Comms Dealer

Distributor Mayflex is gearing up for the April opening of a training, meeting and demonstration facility in Maxim Business Park, Eurocentral (near Glasgow).

The facility will feature a M-Tech product demonstration area, as currently operated in London and Birmingham together with space for training sessions, meetings and presentations.

Tracey Calcutt, Marketing Manager, said: "As our field-based teams, customer base and product offerings grow, the need for a resource such as this situated close to our customers has increased too.

"Our M-Tech demonstration areas in London and Birmingham are popular, enabling customers to see firsthand the solutions we offer. We expect this 3rd M-Tech to be just as useful."

The demonstration and meeting areas will be made available to Mayflex customers where this resource can add value when presenting, demonstrating or discussing project specific points.

Sean Donaldson, Director of Sales for the Infrastructure range of products, added: "We have recently extended our Excel BDM team in Scotland and North East of England, so this addition to our sales armoury comes at an ideal time."

ICT suppliers can now offer their services through G-Cloud 9 (G9), the latest and 'best' iteration of the G-Cloud framework which opens the door to public sector opportunities for cloud service providers of all sizes.

According to UKCloud's CEO Simon Hansford (pictured) G9 is 'the best iteration yet' with improvements coming from consultations carried out by the Government Digital Service and Crown Commercial Service.

Hansford's high expectations for the success of G9 are reflected in UKCloud's just launched channel recruitment campaign to cultivate greater collaboration with more partners on public sector business.

The company launched its partner programme in November 2016 and has so far given circa 120 partners a leg up onto the G-Cloud Framework. "We're committed to continuing this momentum via G-Cloud 9," stated Hansford.

UKCloud has offered cloud solutions via G-Cloud since the Framework first went live in 2012 and has supported more than 465 partner projects across the UK public sector.

Hansford expects the improvements made to G9 to be the catalyst of more sales from a wider range of market sectors. He said buyers will be more receptive to a sharper emphasis on suppliers' security credentials and a slicker buying process through granular service categorisation, all helped along by simplified terms and conditions.

"IT companies wanting to break into the UK public sector market must be familiar with and overcome specific requirements when it comes to assurance, connectivity and commercial governance," added Hansford.

To help ambitious IT suppliers break into the public sector UKCloud offers a G-Cloud 9 check list, a 'How to Submit' guide and a Q&A forum that provides guidance on achieving the required security credentials, and the best ways to address the security questions that form part of the G9 submission process.

8x8 continues to make strong gains north of the border as it marches shoulder-to-shoulder with newly promoted Scottish Gold partner Exsel.

The Glasgow-based reseller joined forces with 8x8 one year ago and hit the ground running, putting in a sales performance that has been rewarded this month with an elevation to Gold status in 8x8's partner programme.

Exsel sold less than 50 hosted seats a month prior to its hook-up with 8x8, a partnership that within six months catalysed a sales boost that more than doubled revenues and registered an increase in ARPU.

In the full year since forming their partnership Exsel has gained more than 100 new customers including Loch Lomond Golf and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

The partnership is expected to push Exsel towards its 30% annual revenue growth goal and 4,000 seat per annum target.

Tom McDonald (pictured left), Exsel Group MD, commented: "We've seen some strong results working with 8x8 since 2015 and we're confident this latest step in our relationship will yield even greater rewards."

Charles Aylwin (pictured above), Director of Channel and Public Sector at 8x8, added: "Working with fast growing and motivated partners like Exsel is key to our strategy for growth."

Gold partner status gives Exsel more sales support and access to marketing development funds, building on the 8x8 Academy and existing partner support.

Exsel has witnessed particular success in reselling 8x8's Virtual Office, Virtual Contact Centre and EasyContactNow.

"8x8's software is born in the cloud so end users can use any device without the need for third party add-ons," added McDonald.

"This is particularly important as the growth of remote and flexible working means that most users expect to use the software on their phone."

Two months ago Exsel Group won £0.5m backing from private equity company Coralinn LLP.

The investment will create circa 50 jobs and fund new offices in Edinburgh and Ireland, adding to its existing offices in Glasgow and Aberdeen.

Comms-care has added three more Microsoft competencies taking its tally to eight Golds and four Silvers, making it the most highly accredited Microsoft channel-only service provider in the UK.

Included in Comms-care's recent achievements are two new competencies: Windows and Devices (Gold) and Collaboration and Content (Silver), while Comms-care has also upgraded its competency in Cloud Productivity from Silver to Gold.

Simon Day, Professional Services Director at Comms-care, said: "Achieving 12 Microsoft competencies showcase both the depth of our ability and our commitment to today's technology market. It also demonstrates our deep knowledge of Microsoft as a business and its technology."

Following 45.09% international sales growth per annum over the last two financial years and international sales of over £9m in 2015-2016, LA Micro has been ranked at number 67 in The Sunday Times Lloyds SME Export Track 100.

The company has grown significantly since it began its commercial life in 2004, having quadrupled the size of its premises and tripled its workforce in the past four years achieving a forecasted turnover of £24 million in 2016-17.

LA Micro's founder and owner, David Bell, said: "We have built our reputation for the service we provide through word-of-mouth, in turn attracting more business both domestically and internationally as customers become more aware of us and what we do."

The league table ranks Britain's top 100 small and medium-sized companies with the fastest growing international sales of between £5m and £25m in their last financial year.

Exclusive Group has restructured following two key promotional appointments. Julien Antoine, currently Group Director of Global Operations, is taking the new position of VP of EMEA while Will Smith, currently Group IT Director, increases his scope to become Group CIO.

