Comms Dealer

Colt has unveiled new cloud infrastructure backup and replication services for VARs, extending the availability of its VMware vCloud data centre services offerings into its data centres in Italy and Switzerland, building on an existing estate in the UK, France, Spain and Germany.

Colt has also announced services are now available from a second data centre in Spain, with Barcelona adding to the existing Madrid capacity.

Colt's new backup service for VMware vCloud provides VARs with flexible service options for their end user customers who can now choose what data they want to protect and backup, the level of resiliency, and in which European locations.

Managed via an online portal, the new service gives Colt's channel partners the option to create and operate a managed cloud backup service, or to pass self-management rights directly to their own customers. The service is available on a pay-as-you-go basis with no upfront costs.

Colt also announces the launch of a replication service. Managed through a portal, the service permits VARs to administer the location of their workloads in the event of a disaster.

By building replication into the fabric of its vCloud estate, Colt has greatly simplified the creation of geo-resilient solutions. This will enable VARs to better meet the needs of customers with on-site VMware deployments who require cost-effective disaster recovery capabilities. Colt's new service also allows resellers to offer their customers cloud-to-cloud resilience.

Keith Humphrey at EuroLAN commented: "With the launch of these new business continuity features, Colt has significantly enhanced its vCloud portfolio and taken another step towards industrialising the hybrid and public cloud.

"Solid backup and recovery is an essential component of most IT solutions, and customers increasingly expect a degree of DR capability in their infrastructure.

"We particularly like the fact that Colt has put the tools into a portal, and opened their infrastructure up to resellers, allowing them to create their own managed services."

Marco Andersen has been appointed by Acer as its new General Manager in the UK. He will replace Neil Marshall who has been promoted to the role of regional manager for North Europe.

Andersen, who will co-act with Marshall from November to January, is currently country manager at Acer Sweden and serves as marketing director for the Nordic region.

Prior to Acer, he was responsible for business development and marketing at retailer MediaMarkt during its entry to Sweden. He also worked at HP and IBM.

"Marco has a solid reputation for building and leading successful teams and for forging great relationships with our customers and partners. We are confident that he will be successful in applying his experience and commercial acumen in his new role in the UK," says Neil Marshall, country manager, Acer UK.

NGC Networks directors were among the guests of honour at Yorkshire County Cricket Club's 150th anniversary dinner held at Elland Road, Leeds.

The telecoms specialist is sponsoring the club's 150th anniversary Hawke blazers which all the first team were wearing at the celebratory event attended by some 700 people including Geoffrey Boycott OBE, former Yorkshire and England cricketer.

The Hawke blazers are an exact replica of the blazer worn by Lord Hawke, who captained the club with distinction from 1883 to 1910.

NGC Networks Director Dean Harrop said: "Yorkshire County Cricket Club is in our view the world's greatest cricket club and we are delighted to contribute our sponsorship in its 150th anniversary year."

Pictured (l-r): NGC Chairman Nigel Adams, cricketer Tim Bresnan, Geoffrey Boycott and NGC Directors Nikki Guest and Dean Harrop.

EMEA PC sales fell in the third quarter by nearly 10% yr/yr, in line with IDC forecasts, the analyst says. PC shipments remained constrained particularly in the home segment, which continued to suffer from weak consumer demand amid an ongoing budget shift to tablets.

Gartner had even higher decline rates: PC shipments in EMEA totaled 22.4 million units in the third quarter of 2013, a 13.7% decline from the same period last year. The EMEA region suffered its sixth consecutive quarter of declining PC shipments. All areas of the region - Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa - showed a shipment decline. PC shipments across all of Eastern Europe remained weak due to the ongoing popularity of tablets and some weakening of the Russian Ruble versus the euro and dollar, which led to a PC price increase.

IDC says that from a supply perspective, the quarter was also affected by an unfavourable year-on-year comparison with 3Q12, when shipments were supported by preparation to Windows 8 launch. Lean inventory remained a priority for channel partners across EMEA during 3Q13, inhibiting further sell-in. Portable PC shipments suffered a particularly strong decline, while desktops were less constrained. As forecast, the commercial market was less negative than the consumer market due to pockets of investments remaining available despite constrained spending. Shipments were also supported by seasonal back-to-school projects.

