Comms Dealer

Scotland's £200m Fortis data centre located near Newhouse in North Lanarkshire is now live through Commsworld's gigabit capable pure fibre network.

The agreement will enable Scotland's independent network operator to offer the services of the low-energy, renewables powered facility to its 2,500 clients, offering a latency performance between Fortis to Glasgow and Edinburgh of one millisecond or less.

Gareth Lush, commercial director at DataVita, the company set up to operate Fortis, said: "Scotland is ready for a next-generation data centre. We have a thriving IT industry but we are lacking the data centres to support this fully, resulting in valuable investment and jobs going outside of Scotland."

The 100,000 sqft, 2000-rack facility is expected to create 50 skilled jobs over five years and DataVita is highlighting to potential customers the scope for a 40% reduction in power costs, and up to 95% reduction in carbon emissions.

Chief executive of Commsworld, Ricky Nicol, said: "In Fortis, Scotland is getting a data centre befitting the market and I believe its services will have a major positive impact within the business community.

"The term 'future-proofing' tends to get overused, but this data centre will do exactly that for Scotland's many businesses and organisations, as demand for digital storage services continue to surge."

Liquid infrastructure is a new technology trend resellers should be embracing this year , according to Mark Curtis-Wood, Head of Nimans Network Services.

He says there are a number of factors shaping modern working practices based around liquid infrastructure and more fluid and instant communication.

"For a long time we have been talking about mobility rather than just mobile services," he said. "We saw a tipping point in 2016 which caught a lot of people by surprise. We are not selling voice connections with data bolt-ons any more, we are now selling data connections with a voice element where needed. The whole thing has flipped on its head.

"The expansion and penetration of 4G has made solutions much more accessible with faster speeds and faster phone processors leading to faster applications and faster access to information.

"People are becoming more flexible in the way they are working and technology is leading the way. It's one of the reasons why we have launched 30 day mobile contracts because we understand businesses need to upscale, downscale, have people on temporary contracts and move people and locations around. This in turn has led to resellers winning more business because they can be more flexible.

"SIP is another important factor in liquid infrastructure as the flexibility of ISDN just isn't there. Generally there's a three year contract and long term investment. It's become very much a dinosaur. SIP has hit a tipping point because people can take a number with them, port and switch it on really fast.

"Instant communication is being driven by customers. A classic example for us was when the deployment of two very large data pipes into student accommodation on behalf of a reseller was delayed. We put 4G in there with 1TB of mobile data. You just couldn't deploy that sort of solution in the past so fast.

"The cloud is obviously another important element in modern working trends but it isn't new, it's just that the 'label' became new. For most customers the biggest decision they make is to move on-premise into the cloud. Once that decision is made it's almost like a tsunami of thought because they realise it's easier than they thought and also saves them money. So they are thinking what else they can do on top of that.

"That's why it's important that resellers and suppliers like us are geared up with a package of products that ultimately give them more flexibility than they have ever had before. Today's working world is becoming very fluid, very fast.

"Connectivity limitations stopped this happening before. Further investment in wireless connectivity by Nimans for example will further fuel this growth to enable solutions to be deployed faster and run over a shorter period of time. The barriers have been removed. True liquid infrastructure is here."

Atos company Unify has enlisted channel supremo Paul Cunningham to the role of Chief Marketing Officer with responsibility for all of the vendor's marketing activities for its OpenScape and Circuit solution portfolios. Cunningham also joins the Unify Executive Committee.

He brings over 25 years experience in ICT marketing to the role having worked in a number of organisations including stints at Oracle, Westcon, SaaS start-ups and freelance consultancy.

CEO Jon Pritchard said: "Paul's expertise and leadership will help Unify build on its foundation of solutions and services to drive demand and enable Unify to meet and exceed customer and partner expectations."

Cunningham added: "Unify, our partners and our customers stand to benefit from Atos' digital transformation for enterprises, which will in turn inform our Circuit platform innovation and help sustain our strong market position with OpenScape.

"This combination of people, solutions, services and routes to market is strongly positioned to meet the business challenges faced by organisations around the globe - now and in the future."

