Comms Dealer

The 'total eclipse' of the Eclipse name by its parent KCOM within an overall rebrand project will be greeted with ambivalence by some and a degree of surprise, even trepidation by others, so Comms Dealer grabbed an hour with KCOM Director Pete Tomlinson and quizzed him on the thinking behind the strategy and any effect it may have on its partner channel.

For over a decade Eclipse has built a solid reputation with its reseller partners for the support and service it provides in the supply of connectivity and cloud infrastructures to SME and mid-markets in the UK. Originally founded by Mark Langdon as an Internet services business, Eclipse was acquired by KCOM in 2006. Unaudited figures from September 2014 to September 2015 saw Eclipse's revenues up £3 million on the previous year at £29.6 million, and up to September 2015 revenues had already hit £19 million with an EBITDA of £3.9 million. Overall, KCOM Group revenues for 2014/15 were £128.3 million with an EBITDA of £13.1 million.

All this means Eclipse accounted for 30 per cent of Group profits and will perform equally well if not better this financial year. With this in mind our first question for Tomlinson had to be, why fix what wasn't broken? "I think we're rather like a couple that have been living together for the past decade finally deciding to get married, take the same name and living happily ever after. Changing a name won't change a business, for better or worse," he said. "We are deliberately doing this under a rebranded KCOM and this was the right thing to do. It simplifies our business, brings together our four market facing brands - KCOM, Eclipse, KC and Smart421 - and makes it easier for customers to access all of our capabilities."

Tomlinson confirmed that although the final brand logo was designed by an outside agency the original decision to dissolve the popular Eclipse name and unify the four divisions under the KCOM brand (which has less resonance in the reseller channel) was arrived at democratically within the KCOM Group.

"We've been simplifying our business behind the scenes for some time and while we've still some work do, now was the right time to visibly move our companies to a single brand. This wasn't a directive from some 'outside entity', this was a joint commitment by each of our original Group brands to come together and give our customers access to all of our expertise. The thinking was driven by our colleagues across the business, but we also believe it is important to bring in outside specialists where they can add value. So it's been a mix of both, but we all had a say in the final decision.

"While moving to a single brand is the most visible thing for customers, it is really something of an evolution across all our brands. I understand some partners will be a little nervous and maybe even sad to see the Eclipse name replaced by KCOM. We get that, but it's the same people supporting them in the same way so they needn't worry."

Tomlinson has been instrumental in building the Eclipse brand and its reputation in the channel, so was he and his partners sorry to see it go? "I've had an incredible time leading the transformation of the Eclipse brand over the past four years and I'm amazingly proud of what the team has created. However, for all that time I've also been part of a wider KCOM Group leadership team, so it's not about leaving something behind, it's about new opportunities for us and our partners.

"I think people can get too hung up on a name. I will always fight to keep everything that Eclipse stood for alive in terms of service, culture and capability. That's really the whole point of bringing the brands together across our organisation. We've been talking to our channel partners throughout the process and made sure that they were informed. Honestly, the reaction has ranged from a resounding 'meh!' to simply 'just don't mess up what we like about you guys', which were both reasonable reactions.

"Our original KCOM brand has a long history in the channel, but we're also aware that recently Eclipse has had a higher profile as a fast growing challenger brand. If we get it right our new KCOM identity has the potential to deliver the best of both worlds. I think we will, but I call on all our partners to challenge us if ever we don't get right, so we can fix it quickly. Over time our offering will expand but we're very keen to keep our partner portal and the personalities behind it exactly the same."

Tomlinson confirmed that the channel will remain a core part of how the company goes to market. "I'm a firm believer in not having separate 'channel' and 'direct' brands," he added. "In fact, your readers who were at the last Comms Vision event will remember me talking about just this point alongside our Head of Direct Sales when he was running a WAN sales master class for partners."

Tomlinson stressed that one important change from the unification that could be most advantageous to partners will be the opportunity to add extra services to their portfolios. "We have a lot of capability that partners cannot easily access right now, or it's not in a service model that works for them. The unification of our four divisions makes it easier for us to fix that and innovate as one business."•

The Pebbletree success story is born of entrepreneurial flair and the strength to instinctively flex with market demands, according to Managing Director Janni Thornton.

