Comms Dealer

A fresh wave of technological innovation and a strong push for closer partner relationships has unleashed a new phase of intense activity within BT Wholesale, revealed James Hennah, Managing Director of Fixed and VP of Media and Broadcast.

In his 19 years at BT he seen the market move, but perhaps not so fast.

In a keynote address to Comms Vision delegates Hennah provided insights into the strategies behind BT Wholesale and Ventures, including a drive to broaden and deepen partner relationships, bring together fixed and mobile assets following the EE acquisition, while investing in portals and B2B gateways to integrate closer with the channel - all happening apace against a backdrop of technological advancements in areas such as G.fast+, 5G, optical services and M2M.

"Portal development in hosted comms has driven 200 per cent growth this year," stated Hennah.

Another hot topic, 'killing' telecoms fraud, is also in growth mode following the launch of an intelligent call analysis solution.

"And we're seeing growth from the economics of owning and managing platforms, which is a difficult and relentless task," added Hennah. "BT Wholesale has witnessed significant uptake of hosted Centrex and SIP lines, along with BT's integrated field services proposition."

Gamma's flexing of mobile muscle reflects a new campaign to give partners the clout they need to disrupt an outdated mobile industry, according to CEO Bob Falconer who delivered a lively presentation on day one of Comms Vision 2016. There is one sure way to take on the mobile market – give channel partners the power of customer ownership  – believes Falconer, who in partnership with Three has done just that.

"Over the past 20 years choice has been reduced," he stated. "We've broken the model with credible differentiated services."

Gamma is now a full MVNO having acquired a mobile core and invested millions to provide a converged services proposition.

"The reality is that we need control of fixed and mobile networks," added Falconer. "The mobile industry is now vertically integrated which means less choice for the channel and more control for the networks."

Richard Woodward, Chief Financial Officer, Three, told delegates that the business sector was an untapped market for Three and that it entered this space with a challenger mentality offering 'sensible wholesale terms'.

"Gamma is a vital part of Three's go to market and has access to our data network," stated Woodward. "We see the business market as ripe for change. Smaller, innovative challengers have been held back, but with Gamma we are shifting the market."

As Gamma marches into mobile territory with Three by its side Falconer's message to the channel is clear. "We give control to partners in real-time which is a great strength," he stated. "Gamma empowers partners to become thin MVNOs. We are also developing our own converged Horizon, SIP and mobile product to provide differentiated integrated services."

Comms resellers already providing value added services are in a prime position to attack the world's fastest growing and most profitable industry - software - according to Comms Vision speaker Hans Peter Bech, author and economist.

"Software is creeping into everything and the industry has low barriers to entry," he stated. "But software is situational, its value lies in its context and the volume of services resellers can deliver such as consultancy and operational excellence, creating customer intimacy."

Business leaders and staff alike have a vested interest in closing the gap between their near non-existent capacity as adults to think outside the box and their more creative past selves.

On the decline of creative genius, Jamie Anderson, academic, author and Comms Vision speaker, noted that our capacity to think creatively plummets from 98 per cent in the up-to-six year age group to next to nothing in fully fledged grown ups. "Just 2 per cent of adults think divergently," he said. "They stand to gain a bigger slice of more complex markets that require new thinking."

The innocence of new borns has been iconised since time immemorial. Less widely known is a child's innate capacity to think divergently, a powerful attribute that is all-but quashed by the passage of time and life experiences. According to Anderson, rediscovering our latent fount of creativity is the catch-all salve to today's key strategic challenges.

And his keynote address to delegates was a piece of pure inspiration as he examined the audience's capacity for creative thinking via a lively display of revealing tactics, some interactive, some slightly unnerving (such as sketching a portrait of the person sat next to you), all designed to help regain our long lost capacity for creative flair and
put some creative oomph back into delegates' businesses.

"What drives linear thinking?" stated Anderson. "Why do we think the way we do? Education and deeply ingrained habits condition our minds to think in a certain way. Our experience would be valuable in a linear environment, but the world is divergent therefore life experience can create barriers when trying to deliver results. We must be open to lifelong education and create an environment in which creativity is fostered.

"There is a difference between intelligence and creative thinking. The brilliantly intelligent can also be too focused and harbour a narrow field of view. We need liquidity in thinking processes to find many different perspectives, redefine the problem and build it into strategies. It's about sensibility, originality and flexibility.

"In a complex market we must develop business models that are different. It takes time to understand market dynamics and solve complexity, and we need the motivation to learn new skills, be curious about developing markets. Without curiosity we cannot learn. We must question our environments and cultures, take time to reflect, identify our inspirations and boost our creative thinking."

CityFibre has kicked off a new phase of construction as part of its Glasgow Gigabit City project that will see the city centre connected to its existing 31km pure fibre network in Glasgow.
 
Work has commenced on Ingram Street, Renfrew Street and Douglas Street, and will be expanding to bring next-generation, ultra-fast internet connectivity within reach of more than 7,000 businesses.

James McClafferty, CityFibre's Head of Regional Development in Scotland, said: "It is great to see our Gigabit City network now reaching the heart of Glasgow.

"Pure fibre connectivity and ultra-fast Internet services are already changing the way thousands of businesses operate nationwide and now Glasgow's business community will benefit too.
 
