Comms Dealer

Telecoms, broadband and hosting company ICUK has unveiled version 11 of its control panel, incorporating a more responsive design as well as retina ready images and a new reseller homepage.

According to the firm responsive design means that every user on every device will get the same user experience whether they're on a tablet, a smartphone or a laptop, with the page resizing to fit your screen, without the need to zoom or resize pages.

The homepage now features drag and drop widgets allowing customers to arrange their homepage according to their own requirements and priorities. Customers can make use of a bookmarks tool which will enable them to bookmark pages within the panel which are easy to access from the homepage. In addition, it's now easier than ever to redesign your own control panel, or choose from an extended supply of ready made templates and add a company logo, to take full advantage of the white label solutions.

Paul Barnett, one of ICUK's directors said: "For ICUK resellers, the new panel means they will now be able to access information about their customers, or accounts while they're on the go, so they're not limited to working from home or a laptop to run their reseller business. We've applied our .simple strategy, and aimed to make it as easy as possible for all of our customers and resellers to keep on top of their accounts no matter where they are."

Azlan SDG, the value-added enterprise division of Computer 2000, is to distribute Avaya's full suite of business collaboration and communications solutions in the UK following the extension of an existing agreement between Tech Data Europe and Avaya.

Azlan SDG will be providing channel development and enhanced support services on Avaya's full range of telephony, unified and visual communications solutions including Radvision, as well as the Avaya Networking portfolio for IP, wireless and next-generation networks.

Paul Eccleston, MD EMEA at Azlan SDG, stated: "The addition of Avaya to the Azlan SDG portfolio opens up new potential for the channel to address the business communications needs of customers who wish to take advantage of the excellent performance, quality and innovation that Avaya solutions deliver. It will enable us to make use of both our solution building capability and our partner network to develop new opportunities for growth."

Thomas Veit, Senior Director, EMEA Distribution Channel at Avaya, commented: "The integration of the SDG business division into Azlan in the UK created an opportunity to extend Azlan into this territory. The joint Azlan SDG business has all the key skill sets we are looking for to drive the UK business into further growth."

Azlan SDG is preparing a full support and on-boarding programme and will be running a number of workshops and training sessions for both established and new Avaya partners.

Kcom, part of the KCOM Group, has signed a five year contract with Leeds United to help them manage ticket demands from their fans.

The communications business has upgraded the club's contact centre with the latest Avaya technology, allowing them to handle a higher number of ticket sales and enquiries.

The new contact centre facility is fully operational and has the ability to record and monitor calls so that Leeds United can measure volumes and quality of calls as well as plan around their peak call times.

Leeds United home ground, Elland Road, has the capacity to hold over 37,000 people. With 23 home league matches every season the number of calls per day can rise up to 700, which means having a dynamic contact centre that can manage large amounts of calls is essential.

Stephen Long, Managing Director at Kcom, said: "We understand how important it is to have a fully functional and reliable contact centre so that fans can easily get in touch to get their tickets for the next game."

Integra ICT has been selected by Siemens Enterprise Communications to promote its next-generation unified communications (UC) product suite to mid-tier organisations.

A European report undertaken by GE Capital has confirmed that mid market companies in the UK employ more than 1.1 million people and are responsible for over a third of private sector GDP.

According to a mid market report compiled by Ofcom, many mid market companies are not maximizing the effectiveness of their existing communications services, which is impacting overall efficiency and performance.

Siemens' new mid market UC offering, OpenScape Business and OpenScape Enterprise Express, has been developed to satisfy a growing demand for anywhere working and bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, both of which are widely offered by mid market companies to facilitate flexible working practices such as home working.

Siemens' next-generation UC solution is based on SIP technology, a signalling communications protocol used for controlling multimedia communications over IP networks. It synchronises different communications channels (voice, video, text, chat, email, social media and so forth) to provide businesses with a fully integrated communications solution and makes use of existing equipment such as handsets or cards.