HP finished the quarter in the number two position after Lenovo, with growth improving from recent quarters. HP's shipment trends improved in the US and EMEA.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 81.6 million units in the third quarter of 2013. In year-on-year terms, the market contracted -7.6%, ahead of a projected decline of -9.5% for the quarter.

Nimans has advanced its Everything Connected strategy with the introduction of a cloud-based Video as a Service solution.

Everything Connected encompasses networks and data infrastructure to systems, end points and support services.

The new VaaS solution is said to be easy to deploy, making instant high definition collaboration available anywhere, regardless of connectivity.

So says Nimans' Head of Conferencing, Ian Brindle. "Cost effective HD video conferencing and collaboration is now within the reach of every reseller. Users simply connect to a meeting over IP, ISDN or SIP, for either room-based, mobile or desktop conferencing," he said.

"VaaS is a cornerstone of our Everything Connected strategy, equipping resellers with everything they need to move further forward in a fully converged world."

ICUK has acted to protect its resellers from being priced out of the market with the addition of unlimited broadband to its portfolio.

The move also reflects the growing number of customers who need and expect unlimited broadband as standard, said the firm.

Director Paul Barnett said: "Rolling out unlimited broadband allows our resellers to cater for customers with higher broadband demands.

"We won't let our resellers be priced out of the market, and we encourage them to use unlimited broadband to its fullest potential. We know the average person is using their broadband from laptops, smartphones and tablets and it's important that we have a reliable system which will always deal with this."

Unlimited broadband builds on a range of services from ICUK including low wholesale telecoms rates and a superfast leased line quoting tool with both BT and Virgin lines.

The feature is available through ICUK's in-house developed control panel which enables resellers to manage everything from one portal, and aligns with a new invoicing platform with automated systems.

Cloud vendors must establish one definition for cloud to protect buyers falling foul of multiple interpretations of the technology, according to the views of delegates attending a recent round table discussion.

With more and more providers joining the cloud market and confusion still reigning over what the term actually means, baffled buyers are at risk of paying over the odds for technology that isn't technically cloud, or worse entrusting their business data in unsuitable cloud solutions, claim the experts.

Simon Swan, co-founder of online recruitment marketplace HiringHub.com said: "There is a real cause for someone to put together a dictionary for the cloud. Define the key terms and then whoever deals with IT in a business can go to that place and get the information. Then they will have a grasp of it before they engage with a cloud company.

"You have got to educate your audience. There needs to be a resource there for them, because they need to have confidence in the infrastructure."

Lawrence Jones, CEO at cloud and colocation company UKFast, said: "We see different definitions of hosting, hybrid and cloud from every provider. To us, hybrid is where the whole solution is in a data centre, and part of it is dedicated and part of it shared.

"People don't ask the question about what it all means. No-one would ever ask what the technology of the cloud is, they just log on and move on. We make sure that we have the conversation with clients asking why they want to move to the cloud and work out the best option from there - whether that's cloud or dedicated."

Tony Pepper, CEO and co-founder of Egress Software Technologies, explained that the confusion is market-wide as, despite organisations like the Cloud Industry Forum creating universal definitions, many firms continue to use their own.

Pepper said: "There is a real misunderstanding in the market, because everyone has their own definitions. It used to be very black and white, but now because services work so closely together it is a lot greyer. It keeps changing. For example, how many people using this cloud model understand liability?"

But Nick Kavanagh, operations director at Gteq, disagreed with the point, saying that he believes that, thanks to cloud sneaking its way into our personal lives more and more, businesses are more cloud savvy than they realise.

He said: "Businesses have been using it [the cloud] for a long time. Email systems like Hotmail, or programmes like Dropbox are all cloud-based. People don't realise they are using it but they have been, and they are comfortable with it."

The panel gathered at a round table debate held by hosting and colocation firm UKFast to discuss the evolution of cloud and its effects on business.

