Comms Dealer

Maintel's acquisition of Azzurri in May 2016 propelled the MSP's revenues last year to £108.3m, up 114% on the previous year.

The group's core business, excluding Azzurri, notched up 1% organic growth year-on-year, mostly seen in H2 when Maintel bagged a number of big contract wins.

The group's adjusted profit before tax increased by 52% to £11.1m with recurring revenue rising to 73%.

Maintel also experienced a strong cash performance with operating cash flow of £10.6m and underlying cash conversion of 104% of adjusted EBITDA.

The group's managed service and technology division delivered a 62% increase in revenue to £64.1m, with managed services revenue up 45% year-on-year and technology sales up 88%, both benefiting from the Azzurri acquisition.

Azzurri also boosted Maintel's network services revenue which increased by 346%. The group also saw strong growth in cloud through its ICON Communicate proposition with the total number of seats for its hosted UC proposition growing 63% over the previous year.

Mobile revenue increased by 147% to £6.9m with gross margin increasing to 49% (2015: 42%) and gross profit increasing from £1.2m to £3.4m over 2015.

Eddie Buxton, CEO, said: "The highlight was the acquisition of Azzurri, supported by the robust performance of the core Maintel business in the second half, demonstrating the strength of our diversified product portfolio and our ability to respond to changing market conditions.

"The combination of the enlarged customer base and the broader technological platform positions Maintel well for an exciting growth trajectory in the cloud environment and we look forward to 2017 with cautious optimism."

A charity ski trip organised by Six Degrees Group has raised over £29k for WeSeeHope, a charity that provides support for children in Southern and Eastern Africa who have been orphaned or isolated by extreme poverty.

Hosted by Six Degrees Chairman Alastair Mills a group of 25 guests from the technology and finance sector headed to the slopes of Val Thorens, the highest resort in Europe, for the three day trip.

The annual event is organised as part of the company's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme, Six Degrees of Hope, in order to raise awareness and funds for WeSeeHope.

Mills said: "This is the third year we have run a charity ski trip and I am still blown away by the incredible generosity of those who join us."

Six Degrees has supported WeSeeHope since the company's foundation in 2011 and has so far raised over £445k through Six Degrees of Hope.

Unify's OpenScape Desk Phone CP family has completed compatibility testing with the BroadSoft Business BroadWorks call control platform.

Luiz Domingos, Head of Product House, Unify, said: "Completing this testing provides assurance to those customers using BroadWorks that their Unify phones will perform, helping to improve communication and increase user productivity."

The results of Polycom's global research into 'anywhere' working trends reveals that 98% of respondents think anywhere working boosts productivity, while 92% agree that video collaboration technology improves teamwork.

"We predicted that 2016 would be the ‘year of video', and it's satisfying to know that people are seeing the benefits of working this way," said Jim Kruger, CMO of Polycom.

"The survey results also tell us that businesses need to offer video collaboration tools to enable the human contact that people crave.

"Organisations that are able to offer flexible working practices and the right collaboration tools will be the winners in recruiting and retaining top talent."

Agilitas has expanded its Cisco support services with the appointment of Mike Cummins as Cisco Technical Consultant.

He joins from Cisco Gold Partner Logicalis where he was Strategic Development Director.

Cisco support has been Agilitas' biggest growth area in the past 12 months delivering a 400% increase in opportunities on the previous year, with requests covering the UK, mainland Europe and the US.

"We are receiving unprecedented requests around Cisco UCS and networking support," stated CEO Shaun Lynn. "With Mike on board we can significantly grow our offering."

Agilitas operates an end-to-end service model to support resellers across the Cisco portfolio. This includes Cisco backed support through to service enhancements such as uplifted SLAs, field engineering, level 1,2 and 3 support and professional services.

Former Alternative Networks and Solar Communications stalwart Mark Walker has joined Virtual1 as Head of Commercial.

He brings 18 years industry experience and predicts 'big things' to come from Virtual1.

"Having worked with Virtual1 on the other side of the fence it's great to join the company at such an exciting time in its development. Given the direction of the business I can see big things happening."