It also manages these different channels and devices (laptops, Smartphones, Tablets) in real-time and seamlessly interfaces with commonly used applications (Microsoft Exchange, Google+ or hosted email services), giving onsite and virtual workers an easy and flexible way to manage their communications requirements.

Pas Ruggiero, CEO of Integra ICT, said: "We are pleased to be involved in this campaign. We have extensive experience of Siemens' product portfolio and a good relationship with their technical and support teams. It has always been our ethos to work in partnership with clients to implement systems and networks that are right for their specific needs. The different package options available with OpenScape will help ensure our clients' transition to IP telephony is a simple and straightforward process."

Quarterly data from IT recruitment site CWJobs.co.uk has shown that in the second quarter of 2013 both permanent (0.7%) and contract (1.3%) IT jobs have shown growth across all UK regions.

While London's 'Tech City' initiative is proving successful, and driving established companies and start-ups to set up in the East London area, this new data indicates that other clusters of technologies firms in the UK could be driving nationwide growth.

Year-on-year, vacancies in London have seen modest growth with 9,886 job vacancies posted in the quarter, a rise of 2.4% on the year. Vacancies across Scotland (7.9%), Southern England (4.6%) and the West and Wales (3.1%) are leading regional growth, providing opportunities for professionals working outside of the capital city.

In the west, Bristol has been positioned as a computer gaming hub, whilst Cambridge's "Silicon Fen" is acclaimed to be roots of many of Britain's most influential technology companies. Meanwhile, Scotland has been making it's name as a technology start-up capital[1], being home to a number of budding companies which are making moves to become influential industry players, such as SkyScanner, the fast growing online airfare tracker.

Richard Nott, Website Director, CWJobs, stated: "As investment in technology firms increases, there is less need for professionals to be based in the capital city, giving professionals the opportunity to work across many different regions. This is good news for the industry and for the prospects of IT professionals across the UK who may no longer need to consider re-locating to get the best jobs. As IT's position as an inherently 'networked industry' grows, it's likely this trend will continue."

TalkTalk Business has chosen KEMP Technologies as its exclusive load balancing partner for Microsoft Lync deployments. Microsoft-approved KEMP LoadMaster appliances will now be supplied with all TalkTalk Business Lync systems to ensure high-performance and availability of integrated voice and data services IM, video, web conferencing and collaboration.

By adding hardware load balancing, traffic can be shared across Lync servers and will automatically re-route and reconnect users to other functioning servers, if a server becomes slow or inaccessible. This will guarantee application uptime and optimise user experience, says TTB.

"There is increasing interest in Microsoft Lync solutions and we see hardware load balancing as a key component for enterprise-scale deployments to ensure the highest levels of performance and resilience," said Paul Rodgerson, Lync product manager at TalkTalk Business, which holds the Microsoft Communications competency for deploying Microsoft Lync. "KEMP was an obvious partner for us, as its hardware and virtual appliances are Microsoft approved for use with Lync, offering excellent price and performance."

Channel Telecom recently held a roundtable dinner event in Edinburgh for its partners to get feedback on the latest additions to the product portfolio now being offered by the fast growing provider of business network services. The prestigious dinner was held at the Michelin stared Castle Terrace restaurant.

Hosted by Matt Donaldson, Channel Manager and Steve Yates, Partner Account Manager, the roundtable dinner provided Scottish partners with an opportunity to discuss latest developments in the company's service portfolio including hosted telephony, SIP and data services. The roundtable dinner is the latest in a series of consultation events that Channel Telecom conducts with its partner community throughout the year.

Entanet is participating in the Department of Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS)'s Broadband Connection Vouchers scheme which allows companies in the Phase 1 SuperConnected Cities of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Salford to get financial help when they subscribe or upgrade to superfast connectivity services.

The scheme, announced by the DCMS as part of the UK government's Urban Broadband Fund, is making vouchers available to companies with fewer than 250 employees and turnover below £40 million to cover set-up and installation fees worth between £250 and £3,000. It is being run as a market test project from 5th August until 30th September 2013 and Entanet is encouraging its partners to promote availability of the vouchers as a way of driving new orders.

