Comms Dealer

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: We've recently grown our team with the addition of two new marketers. During the recruitment process I sifted through a lot of CVs and interviewed candidates from a variety of marketing backgrounds.

This got me thinking about the anatomy of a dynamic marketing team able to generate new ideas that are interlinked with the marketing plan and business strategy.

Building and nurturing an effective marketing team is crucial for future growth. With marketing functions evolving and the growing adoption of online activity, marketing is becoming an area of greater focus and investment. More marketers are now board level than ever before, and new job titles are emerging such as Chief Digital Officer to add gravitas to the marketing function.

The success of 'brand' in the long run and the success of shorter term incentives rely on the skill of the marketing function. These achievements derive from effective team building and getting the right set of complementary skills.

Channel businesses often have smaller budgets than large corporates so are less likely to have consultancies advising them on how to harness creative concepts to the benefit of business activities.

Creativity can be hard to find in individuals, especially when you are looking for creative ideas that are adaptable and appropriate for a B2B landscape. A marketing team needs to be mindful of the business strategy knitting with marketing activity, not just in a creative sense but also analytical.

Understanding the requirements of the channel is vital, as is the analytical ability to efficiently review marketing activity in order to provide meaningful stats and look at ways to improve RoI.

Mitel and Polycom are to hold shareholder meetings to approve the proposed acquisition on July 29th.

Mitel and Polycom also announced that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has completed its review of Mitel's proposed acquisition of Polycom.

Receipt of CFIUS approval follows previous regulatory acceptance including the early termination of the required waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.

The transaction is expected to close in August subject to the approval of the transaction by Mitel shareholders and Polycom stockholders and the satisfaction of the remaining customary closing conditions.

The combination of Mitel and Polycom will create a business with approximately 7,700 employees.

Alternative has been ranked best managed service provider in EMEA and seventh globally out of 501 worldwide MSPs surveyed by the independent MSPmentor survey, conducted January-March 2016.

The report recognises top managed service providers based on a range of metrics including annual managed services revenue growth, revenue per employee, managed services offered and customer devices managed.

"This is a great achievement and reaffirms Alternative's reputation and ability as a principal supplier of robust managed hosting and both public and private cloud based services, underpinned by professional managed service." said CEO Mark Quartermaine.

Computers Unlimited (CU) has legally transitioned to become a division of Exertis UK and is rebranding as Exertis Unlimited, following its acquisition by the distributor in May last year.

CU supplies a range of third party branded software, IT hardware and CE products to over 2,000 customers in the UK and continental Europe.

Gerry O'Keeffe, Exertis UK&I, MD, said: "Exertis Unlimited becomes a key business unit that complements our strategy of providing specialism and expertise right across the technology sector for a diverse set of customers."

Exertis Unlimited will continue to provide specialism in products and accessories for Apple, smart home technology, products for creative professionals and audio products.

Tony Taylor, COO of Exertis Unlimited, added: "By retaining the Unlimited name we're recognising the unique culture, values and skills that have been built over the last 30 years. It's also a strong statement to our vendors and customers that we will continue to offer the services and support that they have enjoyed, enhanced by the reach and resources of Exertis."

Ericsson and Vodafone have demonstrated a new 5G proof of concept following their joint commitment to 5G innovation announced during Mobile World Congress in February this year.

The two companies created a 5G Smart Network Edge prototype including a 5G ready core and demonstrated the benefits of network slicing and distributed cloud technology using the example of a Machine Vision application.

Machine Vision is increasingly used for quality assurance within manufacturing and production processes and to measure or recognise objects. In a typical setup pictures provided by high-speed cameras are processed, analysed and trigger further actions such as sorting out defect parts.

In a live demo shown during the Innovation Days at Ericsson's R&D Centre in Aachen both companies showed how the 5G Smart Network Edge enables much greater efficiency for industry.

Due to reduced network latencies the recognition rate of a cloud-based face detection application was increased; significantly less video traffic had to be sent over the Wide Area Network and sensitive data was kept locally and was therefore better protected against unauthorised access.

Sonja Graf, Head of Vodafone Innovation Park, Vodafone Germany, said: "Within only three months we created a 5G Smart Network Edge prototype by connecting our labs. The Face Recognition use case is just one example demonstrating how 5G will meet the diverse needs of a wide range of industries."

Valter D'Avino, Head of Ericsson Western & Central Europe, added: "We are delighted that the Ericsson and Vodafone labs have come together to innovate and this first use case shows an excellent example of how 5G can enable industries to become more efficient as well as more secure and cost effective."

The latest version of Syscap Partner Portal launched by IT finance provider Syscap contains over 100 functionality improvements designed to help vendors and resellers to close more deals using the company's finance facilities.

The online platform enables partners to obtain a quote for extended payment 24/7, 365 days a year. Mobile responsiveness has also been improved.