Magnus Batsvik-Miller, Chief Financial Officer, added: "Mark is a significant addition to the commercial team and we are looking forward to benefitting from his experience in the telecoms industry as Virtual1 looks to expand its operations."

The 2017 edition of Nimans' free Trade Catalogue contains 484 pages and details over 7,000 products. A key feature of this year's publication is an expanded data infrastructure range along with new system developments and headset innovations including a convertible two-in-one Radius model.

Director of Channel Sales Richard Carter (pictured) commented: "In an age of digital media the Trade Catalogue still has a firm place at the heart of our business and remains popular as a reference point. It is affectionately known as the 'industry's bible' and this year we have a huge range of new products from traditional systems and data infrastructure to two-way radios and headsets."

Miles Rippon has joined endpoint security firm Carbon Black as EMEA Channel Director.

The appointment comes three weeks after the company sealed a distribution deal with Arrow ECS.

Rippon moved from HPE where he was EMEA Channel and Alliance Director for the Enterprise Security Products Division.

He was previously VP of Global Channels for Clearswift, a provider of email and web content security solutions.

Rippon also spent 10 years driving channel engagement as VP of EMEA Channels for RSA Security.

Mark Reeves, VP for EMEA Sales at Carbon Black, said: "Miles is an EMEA channel expert with extensive experience and hands-on sales territory and sales management skills.

"In particular, he has maintained strong sales performance records in developed and emerging territories.

"With the recent launch of our streaming prevention technology and the appointment of Arrow, we are now well set up to service the channel and build momentum in the market."

Call management company Invosys has acquired VoIP platform developer Telux HD. The move sees the integration of Invosys's cloud-based Number Manager portal with Telux's open source cloud communications platform. The Number Manager portal enables customers to configure, manage and monitor their call management solutions. The service will form part of a new channel offering called Invosys Hosted and incorporate cloud-based telephony.

"Instead of reselling hosted from one of the legacy suppliers we wanted to launch a hosted product to integrate with Number Manager," said Invosys CEO Rob Booth.

"Direct access to the owners and developers, swift development and support resolutions along with an open API that means easy and limitless integrations made Telux a clear fit for Invosys.

"The acquisition has allowed us to harness new technology and expand our wholesale channel."

Telux HD co-founder and MD Murray Leach commented: "We have invested heavily in developing our VoIP technology and we share Invosys's ambitious plans to capitalise on the impending changes to the voice market in the UK and beyond."

Invosys co-founder Peter Crooks added: "Invosys's wholesale channel is already experienced in hosted telephony, so we know our offering needs to be commercially viable while including access to features and services not currently available from our competitors.

"With support from Telux we've created something in line with our philosophy of devising feature rich services that are simple to set up, easy to use and priced competitively. Ultimately, we believe that Invosys Hosted can shake the market up and become an important part of what we do."

Telux remains at its Manchester city centre offices and the two companies will continue to operate as separate entities.

Pictured above (l-r): Rob Booth, Murray Leach, Rosie Moth (Telux) and Peter Crooks 

T-Systems and NFON have partnered to create a new UC bundle called 'Dynamic Services for UC NFON Enterprise'.

The service is designed for companies from 100 extensions and comprises the TC system within the NFON cloud, scheduling of voice into public networks with Quality of Service as well as individual and network access from the customer site to the MPLS of T-Systems.

Up to three devices can be attached to each extension. For example, one workplace telephone and one soft client both on the PC as well as on the mobile device.

"Companies that want to keep up with a visibly dynamic and ever faster advancing digitisation must enable their employees to go with the high speed of both the competition and the technological progress," said Patrick Molck-Ude, Managing Director Telecommunication Division at T-Systems.

"Contemporary collaboration tools are becoming an enabler for innovation in the digital age. Even if technology accelerates the introduction of new business ideas and models it is still people who actually develop and launch business ideas. Dynamic Services for UC NFON Enterprise is an important component in this."

"The services of T-Systems and NFON AG complement each other, we foster a partnership at eye level", added Hans Szymanski, Chief Executive Officer of NFON AG.