Comms Dealer

Resellers with great ideas on how to boost their Microsoft software business but lack the cash needed to turn their brainwaves into strategic action have received a welcome opportunity from Westcoast.

The distributor is on the hunt for clever ideas from its partners and has launched The Big Pitch, an initiative that gives resellers the chance to claim up to £10,000 of funding from Westcoast to be put towards marketing activities.

Ben Feurtado, Westcoast's Microsoft Business Manager, said: "We're looking for unique ideas that are going to turn heads and have an impact. Most of us know the pain of having a really promising idea, only for it to become a non-starter due to budget constraints. But with up to ten grand up for grabs, the Big Pitch can overcome that frustration.

"It's an investment that gives anybody who sells Microsoft a stellar opportunity to propel their business. We know we can count on our partners to come up with some cracking marketing initiatives."

To enter, resellers need to send their ideas and complete an application form by March 10th 2017. Westcoast will respond to all entries submitted within seven days, letting partners know whether they've been successful or otherwise.

Resellers contributing ideas must be prepared to match the amount of funding that is provided by Westcoast. All marketing activity needs to be completed by the 12th of May 2017.

Wetherby-based Vital Technology Group has brought in four new members of staff to bolster its business development and account management teams.

Ben Dean, Kieran Philipson and Brice Morrow join Vital's academy programme, while Adam Oddy brings 12 years experience in designing, delivering and supporting unified, hosted and mobile communications solutions for businesses.

Lee Evans, Vital's founder, said: "We've bolstered our business development team as part of our plans to accelerate growth and double our turnover in the next financial year."

Pictured (l-r): Brice Morrow, Ben Dean and Adam Oddy

Colt Technology Services is the latest telecoms and data services firm to add a network-optimised Microsoft Azure cloud to its portfolio in Europe.

Azure is being offered through Microsoft's ExpressRoute private networking offering via Colt's On Demand portfolio Dedicated Cloud Access (DCA).

DCA is designed to offer intelligent, secure and reliable private connectivity to the public cloud, allowing customers to bypass the internet.

DCA On Demand supports connectivity from the Colt IQ Network into the Azure cloud platform in real time, avoiding traditional telco service delivery processes, which 'could take days or weeks to enable new services', said Colt.

The Colt offering follows NGD's Cloud Gateway for Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, which went live at NGD's Cardiff Capital Region data centre late last year. And IT distributor Arrow and data centre operator Equinix are also now jointly offering Azure services via ExpressRoute across Europe.

Clive Longbottom, an analyst at Quocirca, said: "As organisations are beginning to discover, the future is hybrid cloud. With different workloads requiring different platform capabilities, more organisations will be looking to specialised providers in which to house or run certain workloads. But being at the mercy of the public internet is not a good idea. The use of specialised and dedicated interconnects, such as Azure ExpressRoute, provide the means to create the required optimised overall platform."

With the new Colt service, customers can benefit from per-hour pricing plans, as well as more traditional fixed term contracts, it says.

The On Demand service is initially available at Microsoft's ExpressRoute locations in London, Dublin and Amsterdam, with future plans to enable existing ExpressRoute interconnects in Tokyo and Frankfurt, said Colt.

A brand new presence in Paris for Colt On Demand services is also planned in 2017. Rajiv Datta, Colt chief technology officer, said: "Public cloud services have long been associated with scalable, flexible capabilities, and our On Demand offering really brings the network into the cloud era.

"This addition to our On Demand portfolio underlines Colt's position of challenging the status quo of traditional providers with innovation and flexibility."

Mikkel Riis, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft Azure, said: "The cloud is driving transformation through new business models, easy global expansion and reach, and accelerated time to market. Collaborating with Colt to bring ExpressRoute to customers is a core part of these attributes and values."

Colt said it will announce the roll-out of DCA On Demand for other leading cloud service providers, to 'allow enterprise customers to enjoy a consistent experience across multiple cloud platforms'.

More than 5,000 enterprise buildings and 200 data centres globally are currently eligible for On Demand connectivity to Microsoft Azure, said Colt.

A demo day staged by networking and surveillance firm D-Link at Nimans' Trafford Park Trade Counter shone a spotlight on the high-potential CCTV security market.

There are as many as six million security cameras in the UK and D-Link expects the industry to expand by a further 15% this year.

The demo day showed how resellers can be part of a growing industry where security solutions in education and general business sectors are gaining significant traction.

"The open day was a compelling way for resellers to understand how they can capture new sales success in security surveillance," said Judith Addison, Networking Solutions Business Manager at Nimans.

ThreatConnect, provider of an intelligence-driven defence platform, has secured an agreement with BT to integrate its platform into BT's Security Threat Intelligence service.

"After experiencing success in the UK for some time now, this agreement represents a game-changing leap forward for us in the UK marketplace," said Adam Vincent, ThreatConnect CEO.

"Now, with the ThreatConnect platform supporting the organisation, BT can use cross-industry insights and historical context to narrow in on the threats most relevant to each client for fast mitigation."

Kevin Brown, vice president, threat intelligence at BT, said: "Being ahead of the game and proactive in identifying and addressing cyber threats early is key to survival and success for any organisation today."

Hosted UC provider thevoicefactory (tvf) is advancing its global expansion ambitions with the launch of a second data centre in the USA.

The move precedes plans to secure a presence in the Asia Pac region next year and coincides with its seventh anniversary.

tvf now covers 21 European countries and has a particular focus on vertical sectors including hospitality where it intends to have hundreds of hotels live by the end of 2017.

Since it began its commercial life in 2010 tvf has doubled revenues year-on-year and in March moves to larger offices in Cardiff. The company also plans to launch a new website that reflects its progress.

