Comms Dealer

New initiatives to further drive demand for Polycom's products were devised during the inaugural Polycom Global Distributor Marketing Advisory Council, staged at the vendor's Executive Experience Centre in New York.

"The objective of the Council was to establish an understanding of how Polycom and its partners can better collaborate to deliver improved marketing and demand generation programmes," stated Runa Macleod, European Marketing Director, Westcon Convergence.

She also noted that the distributor had a global presence at the event with marketing representation from EMEA, APAC and North America.

"The Council gave partners a genuine opportunity to work together to collectively improve our joint business," added Macleod. "The Polycom team listened to their partners and I am excited about the results this initiative will deliver."

Pictured: Marketing Council attendees enjoy a cruise on the Hudson River.

On the back of a record Q1 during which group sales rose by over 60% year-on-year, Kelway has increased its presence in the north of England with a new northern HQ in Manchester, renamed and rebranded all of its UK and international businesses under the Kelway banner, activated a new digital hub and confirmed that the integration of the Equanet business, purchased from DSGI in April 2013, has now been completed.

"This is the result of a huge collective effort from Kelway's teams across the UK and further afield in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa," said Dan Laws, Managing Director of Kelway.

NeoCloud has introduced a no obligation free Vidyo trial account for resellers in a bid to offer resellers first hand experience of its hosted video conference solutions.

Resellers could also involve customers in the trial, demonstrating the benefits of hosted VC.

"We know with Vidyo seeing is believing, and once engaged you won't want to lose the most effective tool you have in your office," said a spokesperson.

Eight members of staff from distributor Nimans turned to pedal power to raise funds for Manchester's Christie cancer hospital.

They rode 62 miles from Old Trafford football ground to Blackpool - a journey that took between three to five hours for each cyclist to complete, raising over £1,500 for charity.

Nimans sponsored the group - who are all keen cyclists - providing branded T-shirts.

Avnet TS has become the first distributor in EMEA to provide Cisco UCS servers running the SAP HANA software platform.

The Cisco UCS for SAP HANA solution allows customers to perform real-time data analytics and data warehousing, while allowing expansion into SAP's other core enterprise applications on SAP HANA in the future.

"The in-memory computing market is set to expand rapidly in Europe as enterprises seek tools that will allow them to make informed business decisions at any given moment," said Miriam Murphy, senior vice president, Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA.

"We can install the SAP in-memory computing platform and ship the rack mounted servers in as little as three days from receiving an order on most models, placing our partners in pole position to address new SAP customers."

Avnet has already seen early success selling Cisco UCS SAP HANA to the TRAFFIX Group, a business partner headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.

Zen Internet has become an approved supplier to the Broadband Delivery UK vouchers scheme market test.

Initially the scheme will be run in four locations Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Manchester/Salford.

The market test phase will run from 5th August 2013 to the end of September 2013. Subject to the outcome of the market tests, the scheme could then be expanded to other cities, 22 in total, which are part of the Super-Connected Cities Programme.

The BDUK Connection Voucher Scheme provides financial support to end users for the purchase of high speed/high grade connectivity solutions.

The scheme will allow businesses and third sector organisations to approach registered suppliers directly - with the support of BDUK connection voucher funding - enabling them to upgrade their connectivity.

For the market test phase support will be available for up to a maximum of £3,000 (excl. VAT) for individual premises. The grant will only cover the initial installation cost of the connection. No on-going revenue charges will be included. The minimum grant amount available is £250.

Gary Hough, Regulatory Manager, said: "Fibre is the future and feedback from our customers confirms that fibre optic broadband performance transforms their Internet experience, not just by making their service faster, but by enabling them to try new applications that might previously have been out of reach."

Leeds-based IT reseller LDD Group has expanded its team with the appointment of the company's first apprentice.

LDD has partnered with Leeds City College in supporting the Advanced Apprenticeship Framework, employing Dewsbury-based student, Ben Carr as an Assistant Support Technician.

LDD approached Leeds City College after making the decision to recruit an apprentice, preferring to employ a candidate that would see real benefit from the opportunity.

