Comms Dealer

Glasgow-based Exsel Group has enabled City Cabs in Edinburgh to become Scotland's first taxi company to offer free Wi-Fi across its network.

By the end of March all 440 fleet vehicles will be fitted with Wi-Fi systems running on the O2 network.

"We are delighted to be providing free WiFi access across Edinburgh in partnership with CityCabs," stated Tom McDonald, MD, Exsel Group.

George Aird, City Cabs MD, said: "Working in partnership with Exsel we are enabling the business community, tourist and the general public to stay connected at all times."

Cheltenham Gold Cup sponsor Timico Technology Group is giving horseracing fans a free bet to stake their claim to a £250,000 prize fund.

The Timico 250 competition, launched in partnership with Cheltenham Racecourse for this year's Festival, will pay out a total of £250,000 to entrants correctly predicting the order of the runners taking part in the Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup on Friday 18th March.

Tim Radford (pictured), Chief Executive Officer at Timico, said: "Everyone likes a flutter on the Gold Cup, although it's not often you get a free bet, but with the Timico 250 competition that's exactly what we're offering.

"All entrants need to do is correctly predict the finishing order of this year's Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup runners. We wish everyone taking part in this fantastic competition the very best of luck!"

Sophia Dale, Communications Manager for the south west region of The Jockey Club, added: "This year's Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup is gearing up to be as exciting as ever with some of the best chasers in the world lined up to take their chance in the feature race of The Festival.

"Timco 250 will allow people to have a go at winning the huge prize pot and is something really fun that the sponsor has come up with. Good luck!"

The competition is limited to 20,000 entries in total and to one email address and full valid address per entry.

In the event that there are multiple correct entries the prize fund will be divided equally between all winning entries.

Entries will open at midday on 16th March 2016 at www.timico250.co.uk. The competition will close at 2.30pm on 18th March 2016 or once the number of valid entries reaches 20,000, whichever is sooner.

The high profile sponsor spot for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the feature race on the final day of The Festival, became available for the first time in 36 years, at the end of last year and Timico will sponsor the race for the next four renewals.

VoIP hardware distributor ProVu Communications has been ranked among the top 50 fastest growing companies in the Northern Tech Awards for the second year in a row.

Run by the technology investment bank GP Bullhound, companies are ranked by their revenue over the last three years.

ProVu MD Darren Garland said: "We continue to grow year-on-year, and this award validates all the hard work the ProVu team have put in. We came 23rd in the rankings last year, so I am looking forward to seeing our position this year."

The 2016 awards will take place at The Titanic Hotel, Liverpool on 23rd March.

The prevalence of wearables in the enterprise has sparked a growing concern for IT security, according to Centrify, a specialist in securing enterprise identities against cyberthreats.

In research, 69% of wearable device owners say they forego login credentials, such as PINs, passwords, fingerprint scanners and voice recognition, to access their devices.

While 56% of wearable owners use their devices to access business apps such as Box, Slack, Trello, Dropbox, Salesforce, Google Docs, Microsoft Office or a combination of these.

Despite the lack of login credentials and ready access to corporate data, 42% of wearable owners cite identity theft as their top security concern when it comes to their devices.

Lack of IT management and device control comes in second (34%) and a general increase in breaches of sensitive work data or information comes in third (22%).

"As wearables become more common in the enterprise, IT departments must take serious steps to protect them as carefully as they do laptops and smartphones," said Bill Mann, Chief Product Officer for Centrify.

"Wearables are deceptively private. Owners may feel that due to their ongoing proximity to the body they're less likely to fall into the wrong hands.

"However, hackers don't need to take physical possession of a device in order to exploit a hole in security.

"The best news is that solutions already exist that can easily wrap wearables into the identity management picture."

DeutschlandLAN NFON, the cloud telephone system based on NFON's technology, is now available via the Telekom Cloud Portal.

As strategic partners NFON AG and Deutsche Telekom have tailored their solution to the requirements of small customers who aim to replace their existing ISDN system with a modern IP telephony.

The goal of the partnership is to give small and medium sized businesses a simple, flexible and central cloud telephone system and to enable these business to setup and administrate their system independently.

Users are able to intuitively set additional functions such as call management, voicemail or call routing via a web-based user interface.

