Comms Dealer

Regulator Ofcom has stopped short of enforcing the sell-off of Openreach but said BT's infrastructure division should become a legally distinct company within the group that owns its own network, and has its own branding, culture and board of directors not affiliated to BT Group.

The new board will have a majority of non-executive directors, including the chair, and be appointed and removed by BT in consultation with Ofcom.

In Ofcom's proposed model Openreach should develop its own strategy and annual operating plans within an overall budget set by BT Group.

According to Ofcom's CEO Sharon White (pictured) these measures provide the benefits of independence and structural separation but without the time delays, complexities and costs of a sell-off.

White said: "We're pressing ahead with the biggest shake-up of telecoms in a decade to make sure the market is delivering the best possible services for people and business across the UK.

"Openreach will become a distinct company, legally separate from BT and obliged by law to act on behalf of all customers and the whole industry. Not just BT.

"The new Openreach board will have to take investment decisions as a matter of law and the decisions must work for the whole of the UK, not just BT.

"I understand why people see the attraction of selling off Openreach. It seems straightforward, but, for example, pension issues could take years to resolve. These new rules provide all the benefits of separating Openreach and can happen straight away, without delay.

"Ofcom will monitor the new Openreach and the flow of decisions and judge whether they are being taken in the interest of customers. If this does not deliver independence, faster broadband and better service we reserve the right to revisit a sell off.

"There needs to be more investment in fibre to the doorstep, with engineers arriving on time and doing the job first time."

In February Ofcom made it easier for telecoms providers to invest in competing infrastructure by improving access to Openreach's network of telegraph poles and its ducts.

On 31st July new rules come into force that will give telecoms providers further rights to access physical infrastructure. These measures are designed to reduce the cost of deploying broadband networks by sharing access to infrastructure across different sectors.

In February Ofcom also announced a range of measures to ensure that all phone and broadband companies provide service quality that customers expect. Since then the regulator has taken more steps to improve services, as well as boosting coverage, such as automatic compensation and easier switching.

Ofcom has also set out stricter minimum requirements for Openreach to repair faults and install new lines more quickly. From next year, Ofcom will publish tables on communications providers' quality of service, showing the best and worst performers on a range of measures.

Ofcom will introduce coverage checkers by address, providing information on mobile and broadband coverage by individual address, not just postcode.

Ofcom's plans come after last week's CMS Select Committee report criticised Openreach for its poor the quality of service and BT's under investment into the UK's digital infrastructure.

Enterprise applications specialist Unit4 is buying Munich-based prevero, a provider of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) solutions.

prevero has more than 4,000 international clients, and is a privately held company with customers including organisations such as ABB, Audi, BMW, Endemol, Heidelberg, Konica-Minolta, Mercedes, SwissLife and Swisscom.

prevero's offerings aim to complement Unit4's business solutions for services organisations, enabling customers to model service delivery around insightful strategic and operational data.

"As services organisations face increasing pressure to drive organisational transformation across all functions, CPM and BI are critical to successful strategy execution," said Stephan Sieber, CEO of Unit4.

"This is particularly true for services organisations that need to find new service models and revenue streams. Through intelligent enterprise solutions they can become more strategic and ensure efficiency and excellence in execution."

Alexander Springer, prevero's co-founder and CEO, added: "More than ever, services organisations are looking to optimise the performance of their often over-complex financial planning, budgeting and forecasting processes.

"They are also looking to drive that same kind of insight down to all facets of the organisation. As part of Unit4, we will improve our ability to bring these capabilities to organisations globally."

http://www.unit4.com/about/news/2016/07/unit4-acquires-prevero

Skyscape Cloud Services scooped the VMwarevCloud Air Network (vCAN) Partner of the Year award in recognition of its contribution to VMware's UK market performance. 

"Skyscape has a long and successful track record of working closely with VMware to design, build and manage complex cloud platforms that meet the very specific needs of UK public sector organisations," said Simon Hansford, CEO of Skyscape Cloud Services.

VMware is a key member of The Skyscape Cloud Alliance, which brings together best-of-breed technology vendors.

Since its foundation in 2011, Skyscape has scaled to become one of the largest cloud platforms built on VMware and its latest next-generation cloud platform is leveraging the latest VMware technology, including VMware NSX.

The company has also built up in-house VMware technical expertise in order to deliver innovative cloud services to the UK public sector.

US technology magazine CIOReview has named Content Guru as one of its Most Promising Contact Centre Solutions Providers 2016.

The annual listing positions Content Guru and its storm Communications Integration platform as one of the 20 leading worldwide providers of contact centre technology.

Sean Taylor, CEO of Content Guru, commented: "We are proud to once again be recognised by CIOReview's panel of experts, after having been listed as one of its 20 Most Promising Unified Communications Solution Providers in 2015 and 50 Most Promising Utilities Technology Solution Providers the year before.

"Content Guru has over a decade of experience in providing mission-critical cloud contact centre services to thousands of organisations across a variety of sectors.

"Delivering a great customer experience is key to the success of any organisation and, with the proliferation of channels and devices over recent years, consumers now expect to communicate however, whenever and in whichever they want.

"To keep up with the increasing expectations of this new multi-channel consumer, the humble contact centre has rapidly transformed into today's customer engagement hub, and disruptive technologies, such as WebRTC, are only set to further change how customers and businesses engage with each other on a daily basis."

Intelisys Global, a subsidiary of Intelisys Communications, has announced the addition of Equinix to its Supplier Partner portfolio.

