Comms Dealer

Channel only distributor Pragma has reinforced its commitment to its growing partner base by announcing a range of new products and support initiatives to address market disruption in the years ahead.

During the company's ‘On Course for Success' partner conference held at the famous golf venue The Belfry this month, the Pragma team underlined the strength of its partnership with manufacturer Ericsson-LG (ELG) which aims to satisfy customer demands for on-premise, hybrid or cloud communications solutions and a seamless upgrade path across all three.

Ahed Alkhatib (pictured above), VP of Global Sales at ELG Enterprise, told the 150 plus partners who attended that the success of last year's launch of ELG's iPECS Cloud solution, initially through Pragma's channel in the UK, had enabled partners to move into hefty mid-market opportunities and had helped Pragma achieve 30 per cent growth for the second year in succession. "The UK was a launch platform for iPECS Cloud and the growth has been astonishing," said Alkhatib. "Cloud is where the growth is and the applications and mobility sector is also growing. I would say that if you are not seeing this in your business, change your dynamic."

However, ELG and Pragma remain totally committed to on-premise applications too as Alkhatib confirmed. "On-premise business will decline by one or two per cent by 2019, but it's still worth £5 billion dollars globally," he said. "There is now a fragmented approach to solutions - no one size fits all - and none of our competitors have the cloud, hybrid and on-premise solutions we have in our kit bag."

Alkhatib pledged ELG's continued investment in on-premise solutions while adopting a comprehensive cloud evolution programme giving partners the opportunity to address SME and mid-market opportunities via ELG's Virtual UCP private cloud solutions, which Pragma Sales and Marketing Director Will Morey described as a 'massive step forward for partners'. And picking up on the flexibility theme, Morey said Pragma was perfectly placed to help resellers prioritise on the customer experience.

"Being digital is a challenge for you and your customers trying to adapt to new technologies," he told delegates. "You are seeing leads from social media and data is driving the decisions you are making every day. Flexibility enables us to compete and win. Some customers may want cloud, some will want on-premise, some will want a solution tailored to their needs and others will just want the cheapest. We can offer iPECS in the cupboard, in the data rack, in the cloud or anything in between. It's the same proposition. Cupboard to cloud is now at the heart of many reseller propositions."

"We are also delivering UC and mobility on top of our cloud solutions. Mobility and collaboration are key to any comms solution. Work is no longer a location. We can provide a consistent solution delivered on all mobile or desktop platforms. It's about access to data, knowledge and insight. It's not just about providing comms, it's about putting data at the fingertips to improve the customer experience. It's about analysing the touch points and enhancing the customer experience delivered through applications. We can integrate into these applications at a business process level to create a stickier relationship."

This was the cue for Daan Donders, founder and CEO of new Pragma partner SO WIFI, to explain how partners can get any businesses with footfall involved with their customers via its high end Wi-Fi solution, which through social media gathers visitors' personal data including age, gender, email address, location and behaviour. "You'll get insights into exactly who your customers are and build contact lists of proven visitors faster than ever before. This is not conference waffle. Everyone in this room is delivering," he said.

At the Pragma Partner Awards event finale Conceptunet (pictured left) secured the New Reseller of the Year Award for its private cloud deployment across 80 sites and 3,000 users for Oxleas Health Trust. Overall Reseller of the Year was Focus Group.

Timico is preparing for its second year as sponsor of National Hunt's Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup and as a new national sponsor of Point-to-Point amateur horse. 

The IT company became the official sponsor of the Cheltenham Gold Cup at the end of 2015 in a four-year deal which awarded Timico preferred supplier status to The Jockey Club's portfolio of 15 racecourses.

Following a successful first Cheltenham Gold Cup last year, Timico decided to invest in grass roots racing.

Its Timico Mixed Open Series which began in January will culminate in a new Timico Mixed Open Gold Cup Final to be held at the Hunter Chase evening at Cheltenham Racecourse, the Home of Jump Racing, on Friday 5th May.
 
Tim Radford, Non-Executive Director at Timico, said: "Having sponsored some of our local Point-to-Points we were keen to take this commitment further, effectively creating a Gold Cup final for the amateur division.

"For Timico, being involved in racing sponsorship is a win-win. It gives us the opportunity to promote our brand to a national and international audience, and offer our colleagues, clients and suppliers the chance to be part of a hugely exciting sport.

"We wanted to offer a series that could act as a launch pad for top Point-to-Point horses that might progress into a career in professional racing. We see investment in grass roots racing as a positive step to support the sport and the owners, trainers and jockeys involved within it."

 Billing firm Union Street Technologies has set the dates for its upcoming 'streets Ahead' roadshow that will provide a launchpad for a new product, demos, tips on best practices and the lowdown on upgrades to Union Street's cloud infrastructure (underpinned by Microsoft Azure) that hosts aBILLity.

The roadshow stops at Glasgow on May 23rd, Newcastle May 24th, Bristol June 27th and London June 28th.

 Head of Sales and Marketing Vincent Disneur (pictured) said: "The roadshow is an opportunity for Union Street to show its reseller partners the latest developments and how they can help partners to boost profitability and efficiencies."

Commvault's incoming Director of Alliances for EMEA Ed Baker has pledged to strengthen partner relations across the region and bolster the firm's Alliances Programme.