"Our future-proof telecommunication solution is supporting mobile working and enables family-friendly telework models," stated Dirk Backofen, Senior Vice President Marketing Business Customers at Deutsche Telekom GmbH.

"The cloud solution can be extended at any time with several locations or home offices able to be integrated and over 150 functions are available from the first extension."

Dr. Gerald Kromer, CEO at NFON AG, added: "All-IP is not a trend any longer as many areas of life and work have already implemented a digital transformation. Now, business communications is witnessing the relentless change."

The winners of O2 Business' 2016 Customer and Digital Excellence Awards have been named, marking the growth of the Direct Partner Programme re-launched last year.

"The O2 Direct Partner Network has gone from strength to strength in the last year, with all partners fully embracing the programme to drive digital growth," said Jason Phillips, Head of Partners for O2 Business.

"With the programme going from strength to strength we have continued to build deeper relationships with our partners, which delivers real focus in our digital portfolio for the second year running."

The 2016 O2 Customer and Digital Excellence Award winners:

· 360 Comms
· Activ Technology Ltd
· Active Business Communications
· Active Digital Ltd
· Annodata Limited
· Cellular Solutions & Services Ltd
· Challenger Mobile Communications Ltd
· Chess Telecom
· Pure Telecom
· Signal Telecom
· Uplands Mobiles Ltd
· Vivio Ltd

The 2016 O2 Customer Excellence Award winners:
· ADSI LTD
· Daisy Distribution Plc

The 2016 O2 Digital Excellence Award winners:
· Atlas Personal Communications
· Daisy Connect
· Carphone Warehouse Business
· Welcomm Communications

Samsung has revealed its ambition to displace market rivals by de-cabling the future of on-premise telephony with the launch of a new all-in-one pure IP wireless telephone system. The on-premise pure IP telephony market must evolve into an all-wireless world rather than continue down the route of cables, according to Samsung, which set the revolutionary ball rolling with the launch of SCM-Compact (an appliance-based version of the larger SCM-Express system) to 100-plus partners at the Belfry on February 24th.

The craving of any competitive business is to identify and champion its difference from market rivals, so telephony vendors should beware of Samsung's latest innovations. Despite its common field of endeavour with the competition, the Korean vendor's wireless primacy is a vivid contrast to the industry standard.

It's hardly surprising. We are living through a time of widespread mobility and according to Samsung it is at the forefront of one of the most exciting periods in the history of communications, bringing to life significant opportunities for resellers. By its own definition, Samsung is a 'wireless communication platform provider' closely aligned to the projections of industry watchers such as IDC which calculates that 75 per cent of the western European workforce will be mobile by 2018.

The persuasive arguments of comms analysts who predict impending wireless domination are reflected in Samsung's rich blend of mobility based on the WE VoIP application. "The workforce is becoming more mobile and there is a requirement for business communications to follow that trend," commented Wilf Wood (pictured), Senior Product Manager at Samsung Enterprise Networks.

"There is growth in flexible working from remote locations, with more hot desks and more people flowing in and out of offices. Organisations must adapt to having a disparate workforce that uses mobile as the main source of communication. The SCM-Compact meets these requirements, allowing employees to work remotely while businesses retain control of call costs, call recordings and call analytics. The system also integrates with smartphones and offers seamless handover from Wi-Fi to GSM and from desktop phones to mobiles."

Samsung appears to have opened a new front in pure IP telephony for SMEs. In large part it lies in articulating the benefits of a wireless-first approach to this segment and unlocking the potential of a significant addressable market. There are 5.3 million businesses in the UK of which 90-plus per cent have less than 250 employees.

The SCM Compact sits comfortably in this space, scaling up from 16 to 512 extensions, its sweet spot being 16 to circa 300 extensions. This means Samsung resellers are able to approach 76 per cent of the UK market. Not bad for a 44m tall rack mounted unit. Its big brother, the SCM-Express, scales to 3,000 extensions, giving Samsung partners access to 95 per cent of the total addressable UK market with just two systems.