An Intelisys Communications Supplier Partner since August 2014, Equinix is one of the first Supplier Partners to extend its contract to Intelisys Global, allowing it to expand its relationship to Intelisys Global's Sales Partners in the UK and Europe.

"There's an adage all sales professionals are familiar with, and that is that it is easier to sell to the customers you already have than to find new ones," said Jay Bradley, Intelisys President.

"In some ways, it applies to exactly what we're doing here with Intelisys Global - we're taking solid, successful partnerships and extending them into new geographies, enabling a whole new community of Sales Partners to gain agnostic access to the world's carriers and vendors in the telecommunications, connectivity and cloud industries."

Purple, the intelligent spaces company, has partnered with Wi-Fi services provider Haptic Networks, a specialist in public access Wi-Fi with deployments in the town centres of Wallingford, Oxfordshire and Northampton.

Purple has expertise in social Wi-Fi, analytics and marketing, with deployments in over 70 countries.

Its 'Intelligent Spaces' approach provides real-time analytics and marketing for venues and businesses that want to engage with visitors, optimise the use of physical spaces, and utilise the wireless infrastructure to generate ROI.

Purple first joined forces with Haptic Networks to provide Wi-Fi services to Moray Council in Scotland and the King's Cross Public Wi-Fi contract in London.

Following various high profile wins in the leisure, hospitality, healthcare and public spaces vertical sectors, Haptic Networks has achieved Certified Partner status with Purple. It is now operating across UK, EU and UAE, offering secure, family-friendly Wi-Fi with data collection for analytics and reporting functions.

Gavin Wheeldon, CEO at Purple, said: "Our partnership with Haptic Networks has already proved to be a success with joint contracts delivered and a range of upcoming opportunities.

"Our two teams are closely aligned in terms of our approach to services and our vision of the market. We look forward to building a successful long term relationship."

Mark Bartley, CTO at Haptic Networks, added: "We selected Purple primarily due to its approach to data ownership. We believe that customers providing Wi-Fi services to their visitors and residents should have full access and control of any data collected through the service rather than this data being retained by the service provider."

Arrow Business Communications has returned to the M&A trail buying Cambridgeshire-based Comms-Solve, its seventh acquisition in six years, boosting revenues and extending its reach into eastern England. The deal increases Arrow's turnover to £27m and brings in additional UC expertise.

Arrow MD Chris Russell said: "Comms-solve has an award winning team which is engineering focused and well recognised in the industry. The company shares our ethos of excellent customer care while complementing our existing Mitel skills."

Comms-Solve's employees will continue to operate from the Cambridge premises.

Simon Finnerty, Technical Director at Comms-Solve, added: "Our shared resources mean customers will benefit from technology delivered by trusted partners."

The Bristol Network, the name given to the fibre optic network that runs through Bristol city, has announced that wholesale partners are already integrated, customers have been connected and it is unveiling a new brand.

The branding follows the familiar style to other council supported companies such as Bristol Energy.

Last year Bristol City Council awarded a 20 year concession agreement to the partnership of ITS Technology Group and Net Support UK.

The collaboration is to set up a network that can provide internet and other over-the-top services throughout the city by using the existing ducts owned by the council.

The Bristol Network has already integrated the first few ISPs and attracted attention from a number of other prominent ISPs who are looking to connect their customers in the area.

Two high profile Bristol digital and arts organisations Yogscast and Spike Island have already been connected by Spectrum Internet.

Jonathan Griffin, Head of Sales at Spectrum Internet said: "We have a number of business customers in Bristol with high bandwidth requirements due to the nature of their work. In the case of Yogscast, they also had tight timescales to meet which we could only achieve by using The Bristol Network.

"The pricing structure is straight forward and it is easy for us to upgrade any of our customers' circuits up to 10Gbps capacity if needed. The Bristol Network has been designed specifically for this era of digital growth."

Gavin Beckett, Head of Digital Transformation, Bristol City Council said: "The Bristol Network and the collaboration with Bristol City Council is imperative to drive forward a programme of change throughout the city. This project dovetails perfectly into our smart city and 'Internet of Things' initiatives."

Roy Shelton, CEO of ITS Technology Group, added: "We have worked hard with our local partners to design and roll out the network to areas which continue to be underserved and starved of robust ultrafast broadband.

"Working in partnership with Bristol City Council and our partners the network will continue to evolve to be the largest and only council supported network in Bristol."

Channel services firm Synaxon UK has struck a UK deal with Germany-based TERRA Computer, a manufacturer of systems and storage products.

The partnership will give members access to the company's products through its EGIS buying platform.

TERRA Computer is a subsidiary of the €1bn Wortmann Group, an independent computer manufacturer. The company designs and manufactures a range of desktop PCs, workstations, all-in-ones, notebooks, tablets, thin client devices, and displays.

It also produces servers and direct-access, NAS and SAN storage systems; and is a provider of cloud services in Germany offering co-hosting hosting, IaaS, SaaS and backup solutions from its own Tier 3-certified data centre.

The UK agreement follows a partnership between the two organisations in Germany.

Kevin Gaskell has joined ITS Technology Group as Group Chairman.

He will lead the board and help attract further investment into the Group.

His experience includes leading brands such as Porsche, Lamborghini and BMW. He was recognised as a 'top 40 leader under 40'.

Gaskell commented: "I have been involved in founding and growing a number of successful companies, and ITS is a business with a first class team, an energetic and innovative approach to the market and has clear objectives."

Roy Shelton, CEO, added: "As we continue to scale at pace Kevin brings a whole new level of drive and energy."