Mandi Iles, Group Sales Director at LDD Group, said: "It's rare we have the opportunity to take on trainees, but as we wanted to increase business through offering support and maintenance to our customers, we felt the apprenticeship scheme was a great way of giving an opportunity to a candidate who was really looking to build a long term career in this sector."

A recent survey that revealed a reticence from UK business people to communicate with our European neighbours was off the mark according to G3 boss Tony Parish.
 
The survey found that nearly a third of UK businesses fail to see communication with Euro' markets as important and, therefore, only 46% report that their organization has solid structures in place for international communication.  
 
But Parish, who heads up the Aura Alliance and Mitel Communications Director Alliance which are aimed at helping resellers address business opportunities abroad, disagreed.
 
"From my point of view the UK probably leads Europe in communication with its neighbours.  In our industry ,which is dominated by US firms, the language is English, so we have a natural head start.  Because the technology we sell is becoming borderless there is much more need for international sales, hence the Aura Alliance and MCD Alliance. I think that this is a huge growth area, and we will be taking full advantage of this.
 
And Parish believes language is not a barrier. "Language skills are becoming more important but luckily for the English, English is the international langue of business, I'd advise on learning Mandarin ahead of French or German though!"

Distributor ICON has joined forces with vendor Spectralink to launch an attack on rival voice mobility solutions and its key weapons in the armoury are discounts on new kit and an aggressive rip and replace strategy.

The assault runs until the end of September and marauding ICON resellers can offer MRSP discounts for any customer that wants to swap out their wireless communications solution for a Spectralink KIRK DECT or VoWiFi equipment.

Mark Shane, ICON's Sales Director, commented: "Conditions apply, naturally, but in general if the kit has been provided by an approved manufacturer and is on the approved replacement list then resellers can probably get a discount on a new Spectralink equipment."

Channel Partners need to show proof of destruction or recycle the old equipment before the discount is earned, noted Shane.

"Showing proof of destruction is easy," he added. "All you need do is get a copy of the letter of Authentication from ICON, get it signed by the customer, and send it to us along with proof that the equipment has been destroyed. This could be as simple as a before and after photo."

BT Global Services' Diamond IP service and technology distribution company ASM Technologies have forged a distribution deal.

BT Diamond IP provides DHCP, DNS, and IPAM (DDI) software, appliance and managed services solutions, and through partnering with ASM Technologies in the UK and the majority of EMEA countries, BT Diamond IP's full range of IPv4/IPv6 address management product solutions will be available to a base of systems integrators and VARs.

BT Diamond IP is part of the BT Connect portfolio of products and services which enable customers to intelligently manage their data networks.

BT Diamond IP delivers integrated IP address management appliances, software and managed services for enterprises, service providers and governments.

The partnership with ASM will allow BT to concentrate on its own core Global Services customers while ASM and its resellers address markets not yet approached by BT Diamond IP.

IP address management (IPAM) tools are increasingly important as organisations manage multiple IP services and begin to plan and deploy IPv6.

IP underpins all communication over the Internet, and as IPv4 address space exhausts, IPv6 deployment is essential to ensure the internet's continued reliability and performance.

For enterprises this means they must ensure their infrastructure, services and applications are IPv6 compatible to support deployment of IPv6 address space, while maintaining their existing IPv4 infrastructure investment. IP address management tools help to manage this process.

"Deployment of IPv6 should be among the key target milestones for customers to keep pace with the continuous evolution of the internet," states Michael Dooley at BT Diamond IP and author of the IPv6 Deployment and Management book.

"Our most recent IPv6 industry survey suggests that over half of the world's enterprises are already deploying or plan to deploy IPv6 across all or part of their networks by 2015. This is a significant market opportunity as enterprises may require assessment, planning and deployment assistance to deploy IPv6 as smoothly as possible without disrupting their critical network infrastructure."

Iain Tomkinson, Sales Director at ASM Technologies, added: "The clock is ticking on IPv4 so there has never been a better time for enterprises to make the transition."