Channel Telecom's top partners were rewarded with a four day skiing trip to Meribel in the French Alps where they lived the high life with Michelin style four course meals, luxury chalets, a private hot tub and a sauna.

Channel Telecom's Head of Data services Stuart Burdett enthused: "Games, free flowing champagne and skiing awards kept us all more than entertained during the evenings. So much so, that aside from a visit to the famous Folie Douce bar in the afternoon after skiing, we didn't feel the need to go out!"

MD Clifford Norton added: "This, our fourth ski trip, is the traditional Channel Telecom way of thanking partner businesses for their continued support and outstanding service throughout the year."

Tenable Network Security is aiming to give its ongoing European expansion programme a boost with its Tenable.io partner ecosystem, which is designed to allow customers to have an improved view of vulnerability data.

"Solutions that exist in a silo fail to give security teams the visibility and context needed to accurately assess risk in a modern IT environment," said Renaud Deraison, chief technology officer, Tenable. "That's why Tenable.io was built from the start with openness and collaboration at its core, giving it the power and flexibility to meet the security needs of any business."

Tenable.io delivers an application programming interface (API) and software development kit (SDK) to help customers and partners with the export and import of vulnerability, asset, threat and other data. And Tenable is working closely with technology partners to deliver a wide range of pre-built integrations.

"As organisations accelerate their cloud migration initiatives, the new tools and applications used to connect to these dynamic IT environments also have the ability to expand the attack surface exponentially," said Adam Bosnian, executive vice president, global business development, CyberArk.

"The Tenable.io platform integrated with CyberArk privileged account security capabilities makes it easier for our customers to holistically manage and secure privileged application credentials, and consistently apply security policies across cloud and on-premises environments to reduce risk."

Pedro Abreu, chief strategy officer, ForeScout Technologies, said: "The proliferation of IoT devices connecting to the network significantly expands the attack surface and creates visibility gaps for enterprises. The ability to leverage complementary capabilities from Tenable gives our end customers the ease and flexibility to identify and mitigate threats faster, thereby improving their overall security posture and extending the value of existing security investments by interconnecting fragmented tools."

Starting in the US, Tenable says it now has more than 20,000 enterprise customers worldwide, with regional offices in the UK and Germany.

European channel expansion started in earnest with the appointment of Wick Hill - now a division of Nuvias - as a distributor in the UK almost two years ago.

Average selling prices are still falling in volume sales of desktop monitors.

Western Europe's largest distributors increased sales by +4% year-on-year in Q4 2016, according to the latest data published by CONTEXT, the European IT market analysis company. Growth in Southern Europe has been good, but the UK and Poland slipped back on last quarter's numbers.

The key areas driving growth have been low-end business monitors, predominantly 21.5-inch full-HD models, and high-end consumer monitors. The high-end consumer products pushing growth include curved screen and ultra-high resolution monitors such as WQHD and 4K, which are increasingly being used for gaming.

"Although there has been volume growth, revenues have been stagnant with no growth in Q4 2016," said Lachlan Welsh, Senior Analyst at CONTEXT. "This is partly because the high volume of low-end business monitors is depressing the average selling price. However, thankfully for the overall monitors market, sales in the high-end consumer segments are continuing to grow."

The gaming monitor market continues to grow rapidly. In the final quarter of 2016, sales were up +138% year-on-year, and market share was over 10%. The increases were driven by AMD's FreeSync monitors which accounted for nearly half of all sales in the sector.

In terms of vendor performance, HP retained its top position with an 18% share of the total market by unit, an increase of +23% on the same period last year. Samsung and Acer were the other members of the top three, with shares of 13% and 9% respectively.

Country Quarterly - Q4-16
Germany 2.5%
United Kingdom -1.4%
France 12.5%
Italy 10.1%
Spain 8.6%
Poland -14.6%
Netherlands 0.2%
Sweden -3.5%
Switzerland 7.9%
Austria -3.8%
Belgium -0.7%
Denmark 4.3%
Portugal 6.8%
Ireland 40.1%
Finland 18.8%
Norway -16.7%

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has handed over its 2016 partner accolades at its EUNO (North, Central and East Europe, Russia and Israel) Partner event staged in Warsaw, Poland.

