Comms Dealer

In a new TBR research report, the analyst argues that EMC faces many challenges as it moves to becoming a part of Dell.

Not least is the change to its channels, EMC's partner ecosystem will need monitoring to make the change accretive, partners will have natural reactions to the large merger. 

Many of the short-term challenges revolve around the base of transaction-oriented resellers awaiting clarity from Dell and from EMC on the new rules of engagement and conflict resolution that cannot be articulated until after the transaction finalises, it says.

Obvious concerns will be around local market conflict between Dell and EMC partners triggering price wars and margin erosions.

During the transition process, EMC can expect provocative press reporting and some short-term fallout as the combined entity sorts through the go-to-market segment issues.

While downmarket partner programs will face turbulence, EMC has a strong opportunity to forge tighter relationships higher up the partner stack with solution providers, cloud service providers and global system Integrators.

The efforts started at the federation level around these initiatives certainly aim the market motions in the right directions.

Key benefits EMC can articulate include, as Michael Dell intimated in his keynote remarks, the idea that it may be the case that Dell Technologies and HPE will be the last two infrastructure titans standing (with Cisco and Lenovo having at least some reason to take exception to the statement).

From this vantage point, they can sell efficiencies to these global suppliers on the benefits of working with the Dell Technologies stacks and software-defined assets underpinning the API first infrastructure enabling automated services.

EMC will be able to take the IP gained from the transformation consulting services with the core enterprise accounts and turn it into automated services that, in turn, save its partners time in their own services stacks.

Amid extensive IT disruption fueled by the ongoing customer desire to transform IT ecosystems and accelerate business initiatives, EMC rests on a critical pivot point that determines its role as a next-generation leader.

But through an umbrella theme of 'modernize' at EMC World 2016, the storage giant showcased innovation destined to push the company directly into leadership status across a number of modern technology realms.

EMC is responding to the accelerating transition of IT from a cost centre to an enabler of business advantage, with a steady shift in its innovation model toward flash technologies, abstracted and increasingly open software functionality, and 'as a Service' IT delivery.

More notably, EMC is preparing to diverge from its hallmark horizontal business model through its agreement to be acquired by Dell - an industry landmark both in its $67bn valuation and the implications of creating a combined $80bn behemoth. EMC World 2016 served as a ceremonial, unofficial passing of leadership from EMC CEO Joe Tucci to Dell CEO Michael Dell, marked particularly by planned branding of the combined organisation as Dell Technologies.

EMC executives touted continued innovation, with all major aspects of the company's storage portfolio refreshed to date in 2016, and messaged the potential inherent in combining Dell's scale and vast mid-market entrenchment with EMC's large enterprise cachet. Such messaging is crucial as EMC navigates a degree of customer and partner uncertainty as the deal moves toward finalisation, expected in 2H16. EMC has an increasingly clear strategy and the necessary elements in place to mitigate attrition in its vast existing storage installed base and grow in under-penetrated markets, such as the mid-market, during 2016.

TBR expects customers to turn to their IT providers for high-value engagements centred on navigating complex and challenging transformation initiatives. The longer-term path for EMC will mean building from this position following its integration into Dell. Competition is fierce, and will remain so as peers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) also evolve into transformation agents and seek to leverage the Dell-EMC integration as an opportunity for competitive displacement. 

However, EMC executives are clearly working to identify pockets of industry transformation they can better capitalise on jointly with Dell, which portends quick integration when the acquisition is finalised. Further, Dell's supply chain and channel expertise, along with its newfound permission to play in the enterprise, will further spawn opportunity for EMC and its broad set of technologies.

Buckinghamshire-based business broadband provider Toople.com has listed on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker 'TOOP'. The company's leadership team includes industry heavyweights Andrew Hollingworth, former Director at TalkTalk, Geoff Wilson, also from TalkTalk and Neil Taylor, ex-CFO of BT Wholesale.

The listing follows a series of investor roadshows and city fund raising and according to Hollingworth 'it's time to get to business'.

"We have raised the funds we needed and launched our website," he said. "Initially we will roll out broadband services with mobile and hosted PBX to follow."

Hollingworth also plans to bring new services to Toople.com's website with full automation across the different platforms and devices.

"Our leadership team jointly has well over 100 years of telecoms knowledge," he added. "Toople.com is the one to watch over the coming months."