The platform's latest version reflects feedback from Syscap's partners following a testing period.

Enhancements include the addition of new quote templates and advanced search capabilities to speed-up the quoting process, and simplifying document uploads

"By providing an instant online quote, the Syscap Partner Portal removes the administrative burden on vendor sales staff so they can accelerate their deal cycles and focus more on rewarding value added tasks," said Philip White, MD of Syscap.

"IT vendors and resellers can manage their own opportunities whilst having complete visibility of every one, from entry date through to current status and historical transactions.

"All proposals in the Partner Portal are fully supported by Syscap's dedicated account management team who are on hand to guide partners throughout every stage of the sales process."

The portal forms part of the Syscap Partner Programme which includes training, account management and a rewards and incentive scheme.

Pure fibre broadband providers CityFibre and Gigaclear have joined forces to bring ultrafast pure fibre broadband services to rural areas. With metro fibre networks in over 37 towns and cities and over 1,100km of long distance network, CityFibre's national footprint will be used to facilitate Gigaclear's deployment of rural pure fibre networks.

CityFibre's long distance network will provide a new backhaul option for future Gigaclear deployments while its metro networks and POP facilities will facilitate connectivity to nearby rural areas.
  
Greg Mesch, Chief Executive of CityFibre, said: "Gigaclear shares a complementary agenda. We have long been aware of the huge levels of demand for better Internet connectivity in rural areas surrounding our urban network projects. It is a national embarrassment that residents and businesses in rural areas, and indeed many of those in towns and cities, have been left in the digital dark ages. Pure fibre infrastructure is the 21st century utility and is an essential component to everyday life."
 
Matthew Hare, Chief Executive at Gigaclear, added: "Bringing fast broadband to rural Britain has its challenges. This partnership with CityFibre gives Gigaclear access to more capacity, faster delivery and more flexible bandwidth across the country. It helps us build Gigabit networks where other operators do not reach, to meet the demand for better broadband from homes and businesses."

Back-up specialist Druva has formed a German subsidiary to drive partner recruitment and expansion in the DACH area.

Druva has appointed Andreas Sturm as Regional Sales Director, DACH, to lead the company's business development efforts.

His experience includes more than 16 years in similar roles at Verne Global, Commvault and EMC.

At the same time, Susan Hoch has been appointed as Channel Manager, DACH, joining the Druva team from VMware where she spent the last eight years running partner enablement and support initiatives.

Rick Powles, Druva's VP for EMEA, told IT Europa that the business is set for a period of rapid growth driven by the need for compliance among customers looking at the adoption of the GDPR data privacy rules by Europe.

Druva has been building its cloud business through working with both AWS and Azure, and with, it says, some 40% of corporate data now at end-points, it is finding customers responsive to the idea of protection at this level as well as the traditional server backup.

Druva, which first localised its top-rated data protection solutions into German last year, has seen the rapid adoption by German, Austrian and Swiss organisations, including Andritz, Continental, DHL, Leica, Siemens and dozens of others, it says.

Claranet has been positioned as a Leader in Gartner's 2016 Magic Quadrant for Managed Hybrid Cloud Hosting, Europe, for the fourth year running.

Gartner has revised the criteria for its IaaS and hosting Magic Quadrants this year to take into account the evolving market. While there is still a focus on locally-hosted services in Europe, public cloud services are gaining in popularity throughout Europe - a change that has been reflected in the name and evaluation criteria for Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Managed Hybrid Cloud Hosting.

Charles Nasser, CEO of Claranet, commented: "We see hybrid IT as a key differentiator for us and have, over the past two years, invested heavily in our public cloud capabilities to ensure that we can offer a complete range of hosted services."

netEvidence has rebranded as Highlight following the appointment of Antony Bream as MD who aims to expand the company's global reach and growth on the back of recently announced revenues which were up 27% on last year to £3.6m (the latest in a four year run of 25 per cent average increases).

Richard Thomas, CEO, stated: "The new branding is a key element in our expansion - it's modern, in tune with the industry and gives us a fresh platform to build on the successes we have already achieved with global partners such as Verizon and Telstra. We will now embark on a whole new level of expansion outside our traditional UK market and into Europe, Asia and North America."

Bream was previously at Nimbus Partners (a Tibco company) where he built the sales and delivery team from scratch to expand the business globally.

He achieved a similar European expansion for Dion, a global financial solutions company, working specifically to build out its European sales and commercial teams. And for the Swiss-based financial software company Crealogix, Bream helped expand its brand and profile in the UK using a mix of social, content marketing and partner relations.

Bream said: "My experience over the past 12 years has been in helping companies, of a similar size to Highlight, to expand their sales and marketing and work with the other company departments to align internal and external processes to achieve success on a global basis. And Highlight is ripe for expansion.

"The new brand offers a more global positioning and will be supported by a significant investment in marketing and a continued focus on R&D to closely match customer requirements for the future."