The awards are a reflection of partner growth initiatives, innovation and collaboration opportunities with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise solutions over the past year.

The winners include:
Partner of the Year - Dimension Data Germany AG & Co KG
Project of the Year - Nokia Switzerland for the SBB Datacom NG project
Distributor of the Year - Komsa Kommunikation Sachsen AG
Network Partner of the Year - Ingram Micro AB
Unified Access Partner of the Year - Khipu Networks
Unified Communications Partner of the Year - Com plan + Service GmbH
SMB Partner of the Year - ALSO Deutschland GmbH
Vertical Partner of the Year - Taldor
Cloud Partner of the Year - Tele2 Business AB
Service Provider of the Year - Sunrise Communications AG

Rukmini Glanard, Senior Vice President EUNO, ALE, said:
"We are confident that 2017 will be another successful year as we continue to make great strides and work together to help our customers embrace digital transformation."

Canadian vendor Mitel reassured partners that its development roadmap was on track and future vision intact during its annual channel event staged in London, the first in a series of European conferences.

"The communications industry is changing rapidly and it's essential our partners are prepared and armed," said Simon Skellon, VP UK, Mitel.

"With Mitel's enhanced cloud, unified communications, enterprise and contact centre solutions, our partners can help power digital transformation.

"By integrating with an organisations wider IT framework and cloud-based applications, such as SFDC, Google, Evernote or Dropbox, Mitel helps businesses move towards a more seamless collaboration environment."

The London event was attended by 200 channel partners and customers who also heard the vendor launch a 'Move to Mitel' programme designed to capitalise on uncertain Avaya customers.

Nimans has lifted the veil on a new reseller support service that reflects the distributor's intention to become the 'logistics engine of the industry' for IP end points.

The company's IP delivery and support solution includes Compendium, an auto-provisioning and estate management service designed to unlock more business in the UC end point market, including Skype for Business opportunities where voice deployment is forecast to rise by 250% in 12 months, says Nimans.

In practice, resellers are able to access their own virtual warehouse and order any hosted handsets, including Skype for Business, in a way that saves time and money, claimed Nimans. Resellers can also move end points from one hosted provider to another overnight.

The service includes estate management, remote firmware upgrades, device tracking, buy-back and refresh programmes and WEEE disposal.

Ian Brindle, Nimans' Head of Conferencing and Telephony Sales, said: "At the heart of the new initiative is a portal that features a user interface for the creation, modification and monitoring of IP devices.

"Device status and logging are combined with topology and configuration management solutions from a central resource.

"It's not just about the delivery of the device but the whole journey from start to finish."

Organisations across the UK were seeking more IT staff than ever before in 2016, with job postings in the sector increasing by 10 per cent on the previous year.

The analysis, conducted by global IT industry body CompTIA and using stats from Burning Glass Labour Insights and the ONS, found that throughout 2016 there was more than 1.3 million IT job postings, which would equate to more than 1 in 10 of all UK job advertisements being for technology positions.

The size of the UK technology workforce has grown year on year, increasing by over 100,000 since 2012.

Graham Hunter, VP Certifications, Europe and Middle East at CompTIA, believes that the figures are the result of the continued technological innovation businesses are undertaking and highlight the high quality of the UK's technical capabilities:

"Businesses in the UK continue to become ever more reliant on technology and these results highlight that firms are looking for staff to help them meet IT demands in the 21st century. Most organisations now need tech savvy employees across the workplace and not simply in the IT department, which goes in part to explaining the continued increase in demand.

"It is also positive to see that Brexit fears are not deterring organisations from the UK market. Recent announcements, such as Snapchat basing its international headquarters in the UK and Google saying it will create 3,000 new jobs and a new London headquarters, highlights that the UK is seen by companies as a place of technological excellence. This will ensure that demand for technology focussed staff continues and will help maintain this impressive growth span in jobs that we are seeing.

"We now need to ensure that the nation is producing enough talent with all the skills and capabilities to fill these rolls, in order to continue this trend and demonstrate the UK's stance as a tech leader."