The Viatel brand is to be relaunched into the enterprise market following enhanced financial resources and changes to its management team.

Having previously been trading under the VTL Wavenet brand, exclusively within the wholesale market, Viatel will now offer an extended range of telecommunications services as part of its recent acquisition by the Dublin-based Digiweb Group.

The expanded Digiweb Group now operates under two separate brands to serve its distinct customer groups.

Business customers including enterprise, government and wholesale businesses globally will be served under the relaunched Viatel brand while consumer, residential and small business customers (predominantly in Ireland and Belgium) will be served under the Digiweb brand.

Digiweb Group CEO, Colm Piercy, stated: "Despite the current economic climate there's great cause for optimism in the telecommunications industry. Tales of doom and gloom fill the business pages today and more success stories like Viatel's are needed to change this narrative."

With revenues of $78 million, the Digiweb Group generates operating profits exceeding $10 million annually. Backed by Morgan Stanley, a 33% shareholder in the Digiweb Group, Viatel's financial resources have received a significant boost as part of the acquisition and subsequent relaunch.

Having previously sold exclusively to wholesale markets, Viatel will also now service larger enterprise customers, where it expects a substantial uptake of its services.

Viatel predicts an explosion in high bandwidth connectivity demand within the European enterprise market and the relaunch puts it in a position to take advantage of this trend.

Viatel's business and wholesale services now include high capacity-low latency bandwidth, colocation, fully managed voice, wavelength, dark fibre, VPN, metro Ethernet, MPLS, VPLS and disaster recovery connectivity.

In addition to these changes, Viatel is now extending its services to Ireland with the majority of Digiweb enterprise customers transferring to Viatel with immediate effect.

This allows these customers to benefit from the industry leading services available from Viatel and its pan-European network reach. Furthermore, this will also give Viatel access to the many global brands based in or operating from Ireland.

Including Ireland, Viatel now has over 8,500km of wholly owned fibre infrastructure spanning eight countries and 35 cities, and connecting over 120 european data centres.

"The enterprise telecoms market in Europe is in a constant state of change," added Piercy. "Never has there been a better time for a company like Viatel to enter into this market and we are excited about the possibilities it holds.

"Digital trends such as cloud computing show no signs of slowing and businesses have never been more dependent on their networks.

Kcom is backing two polar explorers who aim to complete the 1,800 mile return journey to the South Pole last attempted by Captain Scott a century ago.

Ben Saunders (pictured) and Tarka L'Herpiniere will be on foot and unsupported, pulling everything they need (up to 200kg) including all the food and fuel for the journey on purpose built sleds.

Saunders said: "Completing Scott's Terra Nova expedition is a life-long dream of mine and its thanks to support from organisations like Kcom that it's possible.

"Physically it is a huge challenge but as an athlete one I'm really looking forward to. We'll be connected with the rest of the world throughout the expedition and I hope people enjoy following and sharing in the journey online as it unfolds."

Kcom MD Stephen Long added: "When we heard about Ben's plans we were excited to see how they were harnessing the power of communications to support their epic journey. Like Scott's expedition this journey will be a test of human endurance. We can see a real connection between our values and Ben's team's attitude and dedication to the expedition. It's an inspiring journey, involving a flexible attitude and strongly relying on team work."

The 2013 Scott Expedition will be the longest unsupported polar journey in history, battling temperatures as low as -50C.

Distributor of VoIP hardware ProVu Communications has expanded its range of IP door entry systems following a link-up with Czech Republic-based 2N.

According to ProVu Communications MD Darren Garland the 2N range is a neat addition that offers a number of useful features and a choice of cases and modules that align with the majority of user applications.

"The range is fully SIP compliant and has been through extensive testing with ProVu's technical team who have run interop tests with many SIP PBX systems and leading hosted telephony providers," said Garland. "The 2N equipment has also been approved within the Avaya, Cisco and Broadsoft interop programmes."

As well as the feature set Garland made particular note of the build quality. To see for yourself, view the anti-vandal unit versus baseball clash by clicking here