Comms Dealer

Gateshead-based Synergi IT is to roll-out Nintex workflow automation software to Northumbrian Water's 2,900 employee as part of a wider investment programme in new Microsoft Cloud, Office 365 and SharePoint services.

The move is the latest success for Synergi after investing in Nintex software and will secure long term benefits for the Pity Me-based water company, providing significant improvements in the automation of documentation and creation processes.

The software will provide Northumbrian Water with greater control and governance over its processes, reducing the volume of manual documentation work undertaken and improving data capture processes as systems become digitalised.

Nintex technology enables users to automate processes in minutes using PC-based drag-and-drop workflow tools to reduce the time involved in building, using and improving processes.

Justin Short, director of Synergi, which also has offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow, said public and private sector organisations are recognising the advantages to be gained from new business process management technologies.

The market is worth over $2.7bn and predicted to grow further as more organisations digitalise their processes, according to industry analysts Gartner*.

He added: "Nintex software is part of a growing sector and we are in the vanguard of utilising this and other Microsoft technologies to deliver seamless solutions to regional and national customers like Northumbrian Water.

"We are seeing strong demand as more organisations look to migrate to these new technologies, which quickly deliver demonstrable benefits and RoI."

Ultracomms has appointed Stuart Forrest as Channel Manager and Liza Taylor as Business Development Manager.

Forrest joins from Noble Amcat where he was Channel Manager responsible for revenue growth through channel and direct sales activity, and managing existing partner relationships.

His background in customer contact technology, on and off-shore, spans more than 15 years.

Taylor joins Ultracomms from Unify where she was Business Development Manager with a focus on large clients in the finance sector.

Derwyn Jones, Chief Executive of Ultracomms, said: "With the integration of omni-channel and interaction analytics technology as well as the recent PCI DSS level 1 certification, Ultracomms has an impressive technology portfolio, backed by a talented and dedicated team. These appointments will help us sustain growth for the business."

Air-IT is set to diversify and pursue faster growth following a revamp of the management team.

Founder and MD Todd McQuilkin has moved to the CEO role while Technical Director James Healey becomes MD from 1st September.

McQuilkin said: "James has been an integral part of our journey having been by my side every step of the way.

"We've experienced significant growth, consistently reporting over 20% increase year on year and to top it off in my final year, we're expecting an increase of 30% or more."

Air-IT was established in 2005 when McQuilkin invested a £20,000 redundancy payment from his previous position as Head of IT at Femcare Nikomed.

Initially, the business operated out of residential cottages in Nuthall, Nottinghamshire, and Healey was recruited as the first member of staff in a leading technical role.

In 2013 Air-IT acquired local telecoms provider Managed Business Communications (MBC), enabling it to offer a full portfolio of IT and Communication services under one roof.

Healey added: "Having been on board since day one I have seen the company experience significant change and high growth in an industry that's fast paced and always evolving. I'm eager to continue this journey."

As CEO, McQuilkin will continue to drive Air-IT's business strategy, heading up a new venture under Air-MSP Consultancy which is aimed at helping others in the ICT service industry benefit from operational improvements.

F-Secure's just launched reseller recruitment drive reflects growing demand for security solutions from UK IT service providers.

This year, the cyber security company has seen a 50% increase in the size of its corporate sales team in response to rising demand.

"With pressure rising for businesses to implement tighter security, it is imperative that companies use best-in-class security solution as part of their security strategy," said Andy Harkness, UK Corporate Sales Manager.

Radius Communications has partnered with BT Wholesale and Panasonic to deliver an end-to-end cloud service to its business customers.

Panasonic's IP handsets will be connected via the BT Wholesale network to the storm cloud platform.

Connectivity to BT Wholesale's Ethernet, broadband and IP networks will be sold as part of the storm package through Panasonic's distribution model that sees resellers sell services through a web-based portal.

John Rees, Director at Radius Communications, said:
"Cloud is not just about the quality of the core technology businesses are using. Organisations need to be assured that every element of the cloud implementation is of the highest quality."

Marc Timmermans, Director Portfolio Development at BT Wholesale, added: "Connectivity is a critical element of every cloud deployment. Customers need to be sure that services remain live and accessible at all times.

"We're delighted to combine our connectivity services with the quality of the Panasonic portfolio and the strength of the storm offering to deliver a high-quality Unified Communications service to the mid-market and SME community."

Bob Mercer, Group Manager Communications Business Unit at Panasonic System Communications Europe, added: "With a brand as large as BT onboard we're able to further expand our distribution channels and increase the success of our partnership with storm."

A trip to Iceland next March courtesy of Daisy Distribution awaits the highest sellers of 'premier' Samsung devices following the launch of a new partner incentive scheme.

The promotion builds on last year's Portugal incentive and runs from August until 31st January next year. The partners with the highest volumes winning a trip to Iceland in March 2017.

