Comms Dealer

The deal registration schemes of multiple vendors can now be accessed by Tech Data resellers via a new streamlined Bid Portal.

Cathi Low, Director of SMB at Tech Data, said: "The idea is to remove all of the complexity and make it as easy as possible to apply for special bid pricing.

"Every vendor handles bids in their own way, making it confusing and time-consuming for resellers. The Bid Portal irons out the differences and provides customers with a single form to complete for all vendors covered."

Initially, around 15 of Tech Data's vendor partners will be covered by the portal, including HP and Dell. More will be added at a later date.

A reseller event hosted by Nimans, Microsoft and Yealink at the Belfry golf and leisure resort aimed to raise awareness of Skype for Business and its projected 250% growth trajectory this year.

Keynote speaker Ian Woolner, Microsoft's Skype for Business Development Professional, was joined by Ian Brindle, Head of Conferencing and Telephony Sales at Nimans, and Yealink General Manager Steve Watts.

"Globally, 75 million people work from home, there are 600 million mobile workers along with one billion office cube spaces," explained Brindle.

"Full collaboration of voice, video and content sharing is the way forward with Skype for Business revolutionising the way many people work."

Pictured: Ian Brindle and Steve Watts

Pennine stalwart Geoff King (pictured left), Product and Services Director, has retired following the sale of the business to the Nycomm Group.

He joined Pennine in 1984 as a technician and after a series of promotions became a board member in 2004.

Following King's departure Pennine named Stephen Duffy as its new Group Head of Technical Services, reporting to former Pennine MD Andrew Roberts who now sits on the Nycomm board.

Duffy (pictured left) is a Fellow of the Institute of Science and Technology and brings over 26 years experience working in IT and technical services.

He joins Bury-based Pennine from the Higher Education sector, moving from the Manchester Metropolitan University where he was Head of Technical Services responsible for 200 staff across 35 technical teams.

Duffy's previous experience also includes a stint at the University of Manchester where he was responsible for the School of Electrical Engineering and Electronics' £200m estate, including the development of its specialist teaching and research facilities.

"Through the knowledge and experience I bring, I aim to make a significant contribution to the continued success of a fast growing business," said Duffy.

Zen Internet has been awarded Public Service Network (PSN) accreditation for its IP VPN product, allowing the independent connectivity provider to offer services to the public sector, including local authorities and NHS hospitals.
 
PSN accreditation recognises that Zen's infrastructure and protocols are sufficiently robust and secure to safely carry sensitive public sector data.

To demonstrate this, Zen had to achieve CESG Assured Service (Telecoms) certification - known as CAS(T) - and undergo an IT health check. 
 
Jon Bauer, Zen's Technical Director, said: "PSN accreditation will give us the opportunity to support a whole new sector. 

"But what is equally important is that it shows all our partners how seriously we take the security of their customers' information and data. Our network, and the management that supports it, have achieved the high standards expected of a public sector supplier."
 
PSN accreditation comes on the back of a major investment in Zen's core network and an expansion of the company's on-net presence to over 500,000 postcodes, covering nearly every corner of the UK.

iHub and Panasonic Business have launched a joint hosted telephony offer including Panasonic SIP handsets with iHub's BroadSoft based hosted voice platform.

Steve Day, CEO at iHub, said: "We have seen the requirement for bundled minutes decline as fast as the costs of minutes.

"This proposition is provided on iHub's latest BroadSoft voice platform that is fully virtualised and geo resilient."

Panasonic Group Sales Manager for the UK Bob Mercer added: "The way telephony is bought is changing, with strong choices in traditional bundles or hosted solutions. Panasonic has developed a SIP telephony range to meet the needs of this market and we believe that this collaboration helps do just that."

Operator and vendor revenues for the year ending September 2016 reached $148bn across six key cloud services and infrastructure market segments, a 25% annual increase, reckons Synergy Research.

IaaS and PaaS services had the highest growth rate at 53%, followed by hosted private cloud infrastructure services at 35% and enterprise SaaS at 34%.

Synergy Research also said that 2016 was notable as the year in which spend on cloud services overtook spend on cloud infrastructure hardware and software.

In aggregate, cloud service markets are now growing three times more quickly than cloud infrastructure hardware and software.

Companies that featured the most prominently among the 2016 market segment leaders were Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, HPE, Cisco, IBM, Salesforce and Dell EMC.

Over the period, total spend on hardware and software to build cloud infrastructure exceeded $65bn, with spend on private clouds accounting for over half of the total but spend on public cloud growing much more rapidly.

Investments in infrastructure by cloud service providers helped them to generate almost $30bn in revenues from cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS, hosted private cloud services) and over $40bn from enterprise SaaS, in addition to supporting Internet services such as search, social networking, email and e-commerce.

UCaaS is also growing steadily and driving some radical changes in business communications, observed Synergy Research.

"We tagged 2015 as the year when cloud became mainstream, and I'd say that 2016 is the year that cloud started to dominate many IT market segments," said Synergy Research Group's founder and Chief Analyst Jeremy Duke.