The company owns all of its software, enabling it to implement services quickly and cost-effectively, pointed out Hollingworth, who also noted that Toople.com pledges fixed prices for the life of a broadband contract with no hidden terms and conditions.

"Our vision is based on trust and transparency with no hidden fees," he added. "We focus on providing the facts in straightforward language rather than confusing customers with complicated jargon and acronyms."

Advanced has appointed Andy Williams as Head of Professional Services, bringing more than 15 years experience in top-level consulting in the UK and USA.

His software market career includes six years at Dell and prior to joining Advanced he was a Consulting Director with Vista Consulting Group (VCG), part of Vista Equity Partners which acquired Advanced last year.

Since joining Advanced in April 2015 as VP of Strategic Projects, Williams has overseen multiple projects to transform the business.

Following its acquisition, Advanced has implemented new company-wide systems, realigned its business units, opened two new state-of-the-art offices, undergone a major rebrand and embarked on an ambitious recruitment campaign.

Williams said: "I was interested in Advanced due to its successful history and impressive growth. It was also clear that Vista has a strong vision for the company which I knew from my experience of working for them with their portfolio companies meant it would be an exciting time to join.

"I'm looking forward to creating a strong professional services community within the company, ensuring our resources are in the best positions to support our customers.

"I will also be reviewing and standardising processes across the company as well as ensuring we are using our new internal systems to best effect."

Gordon Wilson, CEO, Advanced, added: "Andy is well versed in Vista's approach and has a great breadth of knowledge and experience in transforming business operations to great effect. 

"With his experience and skills of senior-level strategic planning, complex global transformations and systems implementation programmes, I am confident that he is the right person to lead us forward in delivering high quality customer services."

Williams started his career as a management consultant for Accenture working with a variety of companies like Dell, Vodafone and BT. He then spent six years with Dell working on global transformation programmes including setting up new companies across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Zen Internet has opted for Strategic Imperatives' Elevate billing platform as a springboard for the ISPs next phase of growth.

Chris Platt, Head of Systems, Zen Internet, said: "Billing is a strategic service that our business depends upon. In the past 20 years Zen has grown from a small-scale start-up to a highly responsive CP with more than 400 staff and we have no plans to stop there.

"We performed penetration and vulnerability testing on Elevate, and the system is intuitive and user-friendly. Elevate's SaaS nature meant that a pre-configured version of the service was up and running quickly and we were able to process the first live bill run within days."

Strategic Imperatives Head of Business Development Tim Sayer added: "Elevate leverages Amazon's AWS to keep the infrastructure highly scalable and cloud-based, giving Elevate an 'elastic' capability while allowing it to work in real-time, responding instantly to changes in customer and pricing data, immediately recalculating, and giving Zen constant oversight of its business performance.

"Our two-factor authentication and finance industry level encryption ensures total security for Zen and its customers. Zen can now plot its commercial roadmap using Elevate's time-based capability, enabling it to plan, deploy and test future propositions in real-time."

Video specialist Imago ScanSource is gearing up to host the third annual Business Breakthrough event on May 26th at The Brewery in the City of London.

The event has attracted almost 30 vendors including Polycom, NEC, Samsung and Barco.

Imago ScanSource will also be working with Array Telepresence to show the new i-Kandy video conferencing solution; and with Vidyo and Polycom to demonstrate the latest enhancements to the VaaS-t cloud-based services.

Alongside vendor displays and demonstrations, Imago ScanSource is organising a series of technical and enterprise focused seminars presented by speakers from the broadcast, AV and global tech industry.

A number of new announcements are expected to be revealed in the 'Whisper Suite' and in the 'Cloud Suite' visitors will be able to access help with their cloud strategies from some of the industry's key cloud players.

James Vickerage, Vice President, Imago ScanSource UK and Ireland, said: "Vendors, resellers and users can come together to network, learn and share best practice. They can see the most current solutions and gain an understanding of what is coming down the line."

A new partner programme launched by security firm Sophos simplifies the complexities of managing multiple security solutions across multiple customers, claims the firm.

A growing number of enterprises are turning to MSPs to protect them against the rapid growth of sophisticated cyber attacks that are capable of targeting any area of vulnerability in the IT estate.

This means managing endpoint, server, network, web and email security products across multiple platforms and increasingly on employees' mobile devices.

The mix of traditional and next generation technology available from multiple vendors has placed additional administrative burdens and extra costs on MSPs.