The systems are part of a continuum, belonging to the Samsung Communication Manager (SCM) family as a complement to OfficeServ and the vendor's hybrid range. OfficeServ's IP phones and applications all work with the new additions. And resellers will have little trouble installing the system using two bundled starter packs. Their implementation is straightforward and cost-effective for resellers, eased by a configuration wizard and based on a Wi-Fi network with wireless access points and wireless handsets. The outcome is a highly resilient voice and data network and a full UC solution with options for productivity applications, formal and informal contact centre applications, conferencing, messaging, presence, call analytics and call recording (and more).

The starter packs include the chassis, 16 user licences, rack mounted hardware and a power cable. That's it. The second starter pack includes two voicemail licences. Both form the foundation for further deployment options. The system is wrapped by an ecosystem that includes the WE VoIP mobility solution with enhancements, comprehensive security measures, gateway control, expansion modules that support high density analogue extensions, full iOS support and a broader selection of APIs encouraging more feature rich applications from third parties. The system caters for all of the traditional trunks but is natively designed for SIP trunking with support for multiple SIP trunk providers.

Samsung is right to champion wireless not cables. Of course many customer premises are sensitive to the intrusion of cabling, such as listed buildings. And a sensitivity to legacy cabling in many organisations has prevented them from pressing ahead with upgrade opportunities.

Now it's time to play the wireless trump card, again. "One of the main barriers to providing an IP system, especially at the small end of the SME market, is legacy cabling," commented Peter Law, Enterprise Networks Sales Manager. "Installing cabling to support a new IP system can be cost prohibitive, but we have overcome that objection by using wireless connectivity. Smaller companies are starting to connect their telephony through standalone wireless access points. This opens up a new market for dealers. Going wireless means faster installations, the efficient use of engineering time and more productivity."

Law singled out other markets that offer rich targets, highlighting that the new system's design is a crucial determinant of success in small formal contact centres, a segment that also illustrates the extent to which Samsung is prepared to back up its wireless vision with physical action in support of partners.

"There is an opportunity in formal contact centres with Samsung SCM-Compact," he added. "Each agent requires two SIP trunks, as well as trunks for queues. As an example, a 30 agent contact centre would need 60 SIP trunk licences and perhaps another ten for queues. The SCM-Compact has 128 SIP trunks built-in with no licences, representing an immediate cost saving, and there is no need for MGI licences. It's a specialist sale but we will help qualify, demonstrate, sell and close deals, and help install and maintain the systems when needed."

The audience reaction to Samsung's product launch displayed an immediate awareness of its potential, with training courses fully booked by 36 companies within minutes of opening for registration. More training dates will become available, and they come with a clear message that Samsung is also targeting system replacement opportunities with rivals squarely in its sights.•

Stuart Little, Director of Scotland-based Provista UK, discusses the company's bright prospects as an ambitious network-focused professional services organisation with its sights set on larger rivals and expansion south of the border.

Getting under the skin of computers at an early age piqued Little's imagination and ambition, prompting him to study for an ONC in electronics ahead of a planned career in the RAF. With flying colours Little achieved full marks in the electronics entrance exam but he was diagnosed with a hearing problem, a turn of events that led to him going back to college where he completed a HND before securing a job with Standard Telephones and Cables commissioning equipment that digitised the BT network during the early 1990s. "From there I moved to a company that installed X25 packet switched networks for some of the major banks," he commented. "I became deeply involved in data communications for the enterprise."

Then Little became a consultant engineer with Cisco Partners and achieved certification for Cisco and other vendors. With this experience under his belt Little and two co-founders set up Provista UK in 2006. Today the company operates out of offices in Hamilton, Aberdeen and Birmingham, has big plans for expansion south of the border and currently employs 30 staff. "Provista UK was initially established to deliver a cloud network monitoring and management service for Cisco IP telephony services," explained Little. "From the outset we had a rack in a colocation data centre and signed up a couple of customers, both large universities. We delivered proactive monitoring and completed all add-ons, moves and changes from a managed office and our homes for the first few months.

"We expanded with another three customers in six months and within a year we moved into our first office. Customers asked for Cisco upgrades so we signed up as a registered Cisco partner. From that point onwards Provista has grown organically year-on-year and moved through all of the partner levels and to larger offices. We are aiming to achieve Cisco Gold Partner status within the next couple of months, which is the highest partner level and would make us the only Cisco Gold partner with a HQ in Scotland."

