's announcement is an interesting departure from the strategy it announced earlier in the year and we can understand it will concern those in the channel."

O2's network sale to Sky also prompted Daisy to collaborate more closely with the operator which, according to Daisy Wholesale MD Terry O'Brien, provided a 'quality product with great take up'.

"We have been working closely with our other carrier partners to ensure that our partners and their customers continue to get an equivalent product at equivalent value to their customers," he said.

"We are enabling our affected partners to make the transition smoothly and helping them to manage the change for their customers."

O2 Wholesale was established in 2005 and formerly known as BE Broadband before it was acquired by the mobile operator in 2006.

Distributor of VoIP hardware ProVu Communications is stocking the latest ruggedized cordless handset in the Gigaset range, the R630H which comes with an IP65 rating.

"This rating means the level of water and dust protection makes it a fit-for-purpose business phone in workshops, factory surroundings, building sites and other challenging work environments," said ProVu's Sales Director Ian Godfrey.

The R630H works with all Gigaset base stations and is optimised to work with the Gigaset N510 IP PRO and N720 DECT IP Multicell systems.

ProVu MD Darren Garland added: "If you are in the market for a ruggedized handset at a competitive price point the look and feel of this handset is superb."