"Our long-term success has always been centred on the ability to anticipate and adapt to disruption without diluting any of our value, and these important new positions will safeguard these strengths as we scale to new levels," said Barrie Desmond, COO of Exclusive Group.

Mike Ridgway (pictured) has been appointed Commercial Director of Mobile at Elitetele.com having completed an earn-out period that followed elite's acquisition of Qualitel Voice and Data in April 2014 where he was MD.

Qualitel became Elitetele.com's mobile arm and under Ridgway's leadership generated significant growth, achieving £4.m revenue in the 14 months to July 2014, £4.3m for the year to July 2015 and £6m for the year to July 2016.

Elitetele.com COO Russell Horton stated: "Mike has successfully led growth in his division and is on track to double gross margin over the three years."

Telecoms administrators and users have been given more control over their monthly spend following the launch of a customisable alert service by Bamboo Technology Group.

"Mobile network providers typically only alert end users once they reach 80% and 100% of their usage limits respectively," stated Bamboo MD Lorrin White.

"The specific nature of the alert - such as the usage threshold which triggers the alert, how it is delivered etc - is often fixed by the network provider and cannot be configured by the customer beyond turning the alert on or off.

"Crucially, these standard alerts are only sent to the end user when they have exceeded their allowance, but not to the bill payer (the mobile administrator).

"By enabling our customers to tailor the alerts they receive to match their own needs, while ensuring the administrator is never out of the loop, Bamboo is addressing all of these elements."

The new alerts - part of Bamboo's standard service wrap - can be configured to run across the entire account, set in batches (by department or cost centre) or defined against an individual user.

"Regardless of declining costs across the industry, Bamboo continues to experience companies with unexpectedly high bills," added White.

"Endusers are often unaware of their usage levels, with many of them travelling in and outside of the EU with no administrative controls set to monitor and manage costs.

"Combine this with the trend of businesses consuming more data than ever and you can see that monitoring the individual usage of mobile users has never been more important.

"While spend management and automated barring isn't for everyone, it's a solution that is too often requested 'after the fact'.

"The launch of our alerts service is one of many new customer-centric features and builds on the significant investment we have made as a company."

Livingbridge-backed Metronet (UK) has secured an immediate foothold in London's vibrant super-fast connectivity market following the acquisition of fibre network provider Venus Business Communications. The deal follows Metronet (UK)'s £47.5m purchase of Internet infrastructure and hosting company M247 in October 2016.

The acquisition adds £7.8m revenues and advances Metronet (UK)'s ambitions to build a national platform with last mile control as well as a transit network across Europe.

The addition of Venus brings six new data centres to the Group's network that now connects to the key UK data centre locations and 14 global Internet Exchanges.

The combined entity employs 230 people across six sites including Manchester, Newcastle, London and Bucharest, and supports almost 34,000 customers across 92 countries, delivering revenues of circa £50m.

Venus was founded in 2005 by Brian Iddon and Justin Keery and serves central London and the City with high high speed fibre at up to 10 gigabit/sec.

Livingbridge first invested in Metronet (UK) in June 2014 as part of a £45m secondary buyout of the firm.

Follow on funding to support the Group's acquisition strategy and the investment in Venus has been made by the Livingbridge 5 fund.

Matthew Caffrey, Partner at Livingbridge, said: "The neatly complements Metronet's existing capabilities and will enable the business to build a wireless network in London on top of Venus' core transit and last mile fibre capability.

"Metronet's national services now include connectivity applications across the wireless and fibre spectrums as well as voice, security and hosting and we are very excited about the Group's continued growth prospects."

Lee Perkins, Chief Executive at Metronet (UK), added: "Venus has the same entrepreneurial and customer-centric culture as us so I have no doubt that it will be an excellent fit with our business."

Brian Iddon, Director and Founder at Venus, noted: "I have known Lee and the team for a number of years and feel that Metronet is the perfect fit for us as we look to build on the strong momentum we have generated to date."

Sensing the mid-market shift towards cloud adoption Avaya has targeted this high growth sector with the launch of new cloud solutions and signed ScanSource as its first EU wholesale provider for cloud comms. The cloud offering, which sits under the banner 'Powered by Avaya', enables channel partners to deliver the vendor's UC, contact centre and video conferencing solutions according to the deployment requirements of end users, whether on-premises, hybrid cloud or fully hosted.

Avaya is also working with wholesale distribution partners to deliver a complete cloud solution for partners including billing, provisioning and other back-end systems.

Partners have the option to host and maintain Avaya cloud services in their own data centres and sell directly to customers, wrapping additional services around the core product.

Powered by Avaya has already been rolled out with selected Avaya channel partners in the UK.

The UK's mid-sized businesses account for one-third of private-sector turnover, and added more jobs to the economy last year than smaller businesses and FTSE 350 companies combined, according to business advisory firm BDO.

Furthermore, the European cloud market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.2%.

Avaya UK MD Ioan MacRae (pictured) said: "The mid-market sector is the engine room of the UK economy, but is all too-often overlooked with vendors either focusing on larger enterprise customers or providing solutions that don't deliver the scalability, resiliency, and flexibility mid-market customers are looking for."

In addressing the market ScanSource will provide reseller partners with cloud solutions Powered by IP Office.

MacRae added: "By combining with ScanSource, we can more effectively reach the indirect channel, enabling resellers to leverage our cloud-based solutions and create offerings that meet today's digital business needs."

James Vickerage, President, ScanSource Imago, added: "This partnership with Avaya will enable us to give our partners the freedom to sell cloud-based solutions to their customers."