In May last year Provista was named Cisco's Partner of the Year in Scotland for 2015, the first time this status has been awarded to a Scottish-based organisation in ten years, previous winners being the likes of British Telecom, Virgin Media and Capita IT Enterprise Services. "We are proud of this achievement as it underlines the quality of our Cisco solutions and the investment in Provista to win this award," added Little.

Provista is self-funded, debt free and has re-invested profits to drive organic growth, projecting revenues of £7 million this financial year and targeting £10 million within the next two to three years. "We are currently investing in staff, our Cisco partnership and forecasting growth, enabling us to invest more in future expansion," added Little. "We spend a lot of time recruiting and training to get the highest possible skills and this is our biggest challenge. Our strategy is to stay focused on the customer and continue providing best quality services. This can only be achieved by continuing to invest in Provista staff and developing our current employees."

Provista also has relationships with Avaya and FortiNet, to name just two, and works across all architectures - security, data centre, collaboration, wireless, as well as LAN and WAN networks along with a rich portfolio of services. According to Little the company is geared up to execute against larger rivals by leveraging its flexibility. "It is crucial for us to allow Provista to grow organically and not to lose our agility, flexibility and customer service," he added.

Provista has strengthened its security expertise, data centre and cloud offerings, and continues to build on elements of the portfolio with new products and services such as cloud video for the enterprise. "We assist our customers in leveraging all of the benefits of a secure and unified network infrastructure environment, including operational cost savings and enhanced business output," added Little.

"The industry is evolving to a services model and the suppliers that do not embrace this will struggle. There will always be a need for infrastructure but the model of delivery is changing and technologies such as SDN will become the norm. This is an opportunity for smaller more adaptable organisations such as Provista that can embrace technologies quickly and offer them to customers with a quality service wrap."•

The countdown to Gamma's launch of a 4G business mobile service has begun. Here, Rob Davis, Head of Converged Products, explains how the company is exploiting the core mobile network infrastructure that it acquired in 2014 and discusses the big opportunities for partners.

Ahead of Gamma's much anticipated business mobile launch the company has been busy briefing channel partners on its plans via a series of events leading up to its annual roadshow this month. "Our main aim is to help more channel partners to be successful selling Gamma Mobile than the 153 MVNO partners who are doing so today," explained Davis. "Gamma Mobile is critical to our long-term strategy to deliver converged fixed and mobile services to businesses, and we believe we are the only provider in the UK that has this capability exclusively for business use and designed to give our channel partners an edge in this market."

Gamma Mobile has been an important part of Gamma's telecoms services since 2007 but the acquisition in 2014 of a complete mobile core network has taken things to a new level, giving Gamma a full MVNO capability and total control over all calls, texts and data from mobiles in exactly the same way Gamma controls the calls and data for its fixed services. The acquisition and integration of the new mobile core is a multi-million pound ongoing investment but Gamma's values remain the same.

"What has stayed constant since 2007 has been the focus on giving channel partners full ownership and control over the mobile contract with the end user, service wrap, pricing and profit they want to make," commented Davis. "This means our channel partners can provide a better service to their customers and, unlike the typical channel-based mobile dealer offerings from the big mobile operators, channel partners get from Gamma the full value of the mobile contract as a business asset."

In the first release of the new mobile service Gamma will include voicemail with options for separate messages inside office hours and outside office hours as well as much longer storage of messages. "We believe we are the first to offer a dedicated business mobile service in this way and we have plans to provide many more business-specific features in the future," added Davis. "Our channel partners will also see similar portals, billing feeds and support tools to their existing ones but with the advantage of a better service for their end users with new features like 4G and business-class voicemail built-in as standard."

Gamma provides a range of both bundles and pay-as-you-use options so partners can either take pre-built bundles or build their own. "This gives our partners the full flexibility to deliver what their business customers want rather than being tied into what the large mobile operators want to force business customers to take," added Davis. "We aim to keep our wholesale pricing as low as possible for channel partners and allow them to generate the healthy margins they need from mobile and provide the quality service wrap that businesses expect.

"We have worked hard to make the portal, billing and knowledge base tools that partners use to manage and control the new service almost the same as the current service, so our partners will find it easy to use. However, there has been an extensive project behind this to integrate the new core with Gamma's existing fixed network core. This has involved more than 44 staff on the project over an 18 month period and required new agreements to be put into place with more than 25 different suppliers.

