Comms Dealer

The increasing popularity of managed service delivery models is fuelling European Communications Reseller sales of data and communications networks and everything from security to mobility and video conferencing solutions, with 67.5% of resellers now offering managed service solutions.

Yet the market remains highly regionalised and fragmented with 95.2% of communication resellers providing solutions only within their own or neighbouring countries. These are amongst the trends emerging from European Communication Resellers - the Top 750, a new database report from IT Europa which is published today.

The European Communication Resellers - the Top 750 report provides detailed profiles of the leading 750 European Communication Resellers across 36 countries.

Between them the companies post sales of €25.39 billion ($26.88 billion) and employ 122,742.

In terms of activities, 88% of companies are providing Data Communications/Networks solutions; 84% are providing Telephony/VoIP; 66% providing Security solutions; 61% are offering Mobility; and 57% are providing Video Communications/ Videoconferencing. Sales operations span a number of vertical market sectors the most common being the Public Sector (44.7%), Bank/Finance/Insurance (37.5%) and Manufacturing/Industry Vertical Market (33.3%).

The largest geographic markets covered in terms of companies profiled within the report are: UK (251 companies), Germany (51), Netherlands (51), Russian Federation (41), France (38), Spain (37), Italy (31), Switzerland (28), Turkey (24), Poland (23) and Sweden (23).

"It is good to see the European communication reseller community grasping the managed services opportunity, but there are several other challenges that will need to be addressed for the sector to achieve its full potential," says Alan Norman, Managing Director of IT Europa.

"A lack of standards in such growth areas as IoT (the Internet of Things) and national differences in terms of regulations will limit the potential for pan European growth. While recent agreements in areas such as roaming charges should help, these gains could be very swiftly undermined by potential political/economic events - for example Brexit."

www.iteuropa.com

Chess has bagged Burnley-based ICT company Lanway for an undisclosed sum. It generated £21.8m turnover last year and has been in operation for 25 years, boasting over 550 active repeat customers including a number of blue chip names. The acquisition pushes Chess's headcount to 550.

Chess founder and CEO David Pollock stated: "Lanway shares our passion for delivering technological advantage to customers, and our acquisition of Lanway is another step on our growth journey, helping to bring our vision to life.

"Together with Lanway's expertise we have the talent and technology needed to deliver truly integrated solutions across enterprise, mobile and cloud environments."

Richard Btesh, Director of Chess, added: "We're ready and waiting to take advantage of the consolidation of customers and relationships."

A one-stop hardware and software supply proposition introduced by Daisy Group aims to secure the total comms and IT spend of customers.

Headed up by Daisy's Director of Group Vendor Alliances & Supply Chain Services Jeff Palmer, the new Supply Chain Services operation is moving to a purpose-built office at the Group's Nottingham site.

The unit has already begun trading around 200,000 products from over 4,000 suppliers, ranging from data storage to laptops, desktops, printers and headsets. Palmer aims to create a £100m turnover business within the next three years.

"Whatever technology products a business needs to function, Daisy's Supply Chain Services can now offer via a process that adds value to every customer engagement," he said.

"Many of our customers are buying other technology-related products elsewhere. That doesn't make any sense for them and it makes even less sense for us.

"The advantage of Supply Chain Services for our customers is that they transact with just one company that they already know and do business with."

US security specialist Unitrends has named Zycko as its EMEA distributor.

Unitrends is 100% channel and offers cloud-powered backup and continuity solutions.

Talking to IT Europa, Mike Dalton, senior vice-president of international sales at Unitrends says it has a sweet spot in the mid-market, though it sells its products to everyone from SMB to enterprise, offering both software and physical appliances in what it calls continuity solutions.

He says a key feature which is attractive to partners is its ability to work with both physical and virtual drives, on premise and in the cloud. "Not all vendors can do this," he says.

In particular he points to the attraction of offering SLAs with user-set terms as to time to restore, using either its own hosting sites, whether in the US, the UK or Germany, or using Amazon Web Services.

In this market, word of mouth is a key driver of new business. As part of its recently announced channel programme, Unitrends has said it will reward partners who are active in social media, promoting use of the products and engaging in discussions, he confirms.

David Galton-Fenzi, CEO of Zycko, says: "We aim to choose best in class, and there is a great synergy between our two companies - we both have a focus on networking, cloud continuity and recovery, and we share a common approach to the market." Since Zycko has AWS cerfication, it can offer this model of backup to its partners. The only certification required by Unitrends is for those partners wanting to sell its Boomerang virtual machine mover.

Unitrends announced in March 2016 that it grew its cloud business 250% year-on-year, says David Galton-Fenzi. "They are looking to replicate that success in the wider EMEA marketplace. At Zycko, we are uniquely placed to help Unitrends achieve that goal, though access to our established pan-EMEA channel network, and experienced sales, marketing and technical teams."

Paul Eccleston, head of Rigby Private Equity, owner of Zycko and distributor Wick Hill says: "The appointment of Zycko by Unitrends is a significant step forward for our expansion plans. Customers are asking for simplification in this market and we have seen this in other product areas such as apps performance management and networking. It also demonstrates that there is a strong need for a pan-EMEA distributor that can work with companies wanting to expand and grow internationally."

He adds that RPE is supporting the expansion of support teams at Zycko, building up its cloud capabilities.

It is also clear that the backup market is spreading beyond traditional channels and partners and that these companies are gearing up to address the backup and compliance for the wall of data expected to be generated by industrial scale data generation and capture.

Exponential-e has kicked off a five-a-side tournament for channel partners in a bid to raise funds for the Macmillan Cancer Trust. The first Channel Charity Cup was hosted at West Ham's Boleyn Ground and was one of the last games to be played at the stadium before the club relocates.

