Comms Dealer

Node4 has appointed Ian Millward as its new Head of Channel Sales. He brings over 17 years of sales leadership experience to Node4 with previous positions including Head of Sales at Networks First and Head of Sales Performance and Projects at Kcom.

His experience of working with partners of all sizes will be invaluable as Node4 invests in its channel strategy to maximise short and long term growth.

"There is a huge opportunity for Node4 when it comes to the channel as partners want to work with vendors that provide high quality solutions with strong differentiators," commented Millward.

"Node4 has seen significant growth in its channel business and my role is to build on this success and to further develop our Partner Programme."

Paul Bryce, Business Development Director at Node4, added: "Ian is passionate about sales professionalism, sales performance, business transformation and customer experience. For us he is a perfect fit for how we want to do business with our channel partners, and his experience is going to be invaluable in developing and expanding Node4's existing channel programme."

Eclipse Internet has launched Eclipse Partner backup, the first of many new cloud services for partners under its Eclipse Cloud portfolio.

The Eclipse Partner Backup service is designed to provide intuitive and responsive access to data, via a simple subscription based service and Partners have the flexibility to create their own backup propositions to resell to end customers through the new Partner Backup Console.

With access to bespoke storage quotas and licenses, the console enables Partners to custom build packages for their end customers and to sell at the price points that they choose.

Henry West, Head of Sales at Eclipse Internet, said: "Most customers know us primarily as a connectivity and communications provider, and although this remains of the utmost importance we can't ignore that as technology evolves cloud services are moving to an everyday reality.

"Now is the time to get on the growth curve of cloud services and there is a real opportunity as there is now a genuine demand for these services - look at how they have developed in the home with subscription services such as Netflix and Love Film. There is a real on-demand economy and as a result, a new, smarter way of working.

"We want to enable our Partners to go to market quickly with these services and with no large upfront investment. By easily enabling the provisioning and management of these services via our Partner portal and Partner Backup Console, we can continue to focus on great support and the customer experience to deliver the high level of technical and customer support to our Partners."

Norbain has appointed Gary Rowden as Divisional Director of Sales - South. He joins the company with industry experience having worked for Anixter International as Sales Director and, more recently, Samsung Techwin Europe as Sales & Marketing Director.

Rowden is no stranger to Norbain having previously worked for the company for eight years as a Regional Sales Manager.

Charlie Lacey, Norbain's Sales and Marketing Director, commented: "We're delighted to welcome Gary back to Norbain. He brings with him a wealth of experience having worked in both distribution and in manufacturing, and we're looking forward to using his insights to continue to drive Norbain's sales, particularly in the IP market."

Rowden added: "It's a great opportunity to be able to work at Norbain again. The business has moved on considerably in the last 12 months, especially in its approach to IP, which is now a key focus area."

UK-based ISV and cloud infrastructure management solutions specialist CloudFabricQ is gearing up to take on new partners.

As the company's software solutions (V-Maestro) support demand for analytical management and automation of virtual environments, CloudFabricQ says it plans to recruit systems and services partners that can integrate these solutions into their own portfolios and provide customer and business consultancy support.

The company, which follows a 100% partner-inclusive strategy, plans to reach out in particular to Linux-centric ISVs, server systems vendors, SIs and data centre-focussed VARs.

The most suitable environments for deployments of CloudFabricQ V-Maestro are power-constrained data centres and virtual machine estates, it says.

"Partners can expect to realise incremental margin from V-Maestro software and gain an opportunity to provide added-value services around it," said Steve Charnock, VP of sales and operations EMEA at CloudFabriQ.

The global telecoms industry's revenues will remain roughly flat over the next few years, with a decline in spending on voice services counterbalanced by growth in spending on mobile and fixed (broadband) data services, according to global analyst firm Ovum.

In a recent market forecast analysis report, it was found that as growth slows, market realities mean telcos must find ways to serve their existing customers profitability rather than simply growing their customer bases.

