Comms Dealer

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

A rapidly growing law firm has called on the expertise of a local telecoms provider to respond to a surge in business and use Internet-based technology to quickly open up a new contact centre.

Blackburn based solicitors Curtis Law has expanded its workforce from two to over 150 since its inception just five years ago.

With a steady increase in personnel again this year, the company has recently opened the new inbound call facility at its headquarters with the help of neighbouring company Abbey Telecom.

The telephone systems installer has introduced a new network of secure, resilient and clear lines by utilising the law firm's existing internet capabilities. This means new sets of lines can be made active within 24 hours, providing the flexibility to quickly meet the rise in customer enquiries.

Curtis Law Solicitors Enterprise Manager Ish Ahmed explained: "We needed a reliable supplier and a strong B2B relationship to move ahead with the various new business enterprises that would help Curtis Law Solicitors continue its expansion. Due to Abbey Telecom's locality, our work history, and the fact we have grown together over recent years, they were the natural choice.

"Since the installation of our inbound call system we've not experienced any problems and the client care from Danny Pickin and everyone at Abbey Telecom has been second to none."

The new system will give the company the scope and flexibility to meet longer term growth plans and quickly add new lines when they need them.

Abbey Telecom sales manager Danny Pickin said: "We have been handling the telephone systems for Curtis Law Solicitors for several years now, maintaining technology between its Blackburn, Manchester and Middlesbrough offices and adding new lines to cater for their rapid growth in personnel.

"Our latest task was to quickly open up a contact centre for them with 30 additional lines which incorporate an automated system, inbound routing software and call recording facilities.

"With the growth they are experiencing and the number of clients they now serve, it made sense to advise them to utilise and build on their Internet technology rather than opt for traditional phone lines."

Distributor Northamber has reported a pre-tax loss for the year - £1.05 million, compared with a profit of £37,000 a year ago .

Chairman David Phillips said: "Without dwelling or delving into the core causes, our foresight and focus over recent years was to move away from 'empty revenue', a term I have repeatedly used in my reports to shareholders, as the cash value of margins continued to fall, while growing our non-PC hardware based revenues. However, we were outpaced by the severity and speed of the latest downward twist in the spiral."

The direct effect of the unexpected acceleration in the downturn of demand, on stock turns, prices and margins for PCs on the Group's sales, resulted in revenues for the year ended 30th June 2013 falling by 23% from £100.6m to £77.5m.

"While we managed our gross margins to be near stable at 7.6% from last year's 7.8%, responsive delays to the revenue shift were unavoidable," he added.

"The reduction in turnover necessitated reduction in both staffing and overheads. We had to make costly redundancies during the year, which will result in ongoing savings of some £800,000 and are the major element in achieving more immediate reductions in our total overhead of approximately £850,000."

The necessary restructure of the cost base, product focus and staffing, had a considerable effect on resultant pre?tax result, Phillips noted.

He added: "The true role of the distributor is one of a wholesaler enabling the fulfilment of demand and wholly dependent on decisions made by prime vendors over which it has no control. This is particularly true when it is the major vendors who are the primary innovators and drivers of manufactured technologies, products and demand.

"The company's strategy is dependent on perceiving opportunities within the actions of major vendors and whose actions are at present unclear. Therefore, I am unable to give a clear view on the immediate way forward for the company. Our strength, as always, lies in our liquidity and our balance sheet."

Outsourcery's top Premier Partners (including Freedom Communications, Damovo, Neptune and IP Solutions) are to benefit from the CSP's latest partner programme, InFlite.

The educational programme aims to provide everything these partners need to either launch or continue to grow their cloud business.

Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery said: "Many of our partners are approaching the cloud for the first time and often there can be an underlying nervousness when incorporating something new into their service offering.

"InFlite has been developed to address this exact scenario. We've created an all-encompassing programme so partners have a dedicated resource to go to for support during the process of moving to cloud."

Later this month, partners will gain access to Outsourcery's new InSite Partner Portal. With InSite, partners will be able to access marketing collateral, sales material, support and communications as well as provision their customer solutions via this self-service portal.

InSite will act as a one-stop-shop for info accessible via a single sign-on.

"For many businesses that have already 'gone cloud' and committed to working in partnership with us, turning this decision into tangible sales of cloud solutions is not always a straightforward step, which is why this extra support from Outsourcery to get them off the ground could be crucial to their success," Piers concluded.

Data centre operator Next Generation Data (NGD) has appointed Lee Cauchie as Head of Channel.

He is to ramp up NGD's UK and international channel sales through partnerships with service providers requiring colocation facilities for hosting web, cloud, infrastructure- and software-as-a-service (Iaas/Saas) solutions.

With his hardware, software, networks and security sales background, Cauchie is well equipped to drive NGD's channel business forward. He joins from LenovoEMC (formerly Iomega Corporation) where he was Business Development Manager and prior to this Sales Manager for IT distributor, ASBIS Group.

Since NGD launched its Channel Partner programme last year a growing number of UK and international service provider and reseller organisations have installed racks at its NGD Europe mega data centre conveniently located from the M4 motorway near Newport, South Wales.

These include such companies as UNIT4, Certus IT, Commercial IT, CAE, Surf Telecom, Netplan and TechQuarter.

"NGD Europe is proving to be a popular and profitable haven for channel customers of all sizes and I am very excited about the opportunity of recruiting many more in the months to come," commented Cauchie.

Tablets are ever more prevalent in the workplace, and while they are not usually a replacement for a desktop or laptop their capabilities provide opportunities for organisations to update and change their business processes, according to global analyst firm Ovum.

In a recent market report it was found that as the market for tablets grows, usage of these devices is contributing to a change in the way people work and having a noticeable impact on the enterprise. Whether through corporate provisioning BYOD, fast increasing numbers of tablets are being used to access corporate data and applications.

Richard Absalom, analyst for Consumer Impact Technology at Ovum and author of the report said: "Coupled with imaginative thinking around how mobile apps could provide new or improved processes in specific roles, tablet deployments have the potential to change the way that businesses operate.

"The primary challenge for the enterprise is to turn tablet usage into a genuinely transformative deployment, taking into account but not just reacting to demand from employees that are bringing their own tablet or want to be provided with one. "

Ovum's multi-market employee survey, conducted in 2Q13, found that 17.6% of employees had already been provided with a tablet by their employer, up from 12.5% in 2012. Of respondents that owned a personal tablet, 66.7% used that device at work. The number of personal tablet owners increased from 28.4% in 2012 to 44.5% in 2013. Given this growth, a fast increasing number of personally owned tablets are also being used at work.

"Even given the immaturity of the platform, tablet usage is fast becoming common practice in the enterprise, whether through BYOD or corporate provisioning," according to Absalom. "Although increasing numbers of employees are being provided with a tablet by their employer, the primary route for tablets into the enterprise is through the consumer/employee channel. Over 66% of employees who personally own a tablet use them for work.

A"The first step to a successful tablet deployment is to understand employee behaviour and activity. Employees are using multiple devices to access corporate data and content, and any tablet or mobility strategy must be set in this context."

Providing access to corporate data and applications should not come at the expense of data security, but it is also vital that a secure solution does not come at the expense of user experience. Doing so can ultimately be counterproductive as it turns users off from using the approved device or application and leads to them finding their own way of working - one of the primary drivers of BYOD in the first place.

"Whatever strategy an enterprise opts for, given the fast pace of change in the market and an environment where employees are using personally owned tablets regardless of their employer's official IT policy, generating ROI ultimately depends on getting deployments up and running quickly and understanding what does and does not work." concluded Absalom.