"The launch of the Channel Charity Cup raises awareness and support for causes that have an affinity with our customers and staff," said Michala Hart, Head of Channel Strategy at Exponential-e. "We also wanted to organise something that would enable us to get more involved with our channel partners."

Pictured: Tournament winner Focus Group.

RingCentral has rolled out Global Office to UK customers and bolstered support for local developers.

Global Office is a single global UCaaS solution designed for multi-national businesses.

"Connecting workforces across multiple countries, RingCentral Global Office reduces the complexity and high costs of maintaining multiple, legacy on-premise PBX systems with a single cloud solution," stated John Marlow, MD EMEA at RingCentral.

"Businesses no longer need to struggle with the onerous and expensive task of figuring out how to deploy their communications infrastructure globally.

"With the realities of a global and mobile workforce distributed across multiple offices, often in different countries, enterprises need a flexible, mobile-centric UC solution that fosters a collaborative working environment and scales globally.

"With the launch of RingCentral Global Office in the UK, local businesses now have the tools to communicate across multiple global offices for a single monthly cost."

RingCentral is also expanding support for its RingCentral Developer Programme in the UK.

Rising star car racer Josh Webster, son of Nine Wholesale MD Nick, secured a first win for the Renault RSO1 in the GT Open Series and his second win at Spa on May 23rd.

The 22-year-old received a last minute call on 21st May asking him to drive alongside ex-F1 racer Nicky Pastorelli at the International GT Open at Spa Francorchamps in Spa, Belgium, the next day. They finished the race in second place before taking the flag the day after.

Webster commented: "What a feeling to cross the line as the winners! The V8 Racing team and GP Extreme were absolutely delighted with the win and it felt amazing to be back on the top step of the podium at Spa alongside Nicky after such a fantastic race."

VoIP and hosted dialler services are key to unlocking the full potential of cloud-based recurring revenue sales with 300% increases up for grabs, according to Hostcomm.

The company is hosting two webinars this month that will outline the three steps resellers should follow to significantly increase billable VoIP minutes, open up new revenue streams via value added dialler services and wrap workflow automation into the solutions.

"Diallers aren't just for making automated calls and they're no longer only used by contact centres," stated Chris Key, Director at Hostcomm. "For agents and sales teams, they turn making calls into a convenient one-click process, driving productivity.

"For managers, it's easier to delve into detailed reports about performance on an organisational, team or per-salesperson basis. Work can be quantified, tracked and measured effectively. And managers are empowered to make real-time changes as and when they need to.

"Over time, as that becomes the standard way to work and drives performance, it creates new efficiencies for customers and profit for partners."

The webinars will take place on 15th and 22nd June. Click link for more information

http://marketing.hostcomm.co.uk/acton/media/22154/3-steps-to-boosting-voip-recurring-revenue-wbs

Cloud-based security specialist iSheriff has named Simon Carr as Director of Sales for EMEA.

He joins from CMS Distribution and prior to that worked at Bell Micro, Ideal Hardware and Digicorp.

Carr is the latest addition to the iSheriff team and follows the recent appointment of industry veteran Carrie Roberts to the position of Vice President of Global Sales.

Isheriff says this is part of a growth strategy for expanding its local presence in the region. Simon Carr will be driving sales through existing and new channel partners for iSheriff's scalable, SaaS solution to protect endpoints, web and email.

"He will play a major role in empowering our resellers, distributors and integrators to meet the growing demand for robust and reliable cloud-based security solutions. High-margin revenue streams will also be a focus for us within EMEA," said John Mutch, CEO at iSherif.

iSheriff recently announced the release of iSheriff Complete, aimed at small and medium sized enterprises, offering a cyber security platform with no up-front costs and managed through an interface with a single set of enforceable security policies.

"Faced with increasing multi-vector threats and the success of Software-as-a-Service models, companies are turning to cloud-based platforms to deliver scalable, real-time protection," said Carr.

"iSheriff removes potential malware and viruses before they ever reach the network, allowing our customers to focus on running their business."

Large numbers of employees are circumventing IT, with 40% of workers currently using their personal smartphones for work and 69% claiming their personal tech is better than the options available at work. That's according to the new App Generation report launched by business communications provider Fuze.

The Fuze report, which examines the expectations of technology in the workplace through a survey of 5,000 workers and 2,500 teens across Europe, reveals the extent to which employees are now bringing their own devices, regardless of whether they have been approved by IT.

In addition to using personal mobile phones, 32% of UK workers use personal laptops for work, while 21% provide their own tablet computers.

The same is true of software and applications, with many employees ignoring IT policies and installing personal applications that have not been approved for business use. This includes 32% who are using instant messaging, 25% regularly making video calls and 21% using cloud storage, all without their IT departments' permission.

Commenting on the issue of shadow IT, Luca Lazzaron, Senior VP of International Operations for Fuze, said: "IT departments across Europe are faced with a stark choice, improve business technology or expect to be cut out of the loop.

"Unlike the employees of ten or 15 years ago, App Generation workers are not afraid to adopt their own technology. These are individuals who have grown up surrounded by laptops, iPhones and internet applications and the idea of installing an app to get something done comes naturally. IT departments do not represent security or consistency, they represent slow bureaucracies and unnecessary barriers.

"Businesses need to accept the demands of the workforce are changing. This means providing the latest technologies that ensure young workers, and in fact every employee, can work in the way they want to, but within the safe confines of a secure, managed IT environment. Until this middle ground is achieved, IT departments will continue to be circumvented by the new generation."