"A Gigabit City network will help support the city's growing demand for data, boost competitiveness and create new opportunities for digital entrepreneurs. The rise of digital is really transforming the way we live and work, but to keep up with trends and maintain Glasgow's profile on the world stage, we need the infrastructure to match."
 
Councillor George Redmond, Executive Member for Jobs, Business and Investment at Glasgow City Council, added: "This is a key development for Glasgow, with the greater network capacity and speeds that will come from this delivering great benefits for people and organisations all across the city. 

"We have made great strides in smart systems in Glasgow in recent years, and this will help us maintain our competitive edge."
 
CityFibre's launch partner for the Gigabit Glasgow project is HighNet which opened new offices in the city's St Vincent Street in August.

David J Siegel, Managing Director at HighNet, said: "High-capacity fibre connectivity backed up with a comprehensive Service Level Agreement enables transformative digital technologies to be introduced across all business sectors.  

"Even the basic elements such as reliable high-speed internet access and replacing copper phone lines with modern IP Voice systems can make a real difference to productivity, and it lays the foundations for new digital advances which can keep Glasgow at the forefront of commerce and cultural life in Scotland."

Pennine has scooped the Solution of the Year award from distributor Scansource.

The Bury-headquartered business won the title after it created a multi-site communications solution on behalf of a longstanding international client.

This saw Avaya's IP Office platform being installed at six main UK hubs and a further 20 satellite locations to serve circa 1,000 users.

Pennine's MD Andrew Roberts commented: "The client not only needed an effective and efficient communications solution to serve sites right across the UK, but swift implementation due to a recent contract gain."

In other news, Avaya has awarded Pennine Diamond Partner status.

TeleWare has strengthened its senior team with the hire of Lee Mansell as Product Manager with a primary focus on developing TeleWare's Customer Experience (CX) Analytics offering and TeleWare Communication Manager (TCM) solutions.

Mansell said: "In previous roles I've worked with TeleWare and used some of its products! I am excited to be joining the team and working with them to continue to develop the CX Analytics offering and product roadmap."

Steve Haworth, CEO, added: "This year has been an exciting one. We have forged some successful new partnerships, launched new products and product enhancements, and even achieved a world first when we routed, recorded and analysed a call solely through the Microsoft Azure cloud.

"We're not resting on our laurels and we have plenty more activities to come. Lee has more than 18 years experience in product management and deploying major software and we know he's the right person to help us maintain our momentum."

He joins TeleWare from Gamma where he was the Product Manager looking after Horizon. Prior to that, he worked at Intercall as Hosted UC Product Manager, and Rocom where he worked as the Alcatel channel manager.

Timico has appointed Simon Payne as Chief Commercial Officer, a newly created role within the company's senior leadership team.

He brings over 20 years experience in the ICT industry and joins from Capita where he was Managing Director within the Capita IT Enterprise Services division, leading the team that provides IT, UC and network solutions and support to local and central government and commercial clients across a variety of sectors.

Prior to that, he spent six years at Damovo, latterly as CEO charged with leading a business turnaround, taking on the role of Managing Director of Daisy Group after successfully negotiating the sale of Damovo UK & Ireland to the group in 2015.

Ben Marnham, Chief Executive Officer, said: "We are poised to enter the next stage in our development as a managed IT cloud and service provider.

"I am delighted Simon will be coming on board, strengthening the senior management team to further drive organic and non-organic growth, bringing with him a strong track record of value creation and sales performance with particular expertise in managed services."

SSE Enterprise Telecoms has signed a large scale fixed line network sharing deal with Capita and Updata Infrastructure. The partnership allows each company to share the physical network assets of the other over the term of the seven year agreement.

For the 300-plus IT and comms service provider customers who use SSE Enterprise Telecoms' national Ethernet connectivity services, the deal will double their SSE service coverage from 250,000 business postcodes to over 500,000.

For SSE, the deal shaves two years off its planned network expansion programme (Project Edge), reduces the cost of network expansion by at least 50%, adding 350 BT Exchanges to the SSE network footprint.

Updata and Capita will see each of their eight regional data centres connected directly and diversely to SSE's national fibre optic network.

This new capability will provide scalable, high availability, highly secure (CESG CAS-T) connectivity for their major Government and Corporate clients.

The network is further engineered to deliver high performance, low latency synchronous replication, cloud service aggregation, network service orchestration and managed IT service delivery to their customer sites nationwide.

Colin Sempill, Managing Director at SSE Enterprise Telecoms, said. "Network and infrastructure sharing models like this are commonplace in mobile telephony markets, but unusual on this scale in fixed line telecoms.

"Doubling our service footprint in a relatively short period of time will make us one of the largest fixed line telecoms providers in the UK at a stroke."

Béatrice Butsana-Sita, Updata Managing Director, added: "Connecting our assets together in a way that allows each to share the benefits of the other just made sense. Specifically, this will allow us to provide dedicated networking services to enterprise-sized clients who need connectivity in all corners of the UK."

Martin Classen has joined Swyx as CTO, replacing Joao Gonzaga who becomes Chief Product Officer (CPO).

Classen brings 15-plus years experience in the IT and comms sector across a number of industries.

Previously he held senior roles at Innotec and NetCologne and joins Swyx from PMCS.helpLine Software Group where he was responsible for group-wide software product development.

"Martin fits very well with Swyx both personally and professionally. Together, we will continue to promote the digitisation of SMEs in the future," said Dr. Ralf Ebbinghaus, CEO.