The partners will be split into four tiers with a number of spots allocated to each tier, allowing an equal chance to the distributor's partner base.

Julien Parven (pictured), Marketing Director at Daisy Distribution, said: "We ran a similar incentive last year and saw fantastic engagement from our partners, leading to 19% increase in unit sales volumes.

"We have a host of sales enablement material available to our partners but this time we will also be offering access to Samsung trial kit, allowing their customers to try before they buy. It's a great way to help seal the deal, especially when it comes to device sales."

Support materials include product guides, training and white label collateral. The demo kit, numbering 65 units is a mix of premium devices and tablets and will be available to those partners who have a fully-engaged relationship with a customer that is within the last six months of contract and is actively within a decision making cycle.

sipsynergy has appointed Steve Day as Sales Director and Ged Fitton as Chief Operating Officer. The new hires come hot on the heels of recent appointments Tom Kelly (Chairman) and Toby Gold (CEO) following a £2.75m investment from YFM Equity Partners .

Gold commented: "Steve and Ged bring invaluable experience, expertise and knowledge to the company and I have no doubt they will both make significant contributions in driving the business forward as we execute our business plan and continue to grow at pace to take advantage of the huge market opportunity we see for both ourselves and our channel partners."

Based on Cisco's Hosted Cloud Solution (HCS), sipsynergy has developed a white labelled channel offering which integrates back-end business processes - such as quoting, provisioning, billing and support - into a management portal, reducing cost and complexities and enabling partners to transition to an annuity based UC-as-a-service offering.

Steve Day, who formerly held senior sales roles at Westcon and Inclarity, will be responsible for driving channel sales, partner recruitment and helping resellers leverage the burgeoning market opportunity for hosted UC-as-a-service.

He added: "As a 100% channel business I can't wait to start engaging with partners to help them grow their businesses around hosted UC-as-a-service.

"My goal is to actively recruit, grow and enable partners to take advantage of this growing market opportunity."

Fitton joins having spent 16 years with Cisco where most recently he was responsible for supporting and developing its 'innovation-led' customers. He will be responsible for managing all aspects of sipsynergy's operations, services and customer support functions.

Fitton said: "sipsynergy has taken well proven collaboration architecture from Cisco and added incremental functionality that fits with the needs of channel partners targeting the SMB marketplace with a hosted UC proposition."

South West Communications Group has joined the top 5% of Microsoft resellers worldwide having achieved the Silver Small and Mid-market Cloud Solutions competency.

The Exeter-headquartered company is nearing Gold status having sold and installed multiple Office 365 solutions to businesses across its region since adding the product to its portfolio at the start of the year.

swcomms is also working towards its Silver Data centre competency to consolidate its ability to provide private cloud management and virtualisation deployment planning services.

John Holdstock, swcomms ICT Director, said: "Our team has worked hard to achieve this competency and has successfully resold and migrated Office 365 to existing customers and new."

TeleWare has been awarded Avaya accreditation and is set to join the Avaya DevConnect Program.

Nick Reaks, Chief Operations Officer, TeleWare, said: "This accreditation places us in an exclusive group of Avaya partners and will enable us to work with other companies and offer complementary products through partnerships.

"Each company will bring something new to the table and together we can grow organically and open new markets for each other.

"We're especially excited to be able to tap into the needs of small-and mid-size companies looking for contact centre solutions. This fits with our TeleWare Communications Manager (TCM) product and we're excited to be able to roll this out on Avaya."

TeleWare CEO Steve Haworth added: "Working with Avaya greatly supports our current strong growth phase. We look forward to generating leads and sales in a wide range of markets and delivering value to end users and resellers."

Content Guru has added workforce management (WFM) capabilities to its cloud contact centre solution following a link up with Teleopti.

John Rees, Chief Commercial Officer at Content Guru, commented: "WFM is an increasingly important element of the customer engagement hub and plays a vital role in driving staff efficiencies in combination with more traditional contact centre functions.

"Teleopti's ability to manage staffing on a per-country basis is a key element of the service and aligns well with our global growth model. The potential inherent across both the WFM and customer engagement markets is tremendous."

A custom-built integration connects Teleopti's WFM client with the dynamic agent environment within Content Guru's storm CONTACT solution, enabling contact centre and workforce managers to evaluate and adapt their resourcing and customer engagement strategies.

The partnership has already seen a number of key clients onboarded in the UK and looks to expand into a truly global collaboration.

Nick Smith, Business Manager UK & Ireland at Teleopti, added: "The workplace is constantly changing and as customer demand continues to evolve is becoming an increasingly complex and dynamic environment.

"The workforce is no different. Not only customers but now colleagues bring expectations of interacting anywhere, any how and at any time, making WFM more important than ever in responding to these unstructured demands."