Shagun Bali, analyst for Telecoms Technology at Ovum and author of the report said: "Over the next five years, service and tariff innovation will be key revenue-generating strategies, while LTE rollout, network optimisation, and creative approaches to partnerships will become focal points for cost savings. Telcos need to monetize new business models, leverage customer data by investing in analytics, and define their response to over-the-top (OTT) players."

Ovum estimates that telco IT spending will reach $60bn in 2017, growing at a CAGR of 0.6 percent between 2013 and 2017. Growth in telco IT spending will be driven primarily by investments in packaged software and system integration.

Spending in emerging markets in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa (MEA), and South and Central America (SCA) will drive global IT spending. In North America, telco IT spending will grow modestly at a CAGR of 0.8 percent to reach $17.5bn by 2017.

Bali added: "Although overall telco IT spending will grow modestly, the trend is for telcos to reduce internal IT spending and increase spending on external IT projects. To control costs, telcos are outsourcing the maintenance of legacy IT and turning to trusted partners, both to implement unified and standards-based systems and software and to provide skills such as those of data scientists for Big Data analytics projects. Consequently, the overall addressable market for vendors will increase.

"The combination of middling profits, high capital requirements, high risk, and uncertain economic growth requires telcos to place their bets carefully, including investing in growing revenue streams and managing customer experience more than ever before. The result is increased opportunities for the IT industry. In the long term, telcos will place more focus than they have before on software to drive innovation."

Red Box Recorders has expanded its business development and technical support team in North America in response to increased demand for voice and data recording solutions in the region.

John Pace and Francis Etchie have been appointed as Regional Sales Manager and Senior Sales Engineer respectively to target sales opportunities within the emergency services, call centre and financial services sectors.

In his new role, John Pace will utilise more than 15 years of experience within the recording marketplace to drive sales growth having held a number of roles for Cybertech and Dictaphone. Most recently he spent almost five years as Regional Sales Executive for Cybertech responsible for the direct and reseller channels in the Northeast and across Canada.

Prior to this he worked for over 10 years at Dictaphone selling technology solutions to call centres, public safety dispatch centres, financial trading floors and healthcare organisations.

Meanwhile, Francis Etchie will be tasked with supporting business development within the financial markets. This will include managing and developing pre-sales proposals, demonstrations and presentations, as well handling integration with various trading turrets and PBX systems including IPC, BT Netrix, Speakerbus IP Trade, Cisco and Avaya.

He possesses 14 years experience working for financial services organisations as Telecom Manager for Crédit Agricole Corporate & Investment bank and before this IT Manager for BNP Paribas Asset Management.

Lee Jones, CEO of Red Box Recorders commented: "North America is a key growth region for the business, so we are investing in our resources to ensure we are best placed to provide recording solutions that help overcome the precise challenges of our customers."

Japan-based NTT Corporation has announced that Gyron Internet, an NTT Com group firm and the UK's data centre service provider, plans to double UK server room area with a construction of a new data centre in UK Hemel Hempstead to meet a growing demand, it says.

The data centre market in the UK increased by 20% y/y in 2012 due to a strong demand from media and telecom industries, according to the company. Therefore it expects the demand for hybrid cloud services will be further growing and will attract more service providers to the UK's data centres.

The new facility will be located at a 38,500 square-metre site near the two other data centres that also belong to Gyron. It will provide around 10,000 square metres of server room by spring 2015, more than doubling the total server room area in the UK, NTT says.

The new centre will be equipped in chillerless cooling systems and is expected to reduce NTT Com's environmental load. Additionally, it will provide a hybrid cloud environment that combines on-premise systems, colocation and NTT Com's Enterprise Cloud to better meet customer demand and optimise ICT systems.

What is more, the connections between Gyron's three Hemel Hempstead data centres will allow them to operate essentially as one data centre.