The first manifestation of Sunderland-based Pebbletree's strategic intent can be found in Thornton's original plan to create something different in the comms space, something that could not be ignored by cost conscious businesses. Any shift in tactics continues to be catalysed only by a desire to give customers what they need, and Pebbletree's modus operandi has become a 'personality' that shows the company at its agile best.

Before setting up Pebbletree as a family business Janni and her husband Robert previously worked for blue chip organisations in IT-based roles. They wanted to own their own company so decided to grab the bull by the horns and start up a software development business in 2005 providing bespoke solutions. A bright idea in early 2006 sparked the Soho66 brand into existence, which is now a high profile VoIP provider.

In 2007 the husband and wife team worked out of their spare bedroom. That summer, they shifted up a gear as orders poured in, enabling Soho66 to secure a market foothold against all the odds as the recession loomed. The catalyst was the gulf that opened up for companies under siege from the worst financial crisis in living memory, that were picking up the pieces with ever-shrinking budgets. "Businesses wanted to cut costs anywhere possible to keep their head above water, and Soho66 offered an affordable, reliable telecoms solution that could help companies save in excess of 60-70 per cent on their comms compared to traditional providers," stated Thornton.

During 2007-2008, Soho66 generated revenue growth of almost 63 per cent and a year later 103 per cent. Unfazed by the biting recession Pebbletree spotted another growth opportunity, this time in Ireland. So Thornton established Goldfish.ie in partnership with a close friend and adapted the Soho66 cloud platform to suit the Irish market. Today, Goldfish boasts a customer base of more than 3,000 businesses supported by a team of seven located near Dublin. "Our ability to innovate and diversify without requiring the go-ahead from investors or a board has given Pebbletree the flexibility to build a successful core of brands," commented Thornton.

In 2013 Pebbletree launched another brand, Quvu (pronounced queue-view), a browser-based contact centre management system that enabled the firm to reach some of the largest users of telecoms. A year later the product received 'highly commended' recognition for Best VoIP Innovation at the ITSPA awards. Soho66 then snared the Best VoIP prize at the ISPA ceremony, and last year ITSPA awarded Soho66 the Best Business ITSP (medium enterprise) gong. "2015 was a year to remember for Pebbletree," added Thornton. "We were also crowned champions at the Echo Business Portfolio Awards after winning Employer of the Year."

Soho66 accounts for the majority of Pebbletree's 30,000-plus UK customer base. Although it primarily targets the SME market with cloud-based telecoms solutions, larger customers such as enterprises and contact centres are also switching to its services having opted to move their comms to the cloud.

The company now forecasts a 2014-2015 revenue increase of 21.5 per cent and expects this to grow to 31.5 per cent in the current financial year. Its team of 28 will also expand to more than 30 staff by 2017. "We have grown organically from day one, are debt-free, have no investors and have been operating at a profit from the outset," added Thornton.

Crucially, Pebbletree's early growth was driven by a combination of vision and can-do leadership rather than a pre-planned long-term business plan. "In the beginning, strategy wasn't something that we proactively followed," added Thornton. "It may have been an unconventional business model but we knew the foundations we wanted to build the business on, and added strings to our bow when and where we could."

The strength of this approach is reflected in Soho66's success despite having no dedicated sales team. Furthermore, before Quvu's inception Pebbletree didn't have a sales department. "We grew thanks to word of mouth and recommendations from our customers," added Thornton. "As a self-built family business there has always been a strong focus on customer service. We continue to adapt, innovate and diversify as we see trends and shifts in the industry and marketplace, and believe that this approach, alongside our customer focus, has justified the steps we have taken and the decisions we have made. This approach is the reason why Soho66 is rated as the highest ranked VoIP provider of any of our competitors on TrustPilot, from over 400 customer reviews."

Just as popular is Soho66's Reseller and Affiliate programmes, pointed out Thornton, who noted that the company works with 110 white label partners and 288 affiliate resellers. "We see resellers as an important cog in our VoIP machine," she said. "They provide a consistent, specialist, high level of service. If resellers maintain their customer ethos and provide the right solutions they will succeed in any market."