Entanet's Product Manager, Paul Heritage-Redpath, said: "SMEs are the lifeblood of the UK economy and every business now relies on network connectivity to communicate with their customers. We're delighted to support anything which helps hard-pressed businesses succeed. It's also good to see that the scheme recognises the importance of stability, not just headline speed, for business connections. We'll pass what we learn from this short pilot to our channel partners, who may be interested in applying as suppliers themselves to support their local business community, should the scheme be extended to more cities.

"SMEs all over the UK can benefit from faster connections, so we hope the test project is a success and that we'll subsequently see the voucher scheme extended to other parts of the country. We'll be ready to support our ISP and reseller partners in delivering new connections and upgrades when that happens."

The channel has recognised the change in the buying patterns used by customers and is adapting. Among other things, there has been an influx of smaller managed services players (MSP), often in niches, says that latest CA Technologies Channel Index 2013. The study found that 60% of partners have become or started to become full MSPs.

Customer IT budget cuts were named as one of the biggest challenges faced by 69% of CA Technologies surveyed partners, way ahead of the 58% who cited profitability as a challenge, and the 47% who named competition.
Managed services are already being provided by partners for service management (42% of respondents), infrastructure management (41%), backup and recovery management (39%), application performance management (27%), identity and access management (22%) and project and portfolio management (20%). Over the next year, about a quarter of respondents intend to introduce each of these services (from 23% to 28% of respondents, depending on the service).

Talking to IT Europa, UK&I Sean McCarry, Senior Director, CA Technologies says: "Two priority areas for IT investment emerged from this research: enterprise mobility and cloud. Enterprise mobility is becoming increasingly more widespread, providing customers and employees with new and convenient ways of accessing enterprise applications. With this comes added complexity to the IT environment and new challenges to manage and keep the IT environment secure. There is budget there in customers, perhaps in other areas, and for the right patners, there is a good opportunity."

He was already seeing an influx of new MSPs, and CA Technologies had set up a "Centre of Excellence" to get them enabled. Distribution too had a role with the smaller resellers. It was necessary for the smaller channels to build every service they sell. And, he added, the pricing and margin in the specialist areas was often much better for the channel than that offered by the giant MSPs. "The mid-market is all about value in the channel. Smaller MSPs do well in countries and regions, where they can take the fear out of trends and provide usable services. SaaS allows much smaller MSPs to come in with no cpaital investment; we are seeing a lot of new ones , usually very focused."

The index revealed that 83% of CA Technologies partners in EMEA expect to see increased spending on enterprise mobility over the next year and almost all (93%) recognise that the rapid adoption of mobility creates opportunities to help grow their business. Among UK partners, this figure rose to 95%. Nearly two thirds (66%) of the partners surveyed predicted an increase in cloud computing spending over the next year. In the UK, a significant 81% of partners expected increases. The UK is ahead of the rest of Europe on the MSP side, says Sean McCarry. The UK is following the trend in the US, where companies face having lots of data and often the first way in for a partner is back-up, he says. This can prove the success of the model and other services can be wrapped around it.

Microsoft has decided to integrate its Windows Embedded Partner Program in the Partner Network, a reorganisation that will take effect by the end of the year.

This gives embedded device manufacturers, semiconductor vendors, systems integrators and other Microsoft partners a better chance in the growing market for intelligent systems, it says. IDC believes, in fact, it should weigh around $2.3tn in 2016.

"By consolidating offers and resources within the Microsoft Partner Network, Microsoft partners will have easier access to the tools they need, and whatever the product " Microsoft noted during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference held recently in the USA. Besides training, support tools sales and marketing resources, partners can benefit from the knowledge and experiences of 500,000 businesses who are already members of the network, it says.

A large community forum will be also available to them in order to gather information and identify business opportunities. The partners will also benefit from the rights to use certain products and software development kits. Four new specialisations will also make their appearance in the MPN, one of which will involve the design of intelligent systems. Finally, from January 2014 a Device Design and Developement Resource Center will open its doors and will be available by subscription to companies working in the design and development of embedded systems, especially helping newcomers to the market.