Blackberry lost nearly $1 billion last quarter and taking the company private was the only option left for the company, according to Frost & Sullivan's Lawrence Lundy.

"Going private will give the company room to reorganise away from the glare of the markets. In order to survive Blackberry will need to pull out of the handset and mobile OS markets. Blackberry will no longer be a consumer company, it will be an enterprise security company," he said.

"Before it overreached and attempted to compete in the consumer market, Blackberry was the first choice for corporate IT departments. Apple and Android manufacturers, namely Samsung, have been improving their enterprise offerings of late, meaning that Blackberry is no longer the default option for enterprise. If Blackberry is to survive it will need to go back to its roots, and hope that it is not too late.

"Blackberry still has a strong brand around the world, an industry leading security system and relationships with many of the world's largest companies. By focusing on Blackberry Enterprise Services and extending Blackberry Messenger (BBM), and making these services available across all platforms and devices, the company can continue to exist albeit in a much smaller form. This will enable customers to meet the needs of their employees with devices they want, with the security and control required by IT.

"With Nokia retreating into network communications equipment, and Blackberry to move into enterprise security services, the two biggest names in consumer mobile phones just five years ago are no longer. The technology industry has always moved fast, but the speed at which companies can rise and fall has become dizzying."

Lancope has appointed Tim (TK) Keanini as its new chief technology officer (CTO). He will lead the company's technology architecture toward software-defined networking (SDN) and will be responsible for product roadmaps, it says.

He has over 25 years of network and security experience at the companies such as Cisco and nCircle. He joins Lancope from nCircle where he served as CTO of Network Security. Prior to that, he worked at Morgan Stanley and at Cisco as systems engineer as well as he advised on the design and architecture of their data networking infrastructure.

"TK possesses an incredible amount of industry expertise and has a burning passion to help us further define the evolving market requirements to keep our products and services state of the art. Between his time spent with Cisco, his impactful tenure as CTO of nCircle, and significant contributions to various security standards and patents, TK has always stayed on the cutting edge of security. We are honoured to have him on board as we continue to improve today's position of cyber security one customer at a time," says Mike Potts, president and CEO of Lancope.

Lancope is a specialist in network visibility and security intelligence solutions.

Yorks-based cloud services provider Vapour Media has signed an exclusive long term agreement with TalkTalk for fibre and EFM connectivity.

Tim Mercer, Director of Vapour said: "To deliver Vapour's NxG voice platform and SaaS propositions to our resellers we realised the requirement of our own network infrastructure, owning our own network is essential and has enabled us to control and manage the quality of service and cost required for resellers to win business."

Vapour has built its own fully managed MPLS network with interconnects into each of the four tier 1 carriers. "SMEs are disappointed with slow broadband connectivity not living up to the promises given, with Vapour's lower price entry, SMEs are now opting for our fibre or EFM, through our resellers," said Mercer.

Vapour is backed by significant VC funding and is looking to grow rapidly and is going to add another 100 partners in the next 12 months. It aims to do this via significant investment into a partner incentive scheme, through training, marketing and support to win business with resellers.

Mercer added: "Traditional voice, PBX or mobile resellers realise that change to cloud services is finally happening and that to run this next generation technology SMEs will need faster more reliable connectivity.

"Presently a large proportion of SMEs run all their business activity on a standard broadband connection, this will change over the next few years and SMEs will require more reliable connectivity, with a better class of service, improved SLAs, with the ability to deliver voice, data, and Internet across one dedicated always on connection."

Charles Bligh, MD, TalkTalk Business, added: "Vapour brings a new and exciting opportunity for TalkTalk Business, and by offering its own cloud voice platform we believe the partnership will enhance both of our network footprints across the UK.

"Fibre and EFM connectivity is a compelling proposition for customers who require higher capacity and resilience and will create significant opportunities for revenue generation and business growth. We look forward to watching Vapour become a significant network access provider within the next 12 months."