According to Thornton, Soho66 and Quvu are the primary growth areas as larger organisations realise the benefits of next generation communications. "The prospects for Quvu are huge," explained Thornton. "Some of the largest and most influential contact centres are switching their call management platforms onto the cloud and enjoying the cost savings. Internationally, Soho66 and Quvu have a chance to gain significant ground. With existing customers in the Irish, South African and Filipino markets we have the opportunity to build a strong global customer base. Although our services are used worldwide, we refuse to fall into a corporate way of working and believe investment in our platform, infrastructure and team is the best way of ensuring success."

Although Soho66 has built its customer base without a sales team, Thornton recognises the need to support the Quvu product with selling expertise. "With Quvu, the top priority is to continue to build the brand, develop the product, understand our customers' needs and adapt future releases to mirror them," noted Thornton. "By building all of our solutions in-house we can adapt and alter our priorities as the market changes. This gives us more freedom to innovate and the opportunity to work alongside customers."

Pebbletree has invested significantly to ensure that its platforms are as stable, resilient and reliable as possible by using a number of different data centres, each of them operating redundancy and failover fault tolerance. Pebbletree also carries out 24/7 platform monitoring across thousands of unique monitoring points allowing it to immediately detect a problem and rectify any issues. Aside from these investments, Pebbletree has created Simply66 as its own brand, a Virtual Receptionist service built and run in-house at the Pebbletree HQ. The company is also a fully fledged RIPE NCC member, giving it access to its own IP numbering.

The Pebbletree portfolio continues to evolve whenever the team spots a gap in the market, and the company's track record in such matters has earned it a reputation for entrepreneurial talent. "As with Simply66 and Quvu, we saw the chance to provide customers with a complementary product to Soho66, or in the case of Quvu, an evolution of the Soho66 solution," she added. "By tracking, understanding and dissecting the market and our competition we give ourselves the best chance of staying ahead of the game."

Thornton embraces Pebbletree's future with excitement and ambition and looks back on a decade well lived. "In a career with many highlights, celebrating 10 years of Pebbletree has been my biggest achievement," she said. "It is a special milestone for Robert and I, and it is testament to the risks we have taken and the decisions we have made since we started the business."•

Turning non-technical industries into digital players is the fine art of Fifteen Digital Managing Director Robert Adams, who, for example, is helping the crisping market to make a packet.

Adams first encountered the world of IT at the age of three when his father bought him a computer. Three years later Adams was a dab hand at programming and needless to say he was already on a career path, deepening his knowledge and experience at school, achieving a high level of expertise that was recognised when he came second in the National Computing Awards. Perhaps it was the number-crunching of computer programming that diverted Adams from his destiny into a surprising career choice. "After leaving school I became an accountant," he said. "But I always had a passion for technology and at the age of 21 went self-employed to start up an IT business called Anet with my brother Mark."

Fifteen Digital was incorporated in February 2006 following a link-up with 15 Digital Marketing owned by John Borthwick. "Myself and John met through a mutual client and the digital marketing and IT skills we shared was obvious," added Adams. "We decided to merge the two businesses into one with the Stoke-based company offering marketing and technology solutions."
The following year Fifteen Digital started to offer web development and James Tierney joined the firm as Developers Director. "Three years later we opened up a second office in Darlington to replicate the success we had in the west midlands," explained Adams.

A more significant development in April 2014 saw Fifteen Digital purchase B2B Telecoms business Sitelink Communications, with Ian Walker coming on board as Communications Director. "Acquiring a telecoms business allowed us to broaden our range of services as well as our portfolio of clients," commented Adams. "Moving into full specification business transformation services enabled Fifteen Digital to provide a whole solution, permitting businesses to work towards their goals while we support their development more efficiently."

Last year's revenues reached over £1 million and the company now employs 27 staff with plans to double the headcount by 2019. Target markets include franchisor clients, leisure and entertainment brands, retailers, manufacturing firms, construction companies, training and recruitment agencies, health and beauty services, plus many more, including crisp makers.

"The creation of our Agritech solution has been a great success," explained Adams. "It now supports 20 per cent of the UK's crisping markets. This particular project allowed us to bring technology to an industry that's not normally considered hi-tech. This shows the benefits that technology can bring to any business. One of our biggest opportunities is our specialism of developing provenance and trace solutions. In 2015 we won the Business Enabler Award at the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards. This was for our collaborative partnership with a large crisping potato provider which led us to create the LiveTrace system."