The new Sophos MSP Connect programme provides access to the company's portfolio of endpoint and network security products.

MSPs are now able to manage all Sophos solutions for every customer through a centralised management platform, Sophos Central.

Within Sophos Central is Sophos Central-Partner, a specialised dashboard that allows MSPs to distribute licenses, add new customers on demand, cross-sell and upsell services, drive recurring revenue and have a clear, real-time perspective on all customer activity.

MSPs can respond to security incidents faster and track alerts of all levels directly from the dashboard, so time spent handling incidents, including minor ones, is more productive and effective.

"MSPs benefit from aggregate licensing models, and with Sophos they will also benefit from more effective synchronised security," said Scott Barlow, vice president, global MSP, Sophos.

"The Sophos Central-Partner dashboard will enable MSPs to manage security for endpoint, mobile, network, email, web, wireless and data privacy solutions in a single pane of glass, which is essential when business owners and employees are working in and out of the office with multiple devices."

Telcos are missing out on SMB SaaS opportunities, according to research by BCSG.

Previous research conducted on behalf of BCSG suggests this market may potentially be worth $22bn to UK and US operators, yet many are failing to realise this opportunity because of the failure to implement a best practice model that considers SMBs needs.
 
While many telcos are struggling to generate new revenue when offering software as a service to the SMB market, other, mature SaaS vendors are experiencing significant customer growth.

Good examples include cloud-based accounting software firm Xero and retail ecommerce firm Shopify, who each added hundreds of thousands of paying users last year alone.

Spurred to investigate this dichotomy, BCSG's analysis has identified several key reasons why telecoms operators are falling short in their ambitions.

According to the study telcos are failing to properly understand the customer and their needs and develop effective customer journeys, among other factors.

"Multiple reports and research, including our own, shows there's huge, latent opportunity for telecoms operators to generate substantial new revenues from cloud services provision," said Alan Marsh, Product and Marketing Director at BCSG.

"While telcos have had some success selling to tech-savvy 'early adopters', SMBs in the mass market are less willing and able to find their own way.

"Our analysis shows that low sales among mass market customers comes from failing to build awareness and appreciation of value effectively in the early stages of customer engagement.

"Understanding and building engaging, multi-channel customer journeys that span the full customer lifecycle will be key to unlocking the potential from this sector."

Pebbletree marked its 10th anniversary by filling a retro phone box with balls of varying sizes and launching a competition to guess how many balls.

Contestants entered via Pebbletree's website and Pebbletree customer Richard Pierpoint scooped the 13 night luxury cruise prize following an inspired punt.

Pierpoint, Director of FlexiSail, a boat and yacht sharing business based in Lymington, stated: "I thought there might be around 4,000 balls, but seeing that there were balls of different sizes it was anyone's guess.

"Looking down at my keyboard, 4,321 came easily to my fingertips and just made sense! They say that your first hunch is often right!"

Pierpoint and his wife Sue will to sail from Southampton to Spain and the Canary Islands aboard Celebrity Cruises' Eclipse ship in October 2016, having beaten off 1,500 entrants.

Janni Thornton, MD and co-founder of Pebbletree, said:
"After pushing this competition to customers through our notification system we were over the moon to discover that it was a customer that had won the competition.

"We wanted to splash out for our 10th anniversary, and after all, without our customers, we wouldn't have made it this far, so a big prize such as the cruise just made sense to us."

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Zen Internet has appointed Jon Bauer as Technical Director with a remit to lead the firm's next generation network strategy.

He brings 15-plus years experience in the technology, media and telecommunications sector, and prior to joining Zen he was Director of Technology at TalkTalk, having held many other senior positions with the company.

Bauer will head up the Network & Infrastructure division at Zen as it kicks off a multi-million pound investment programme to build a new national network.

"I have joined Zen to advise and deliver on the evolution of its network from a reliable and efficient one to a carrier-grade telecommunications infrastructure that will deliver and support the next generation of connectivity, IT and telecommunications services," stated Bauer.

"When complete, the new Zen network will provide the company with a solid platform on which to further build its credentials as a wholesaler."

Darlington-based Fifteen Digital narrowly missed out on the 'Most Ingenious' gong at the Best of Darlington Awards, coming in as runner up.

The Best of Darlington Awards recognise the local businesses of the town and their achievements, and the Most Ingenious Award category honoured businesses who see opportunities and solve problems through creativity and inventiveness.