He brings over 20 years of experience to the role and was previously Director for Data Centre Incubator Sales EMEAR at Cisco where he was responsible for building sales and technical teams.

Bruce Park, Vice President of EMEA for Channels and Alliances at Commvault, said" "With Ed's proven experience building teams and forging alliances with some of the biggest players in the industry, we will be able to offer more data management solutions and tools."

Baker added: "This role provides an opportunity for me to add real value for our customers by simplifying the way Commvault's offerings can be integrated into wider partner delivered service offerings."

A flexible pay-as-you-go option offered by Nimans and Unify has been welcomed by resellers keen to provide full OpenScape Business functionality based on a per-user-per-month licensing model.

The proposition scales up to 1,500 users and can be delivered as an on-premise server-based solution, using a designated data centre or via a hosted service provider of choice.

"The new solution provides the best of both worlds and offers resellers an entry into cloud-based technologies," said Marcus Yates, Unify Solutions Business Manager at Nimans.

"There's been lots of interest around this flexible product set. The first webinar attracted over 120 registrations which demonstrates the reseller appetite."

Channel-only comms provider 3CX has lifted the lid on PBX Express, a web-based wizard that enables users and resellers to set-up a PBX system in a cloud of their choice for free.
 
The solution is targeted at small businesses that need a low cost but fully fledged cloud PBX.

Customers can choose their SIP trunks, devices and system features such as softphone and smartphone clients for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android; presence, chat, and integrated video conferencing; along with unlimited extensions, eight simultaneous calls and five web conferencing participants for free.
 
Nick Galea, 3CX CEO, said: "The PBX Express makes deploying 3CX in the cloud easy. Most importantly, it allows users to leverage one of the many high quality yet low cost cloud providers."
 
An eight step process helps customers to create a new PBX installation hosted on Google Cloud, Amazon, OVH or any Openstack-based VPS provider.

Users have same features, settings and management available as offered with 3CX's existing on-premise and cloud versions.
 
"With the PBX Express tool resellers can set-up a dedicated instance of 3CX under their own account at one of the main cloud providers and fully manage it for the customer," added Galea.

"3CX partners no longer need to invest in hardware and dedicated servers to setup a complex multi-tenant 3CX installation."

ICT solutions developed by hotel sector provider FCS Computer Systems have been rated as fully compliant with NEC's hospitality proposition.

A new agreement between the vendors sees them target the EMEA market with solutions such as a billing interface, voicemail, job dispatch, engineering, housekeeping, glitch management and more, all tested and integrated to work with NEC's range of IT and communications servers and available to order through NEC's business partners in EMEA.

In the lead up to full launch FCS VP for EMEA Eric Rogers worked closely with NEC's EMEA Director of Hospitality Kees Van Donk to help accelerate the Japanese vendor's push into the 'smart hotel' space.

"The partnership is now in full effect and I am looking forward to working closely with NEC's Hospitality team and the wider NEC partner family to support this new agreement," said Rogers.

Van Donk added: "This partnership with FCS is a valuable addition to the solutions we offer in our NEC Smart Hospitality Framework."

Nimans has urged hospitality resellers to check out a new hotel management application brought out by NEC and targeted at 2-3 star establishments.

The InHotel inbuilt solution offers a one-off licensed based cost, check-in/out and wake-up call, message waiting and toll restriction, billing and invoicing, multiple/concurrent users at no extra cost, and a dashboard view of all rooms.

"InHotel is one of NEC's InApps, a range of applications which are built-in to the system," said Nimans NEC Solutions Business Manager, Yvonne Tierney-Neave.

"This makes them easier to sell and manage as they are cost effective since no extra PC or server is required."

The hotel application forms part of a NEC reseller training programme running throughout the year.

A comparison website rolled out by DMSL enables partners to more quickly compare and contrast the supplier and service provider options offered by the distributor.

Resellers can also present the service under their own name on a white label basis.

DMSL is operating a virtual sales team whereby each partner has their own 0330 number with all calls routed to DMSL's sales staff who answer in the reseller's name before explaining the options to prospects.

Straightforward orders will be placed on the reseller's account while more complex solutions will be passed on to the reseller.

"There is a multitude of options now and one of the challenges resellers have is trying to keep up-to-date with what's available," said MD John Carter.

"The website will always have the latest information, making the sales process easier and helping resellers to sell more broadband, voice and mobile. DMSL's account team will be available to help resellers close the sale."
 
Carter also noted that DMSL will conduct a SEO campaign to drive traffic to the main site, and he urged resellers to run their own campaigns within their target markets.

IPCortex is set to build on its partner numbers with the appointment of David Farrell (pictured) to a New Business Development role. He brings over 10 years experience working with hosted service providers and resellers.

"The IPCortex Service Provider Platform is growing 100% year-on-year, driving our existing partners' recurring voice revenue and related services such as connectivity," stated Farrell.

"Hosted comms is no longer just the remit of small businesses. Feature rich platforms and embedded comms are moving the conversation away from the dial tone."

IPCortex CEO Rob Pickering added: "There's never been a better time for ISPs and existing ITSPs to re-evaluate the solutions they're presenting to the market and get more from hosted comms, whether it's increasing the size and spend of their average deployment or enabling new opportunities. David joins us at an exciting stage in this pivotal moment of our business and the market."