The LiveTrace system provides provenance and traceability over all produce to the full supply chain, ensuring food safety regulations and standards are met. "The system has revolutionised our client's business through efficiency and effectiveness," said Adams. "A challenge we face is encouraging low tech industries to adopt technology in their business areas. We have demonstrated the importance and benefits of applying smart technology to business activities.

"It's now a case of sharing these benefits and encouraging more companies to get on board and transform their business for the better. We have found a niche for supporting companies that aren't technical by helping them to become more technologically advanced. A challenge that Team Fifteen finds inspiring and exciting."

Other challenges include developing and growing the Fifteen Digital team. "Finding new suitable candidates can be problematic, as well as creating training programmes around new technologies for the team to adopt," noted Adams. "The technology market is strong and thriving with new agencies and businesses being established every day. Ensuring that we stand out in a prosperous and growing market is vital."

Two months ago Fifteen Digital kicked off its tenth anniversary celebrations with various activities taking place over the year including a £10,000 fundraiser challenge for local Stoke charity The Donna Louise Children's Hospice. Adams commented: "The past ten years have been exciting for Fifteen Digital, with Team Fifteen doubling in size, regional and national award wins and a growing portfolio of clients and projects."•

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: The continued popularity of multichannel marketing means that strong and consistent brand identity is more important than ever.

Multichannel marketing is the communication with customers and prospects using a combination of indirect and direct communication channels such as websites, direct mail, email, mobile etc. A multichannel approach is a fantastic way to engage with your target audience. However, ensuring the key messages and corporate 'look and feel' are the same across all marketing channels is harder to execute if not planned correctly.

Consistency can be easily lost when several companies and agencies are working on the same brand. For example, there may be an in-house marketer for collateral, an e-marketing agency for e-shots and web designers for web updates. When so many different parties are working together, brand subtleties can get inadvertently missed.

Detailed brand guidelines are an obvious starting point to ensure there are clear rules for all parties to adhere to. Viewing your marketing activity as an integrated campaign rather than individual marketing projects is another way of flagging any inconsistencies at an early stage.

Sending out differing messages to your target market will lead to confusion. But ensuring there is straightforward consistency across all your marketing is simpler than you think. Easy checks such as making sure your business card has the same font and colours as your product proposal document makes a difference to how prospects and customers view your company.

Branded product sheets explaining your services in an easy to understand manner is also advisable, and don't forget to clearly state why your company is better than your competitor.

Samsung has crowned Bournemouth-based 4Com as its leading reseller of Samsung Unified Communications solutions worldwide.

4Com combines Samsung's business phone range and networking products with its own software to create a solution that dovetails with the requirements of customers.

Peter Law, Samsung's Channel and Distribution Manager, stated: "4Com's rapid growth has helped boost our own market share in the UK."

4Com Chairman and MD Daron Hutt stated: "This is a great example of two companies succeeding by making the customer experience central to what they do and how they do it.

"We have some exciting plans for the future, but we're looking forward to our continuing relationship with Samsung which is now an invaluable part of our product mix."

Pictured: Peter Law (left) and Daron Hutt

Riverbed is strengthening its partner strategy with updates to existing channel programmes and the introduction of new initiatives such as a track for managed services and a Consulting Partner scheme.

The company is also investing in its value added distributor programme.

"In this transformational time in the IT industry, Riverbed is doubling down on its investment in our partners," said Karl Meulema, Senior VP for Global Channels.

"We are making resource, programme and IP investments designed to engage with our partners at the customer level, build differentiated embedded solutions and services, create a partner services economy, and develop revenue and services opportunities for our partners in the channel-led space.

"Technology including mobile, SaaS and cloud are disrupting business models, providing new ways to engage and connect with customers as well as entirely new routes to market," Meulema added.

"These updates to our partner programme are designed to help our partners make this market shift."

The European Software & Solution Summit 2016 (April 14th London) will reveal insights into the future role of global tracking in IoT markets.

Technavio expects the global tracking-as-a-service market to exceed $1bn by 2020.