"Major barriers to cloud adoption are now almost a thing of the past, especially on the public cloud side. Cloud technologies are now generating massive revenues for technology vendors and cloud service providers, and yet there are still many years of strong growth ahead."

Across seven key enterprise infrastructure segments vendor revenues for the last four quarters declined by 1% on an annualised basis, claims Synergy Research Group.

Aggregate revenues for the last four quarters reached $88bn, with revenue in each of the last 12 quarters typically in the $20-23bn range.

Data centre servers comprise the largest segment of the market though revenues here declined by almost 5% in 2016.

Switches and routers are the second largest segment and they experienced growth of 1%.

WLAN grew the most while the enterprise voice and telepresence markets continued to be challenged by aggressive price competition and market disruption.

According to Synergy Research Group, Cisco is the market leader in six of the seven segments with the exception being data centre servers, where it is ranked fifth.

In aggregate across the seven segments Cisco's market share over the last four quarters was 33%, in line with its share in the preceding four quarters.

HPE is the leader in data centre servers and is the number two ranked vendor in both switches and routers and WLAN.

Its aggregated market share over the four quarters was 16%. The number two ranked vendors in the other segments are Dell EMC (enterprise data center servers), Avaya (enterprise voice systems), Juniper (network security), Microsoft (UC applications) and Polycom (telepresence).

Vendors who have been achieving steady market share growth in these competitive markets include Palo Alto Networks (network security), Arista Networks (Ethernet switching), Huawei (Ethernet switching), HPE (WLAN) and Dell EMC (servers).

"Cisco continues to control a third of the enterprise infrastructure market and remains in a league of its own despite a variety of challenges," said Synergy Research Group's founder and Chief Analyst Jeremy Duke.

"HPE is the only broad-based competitor to challenge Cisco's dominance though it does not compete in all of the major segments.

"The main disruption to the market is being provided by the growth of cloud and hosted solutions, which are redefining markets and enabling new competitors to emerge."

Cardiff-based thevoicefactory is set to realise its international expansion ambitions following a funding boost that enables the firm to address opportunities in the United States.

Knight CF advised thevoicefactory on a significant debt funding package from Finance Wales that also allows the hosted telephony provider to increase its headcount and strategic focus.

Paul Billingham, Director at Knight CF, said: "thevoicefactory is a fast growing company but was constrained by a lack of funding. We knew that an injection of cash would enable the business to recruit new people, invest, and most importantly free up management resource so key staff could focus their time more strategically."

Paul Harrison, MD, thevoicefactory, added: "Knight ensured that we could secure the required funding with no disruption to the business."

Business owners wanting to sell-up should focus on preparation, planning and executing on a clear strategy to maximise value, according to Adam Zoldan (pictured), Director at Knight Corporate Finance, the comms and IT sector M&A specialist.

To underline his point he cited the firm's role in advising the shareholders of Freedom Communications on its disposal to GCI, saying Freedom displayed a classic growth model that all would-be exiters should aim to replicate.

"Freedom Communications is a forward looking company offering a range of services from traditional PBX, hosted voice and latterly Skype for Business," said Zoldan.

"Ultimately, its strategy and ongoing investment in people, products and expertise paid dividends, with GCI being the successful bidder in a competitive sales process.

"The price paid fully recognised Freedom's strengths in the public sector and expertise in Skype for Business that would help cement GCI's position as a leading Microsoft partner."

Zoldan said the deal offers a neat blueprint and that the mechanics of Freedom's growth engine should become standard across the industry in terms of strategic vision, planning and process.

"Freedom had a strategy and identified a specific type of customers together with a next generation service," he added.

"It invested time and money in building presence and expertise and was able to successfully execute its strategy.

"When it came to exit it was clear this investment had paid off with stiff competition among buyers that wanted to build scale in the public sector and leverage their Skype for Business expertise."

According to Zoldan, there are clear signs that 2017 is set to continue the high level of sustained deal activity witnessed during the past year.

"Well funded buyers are acquiring and financial institutions will continue to investment in the sector," he added. "We have a fascinating range of deals in process and look forward to further announcements in the coming months."

VoIP over VDSL is a long-term risk to business continuity despite many company leaders rating the technology as adequate.

The crux of the issue is a lack of QoS guarantees for VDSL which leaves businesses vulnerable to poor voice quality with no route to resolution, according to comms provider Spitfire.

Spitfire says the situation is set to worsen as more public Internet services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix and digital TV are prioritised.

And users wanting to upgrade to Ethernet connectivity for VoIP can be faced with deployment lead times of up to a year for Ethernet circuits.

The answer, says Spitfire, is a complete end-to-end SIP service run over a wholly owned IP and TDM infrastructure.

Harry Bowlby, Spitfire's joint MD, commented: "Businesses that choose a VoIP solution without appropriate QoS guarantees are gambling with their future. VoIP over VDSL is a significant potential risk to UK business."

Graham Lewis, Spitfire's Director for IP Engineering, has written a white paper on the issues raised in this article.