Comms Dealer

SMART Technologies, a provider of collaboration solutions, has signed a distribution agreement with Midwich.

Midwich will support SMART's new go-to-market model and will be ready to ship in mid-June.

Following its recent partnership announcement with Westcon, SMART Technologies is establishing itself more strongly in the channel.

Along with extending the reach of these solutions, this new agreement will allow SMART to work with the channel directly, offering account management and marketing services to each individual partner.

Jane Ashworth, UK Managing Director, SMART Technologies, commented: "This is another significant step forward in the re-invigoration of our UK channel presence.

"With this new addition, we will be poised to quickly gather pace and accelerate our new channel strategy.

"Working with partners like Midwich is vital to reach organisations looking to capitalise on software and hardware for collaboration."

Richard Bovingdon, Head of Interactive Sales, Midwich, added: "SMART has developed an all-in-one solution that's ideal for today's classroom, alongside a range of other products that have valuable roles to play in both business and education.

"SMART is working with us not only on products, but also on education and enablement."

Openreach is inviting all comms providers to take part in consultations to 'agree and scope' the process of giving them access to its dark fibre network.

The move follows Ofcom's Business Connectivity Market review of the UK's £2bn leased lines market in which it called for Openreach to open up its dark fibre to competitors by October 2017.

Openreach says it has already invited comms providers to take part in initial discussions and 'a small number' have asked to join the Dark Fibre Industry Working Group facilitated by OTA2, the independent organisation tasked by Ofcom to oversee co-operation between communications providers.

Openreach has now opened up the consultation to the entire industry as Mark Logan (pictured), Director of Fibre Products at Openreach, confirmed: "We are pleased to invite all interested parties to join us for a series of regular update calls on the negotiations currently taking place," he said.

"This is to ensure that anybody not taking part in the industry working group is kept up to speed with the discussions and with Openreach's obligations on dark fibre services as laid out by Ofcom."

The calls will take place on June 17th, July 21st, September 5th, October 17th and December 5th. To take part in the events comms providers need to register on the Openreach website.

The move has been welcomed by resellers who have been pressing for Ofcom to put more pressure on Openreach over connectivity issues.

Neil Barrell, MD at Telecoms World, stated: "Having access will help us and hopefully bring costs down.

"Companies need fibre broadband, especially those in business parks that may have good transport links but poor access to data."

David Donnelly, Director at Midland Networks, believes that in the medium-term access to the dark fibre network will help all resellers install more products to a wider audience.

"But, in terms of being competitive it will be advantageous to the customer more than our industry," he commented.

"It may well prove to be another race to the bottom in terms of pricing rather than using the additional margin to improve customer satisfaction."

This news follows Ofcom's first significant review of the telecoms sector for a decade announced earlier this spring.

Ofcom's CEO Sharon White, alongside the Communications Minister Ed Vaizey, is pushing for a Digital Britain built on fibre.

White said: "The UK must do better at rolling out superfast broadband and 4G. Openreach must open up its network of telegraph pole and underground tunnels to allow others to build their own advanced fibre networks, connected directly to homes and offices."

Meanwhile, under White's leadership Ofcom is also taking a harder line with BT on its service levels and has demanded that Openreach fixes faults within five hours and reduces install times to 40 days.

However, many comms providers are urging the regulator and Government to go further.

Winchester-based IT company ProcessFlows has been acquired by Konica Minolta Business Solutions (KMBS) enabling the Japanese firm to offer a hybrid sales model for document solutions backed up by IT services expertise, especially in managed content services.

ProcessFlows generated £13.5m in its financial year to June 30th 2015 and has a 168 headcount.

Following the acquisition ProcessFlows will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of KMBS.

Entatech UK has released the latest version (6.04) of its e-commerce website for reseller partners.

Entatech's in-house design and development team, Entamedia, spent nearly two years working on the remodelling of the site to optimise the user interface and purchasing experience for Entatech's customer base.

Dave Stevinson, MD Entatech UK, commented: "A lot of brainpower and planning went into designing Version 6 of Entaonline.

"The critical features for designing the platform for our resellers was simplicity and speed. A trade only platform is fundamentally different from a traditional consumer site."

Cloud and network provider Exponential-e has promoted Liam Montague to the Channel Sales Team Leader, Referral, after fast-tracking his career through Exponential-e's Sales Academy.