MD Paul Harrison said: "The UC market is booming and thevoicefactory is positioned as a truly international hosted telephony provider.

"We are seeing demand for robust global unified communications that allow corporate telephony to move securely to the cloud, remain 'fit for future' with predictability of costs and services for many years to come.

"Working with select partners, we aim to bring continued innovation and exciting revenue generating solutions to the market."

Incorporating open APIs and test lab tvf's BroadSoft platform enables services to be delivered from the cloud in a global ready solution.

Westcoast has signed a distribution agreement with Juniper Networks that enables it to offer the full range of Juniper's networking portfolio including data centre, firewall and mobility solutions.

Westcoast MD Alex Tatham said: "Having Juniper on board as a vendor brings us a huge opportunity for growth and fits with our strategy around hybrid IT solutions as well as bolstering our security offering."

Westcoast has invested in its enterprise capability over the last 12 months, creating a new field-based Enterprise sales team that works with partners on joint business planning, sales enablement, co-marketing and other bespoke services.

The distributor also set up a dedicated internal sales team focusing on partners with established or developing solutions businesses.

Councils run the risk of productivity and efficiency losses if they fail to update their printing fleets, according to Annodata which has observed that local authorities moving to the cloud rarely included print in their migration strategy.

A Freedom of Information (FoI) request was issued to 79 local authorities throughout England to determine the adoption of cloud-based solutions in the public sector. The results reveal that while 58% of councils are using the cloud to some extent, only 6% have implemented any form of cloud-based printing.

Rod Tonna-Barthet, CEO at Annodata, commented: "Cloud has a great deal to offer the UK's public sector due its ability to improve efficiencies, drive cost savings and increase flexibility.

"Although there seems to be mounting interest among councils in the cloud delivery model for certain aspects of the IT estate, the findings reveal that there are still great strides to be made when it comes to migrating the print estates over to a cloud-based environment.

"The printed page is, undoubtedly, still an integral element for the day-to-day functions of England's councils, but with inefficient printer estates that often consist of many different devices, these organisations may very well be leaving themselves open to a deficiency in cost-savings and productivity."

TalkTalk Business today announced the results of its first survey into the UK business adoption of IP Voice services.

The research, carried out with Censuswide, into the attitudes of 1,000 decision makers within UK businesses found that 96% of companies that had adopted services such as Hosted Voice or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking had reduced their total telephony costs.

Ahead of the switch-off of traditional ISDN telephony (i.e. telephone lines which run independently of internet connections) in 2025, TalkTalk Business' research found that key motivations for companies making the switch were down to reducing costs, having greater flexibility, and being able to provide futureproof unified communications.

Reducing costs was the biggest draw, with 55% saying they switched to IP Voice to reduce telephony costs across their business. For the 96% of businesses that made a saving by switching, the business case from a purely cost-based point of view was a no-brainer. Those that had made the switch reported saving 35% on total telephony costs versus their old ISDN lines. 1 in 4 firms said that making the switch had cut their telephony costs in half.

Cost savings are far from the only motivation for businesses making the switch to Hosted Voice and SIP, however. Flexibility both within the organisation and for future business growth were important considerations when adopting these cloud based telephony solutions. 24% reported adopting SIP to enable more flexible working opportunities within their business, while 31% said they had adopted the technology in order to expand their company to new locations more efficiently.

Unlike ISDN, SIP also allows businesses to quickly add or remove additional lines, which has proved popular amongst the 48% of UK businesses that reported paying for telephone lines that they only use for part of the year.

Finally, the research found that businesses were adopting IP Voice services to improve efficiency now and future proof for new technologies in the future. 20% of those surveyed said that they had adopted it to 'stay ahead of the curve' and 32% to create better unified communications.

Technologies such as SIP, by being more reliable, can also help businesses prepare for the future by reducing the possibility of costly telephony outages. Censuswide's research found that the average business loses £24,621 for every hour their phone systems are down, with the average loss of communications lasting eight hours.

Despite the urgent need to start replacing ISDN, over one quarter of UK businesses are still not aware of the upcoming switch-off in a few years' time. Similar to the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, or when television moved from analogue to digital, organisations need to start preparing now. By moving to IP Voice, organisations can avoid unnecessary disruption and start taking advantage of savings and scalability right away.

Guy Miller, Director of Next Generation Voice at TalkTalk Business commented: "IP Voice products like SIP Trunking and Hosted Voice are essential for businesses looking to not only reduce telephony costs, but also adopt more modern approaches to work, such as those offered by collaboration and unified communications tools.

"Organisations that have made the switch to IP Voice (including Hosted Voice in addition to SIP) have more than justified the business case they made when it comes to reducing costs. Moreover, they've also deployed reliable systems that will reduce the chance of costly outages and provide them with futureproof technology, ready for the workforce of tomorrow."

Bath-based Cloud Direct has bagged its fifth IT business in 20 months, snapping up Microsoft CSP Connect Support Services.

The deal follows Cloud Direct's acquisition of AlwaysOn in January and adds 300 more customers to its base along with Microsoft skills in Azure, Office 365 and hosted desktop.

Previous acquisitions include Redblade in July 2016, ihotdesk in December 2015 and Datel Business Systems in June 2015.

Brett Raynes, founder and CEO of Cloud Direct, said: "We've been helping businesses move to the cloud since 2003 and continue to invest in cloud services that help small to mid-size organisations become more competitive, productive and agile, mainly through our expertise in cloud migration and management

"Connect Support Services brings great people with a great ethos, enabling us to drive better business continuity, people productivity and infrastructure for customers."