Amit Sharma, lead analyst at Technavio for cloud computing research, said: "Economic and cultural globalisation has resulted in the rapid movement of ideas, commerce, people, and assets worldwide. As a result, businesses and people require real-time tracking technology to monitor the movement of people, property, and assets in order to conduct their business safely and efficiently."

The top four emerging trends influencing the global tracking-as-a-service market according to Technavio's ICT research analysts include opportunities for M2M platform providers. M2M platforms offer technologies to connect hardware, networks, software, and services to bring end-to-end tracking and monitoring solutions. Pre-built applications help create solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of a target user group.

The core components of M2M platform include the hardware that is used to capture the location of people and other objects under remote tracking and electronic monitoring. Devices use GPS, A-GPS, and AFLT location technologies to pinpoint location. M2M communications offer added values to domains, such as automotive, health, and consumer electronics, through remote monitoring and control using automated data exchange in real-time. It enables great revenue opportunities for tracking service providers.

M2M companies, such as Maven Systems, SensorLogic, and onAsset intelligence, offer tracking services with IoT. Such services will lead to opportunities for M2M platform providers.

Service providers in the market offer proprietary analytics services for both location-based information and electronic monitoring devices. This involves extraction of information from mobile phones or any other devices that can track location.

Analytics uses location data and past records to forecast early warnings of crimes in the offender monitoring market. Large-scale data analytics is used to pre-empt offenders about to commit a crime. This allows authorities to intervene and contain a potential situation. All these factors have boosted the growth of tracking device companies.

There will be a big shift from CAPEX to OPEX business models, it says. Asset tracking and vehicle tracking solutions are competitive areas as there are many service providers offering similar services. Therefore, to differentiate themselves, tracking service providers are offering services bundled with monitoring, tracking, and analytics services (based on PaaS). This also allows end-users to quickly build customized applications that track and monitor mobile workers and commercial assets.

Customers prefer monitoring services through PaaS owing to cost factors. The high costs involved in the long term have forced customers to use low-cost models or to shift from CAPEX to OPEX for tracking and monitoring services offered through PaaS.

Under the umbrella theme of "Creating Solutions for the Digital Age," the European Software & Solution Summit 2016 will shed light on these trends and examine the impact they will have on European software and solution development and delivery. Conference and breakout sessions will explore trends in Cloud hosting and service delivery, evolving business models, the Internet of Things (IoT), M2M and the impact that the introduction of high speed fixed and mobile communications is having on them and the speed with which they can be leveraged to transform business operations.

Nimans is raising the profile of Asterisk, an open source framework for building communications applications.

It forms the basis of IP PBX systems and VoIP gateways such as Nimans' iQ PBX platform, conference servers and other custom solutions.

"This technology is perfect for resellers who want an all-in-one solution as well as those who prefer to 'get under the bonnet' and create a more bespoke comms platform," said Nimans' iQ Business Manager Judith Addison.

"Today, there are more than one million Asterisk-based communications systems in use
in more than 170 countries. Often deployed by system integrators and developers, Asterisk can become the basis for a complete business phone system, or be used to enhance or extend an existing system, or bridge a gap between systems."

ScanSource Communications Europe is set to launch a new cloud solutions programme under its existing hosted brand VaaS-t following a link-up with data centre and connectivity provider Virtual1.

The hosted solution will be based on Unify's OpenScape Business system.

The move is a response to growing demand for cloud solutions and hosted UC and introduces subscription-based, cost per-user per-month license models with cloud-based, on-premises or hybrid deployment options.

"Many of our resellers were looking at alternative solutions to our on-premises systems as a number of their end user customers have now adopted a cloud-based strategy," stated Paul Emery, Director of Technical and Services, ScanSource Communications Europe.

"We have responded to this market change by establishing our cloud solutions for voice as well as video." 

The UK is the first market to launch new cloud solutions under VaaS-t.  

Analytical data management platform Zizo has become part of Dell's Service Provider Partner programme.

Zizo has signed up to Dell's Service Provider Partner programme in an greement that sees Zizo's analytical data management solution proposed alongside data centre hardware and support provided by Dell.

The company delivers an end-to-end Analytics-as-a-Service platform based on its own patented technology, with customers including the BBC, Marks and Spencer and the Royal Mail in the UK.