David Yates has also been appointed Channel Sales Team Leader, Referral following his return to Exponential-e having been one of the original members of the company's channel team.

Montague will be responsible for expanding and building Exponential-e's relationships with partners of all sizes, and heading up the team's sales strategy.

He joined the Exponential-e Sales Academy as a graduate in 2009 and in just over six years, has progressed to team leader.

"Exponential-e's Sales Academy gave me a platform to work with an ambitious team and develop a strong career vision that matches my personal goals," said Montague.

"Within the first few months of the programme, not only had I gained sales knowledge pertinent to my role, but I'd already experienced valuable insight across the operation of other business units, and well-rounded knowledge of the technology industry.

"As team leader, I'm looking forward to guiding my team with a results-orientated approach, while also focusing on building relationships and understanding different approaches with our partners."

Yates will be leading the development of the channel referral team. Having previously spent four years at Exponential-e where he helped with the conception of the company's channel team and managed Exponential-e's office and sales team in Reading, he returned to the company from a data sales team manager role at Alternative Networks, an Exponential-e reseller customer.

F-Secure has appointed Samu Konttinen (pictured) as President and CEO following the resignation of former chief exec Christian Fredrikson who resigned to 'pursue a new career opportunity' outside the company.

Konttinen's appointment is effective from 1st August 2016.

He joined F-Secure in 2005 and has held a wide range of senior management positions in the company, including Executive VP of Sales and Marketing, and Executive VP of F-Secure's consumer business.

Most recently he served as Executive VP of the Corporate Security business.

Since 2009 he has been a member of the leadership team.

Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman of the F-Secure Board of Directors, stated: "Samu has proven his ability to drive innovation and ensure a steady strategy execution that delivers growth.

"I'm confident that his winning attitude and relentless focus on execution will further speed up F-Secure's transformation to the leading European cyber security company.

Konttinen added: "Thousands of companies and millions of people around the world already trust us to defend them against cyber-attacks.

"With our strategy, we are well positioned for further growth and I'm looking forward to taking advantage of the new opportunities in the connected world."

F-Secure aims to capitalise on the opportunities driven by increasing digitisation by increasing investments in the fastest growing corporate security markets, which include managed endpoint security services sold through the reseller channel, as well as cyber security services.

Logicalis UK has unveiled four new Logicalis Optimal Services, creating a wider choice of consumption and operational models for its customers in core areas of both infrastructure and business collaboration.

The services provide consumption of Data Centre, Networking/Security, Business Video and Collaboration services, and are available immediately.

Mark Best, Logicalis UK Services Director, said: "These services give our customers more choice, more flexibility, and greater access to digital platforms, as well as a faster time to delivering business results.

"Being able to access the latest in cloud IaaS at the touch of a button, accelerate business collaboration, or even deploy large enterprise class networks through cloud services is bringing in a new era of business aligned IT services."

Distributor Steljes, which has been in operation for 28 years, has called in the administrators following a period of cash flow difficulties, it is reported.

It is also reported that changes to an agreement with vendor SMART, a relationship Steljes was reliant upon, tipped the balance towards receivership.

When the warning signed were first registered Steljes made redundancies but these were not enough to offset losses.

Avaya is reportedly considering an asset sale to ease its $6bn debt burden.

It is reported that the vendor's private equity owners Silver Lake Partners LP and TPG Capital LP are exploring a sale that could value the business somewhere between $6bn and $10bn.

In an earnings conference call Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy said that Goldman Sachs is helping the firm to 'evaluate expressions of interest that have been received relative to specific assets, as well as explore other potential strategic opportunities'.

Avaya is experiencing strong cash flow, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation last year of circa $900m. But the vendor is being pushed into loss by an interest expense of $400m-plus every year.

Microsoft has started a venture capital fund to pursue early-stage technology investments, including cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

The new fund is called Microsoft Ventures, not to be confused with the existing group by that name, a startup accelerator that will be renamed Microsoft Accelerator.

The new Microsoft Ventures will sit on a continuum between Microsoft Accelerator and the company's bigger, more traditional M&A activity.

The company has typically invested alongside commercial deals, so the new creation is a move to an earlier part of the process. The unit will open offices in San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Tel Aviv and will be run by Nagraj Kashyap and Peggy Johnson, both veterans of Qualcomm.