"The biggest challenge has been getting all of this core network and systems development work done without impacting the simple and easy-to-use way we allow our partners to manage and control the Gamma Mobile service."

According to Davis there is a significant build up of demand for what Gamma can offer the market as a full MVNO. "We intend to provide a wide range of enhancements to the service and are currently talking to partners about what they would value most to ensure we can continue giving them an edge in the market," he added.

Davis believes that Gamma has also gained an edge because of the current dynamics of the mobile market in terms of M&A. "There is much change planned with many large mergers and acquisitions," he explained. "This creates a great opportunity for us and our channel partners to focus on the important task of delivering great products and services for UK businesses while the larger operators' attention is consumed with internally-facing merger and integration activities that take many years to get right."

Gamma's ability to knit together its fixed and mobile technologies combined with its flexibility and focus will provide a springboard for partners wanting to leapfrog their competitors, says Davis. "Our size and agility means that from 'flash to bang' we can bring products to market more quickly than other network providers," he said. "And our relationships with our partners, who are closet to their customers, provide us with great feedback on what the market requires enabling us to produce innovative and relevant products."•

A cloud telephony reseller's greatest ally is the intransigence of their cloud-averse counterparts, according to NFON UK Managing Director Rami Houbby. Here, he issues a wake up call to diehard traditionalists who are 'sleepwalking' through an unprecedented industry transition.

A sign of the times is the level to which cloud telephony proponents have turned up the volume of their calls for comms and IT resellers to stop in their traditional tracks and take stock of what is happening around them. Another is the growing strength of newcomers such as NFON UK which have quickly flourished in what is still a fledgling but burgeoning market. The company has blossomed under the leadership of Houbby for the simple reason that his proposition and channel strategy works, and he urges non-cloud players to take on-board his clear message.

"This decade's defining challenge for resellers is the imperative for them to examine their own business models, their cloud and virtualisation skills, their portfolio of vendor suppliers, and the way they train and remunerate sales staff," stated Houbby. "There is a big shift towards the subscription economy but many in our industry are sleepwalking through this transition. They must understand the challenges they face and the opportunities at hand. My advice is to grasp that nettle now on their own terms."

The most significant aspect of NFON UK's growth has been the expansion of its partner base which is reflected in the firm's overall performance since its UK operations began in 2013. "We've always been 100 per cent committed to the channel," commented Houbby. "Our partner growth exceeded 160 per cent last year and our customer base grew by over 300 per cent. We have also increased our team threefold and moved into a larger office. NFON UK has been geared for high growth since day one and we don't intend to take our foot off the gas."

Last year also saw NFON UK expand into new markets such as Government, large enterprise and white label telecoms providers with successful signings of its first large scale distributor, wholesaler and white label partners.

"There is a window of opportunity for resellers to take advantage of cloud telephony," said Houbby. "Foresighted VARs and SIs have spotted that the wind has changed in terms of IT and comms consumption. Business people want 'as-a-service' on-demand IT, and they'd rather put technology spend on the P&L account than have truckloads of capital assets loitering around on the balance sheet. Most of all, they don't want to be made a fool of by a static one, three or five year contract for a technology need that is evolving so quickly."

A key component of NFON UK's channel strategy is its 30-day contract which has engendered long-term partner and end user loyalty. Since introducing this in September 2013, NFON UK has not lost a single partner or end user customer. But its biggest opportunity is to capitalise on the seismic market shift around IT consumption. "The supply chain simply has to keep up with the way demand is going," explained Houbby. "It's interesting to look at our partner base and see a near 50/50 split between those traditional comms resellers whose evolution we are supporting, and those other partners who seem far less encumbered by the brave new world of cloud but perhaps don't have the experience with telephony."

Aside from the broad market evolution toward cloud-based IT infrastructures and new consumer-like IT consumption models - and the knock-on effect this has on the whole IT channel and supply chain - other factors influencing NFON UK's outlook include the market acceptance of UC which is driving greater demand for integrated communications channels and media.

"Enterprise customers trust cloud services and have an appetite for them," commented Houbby. "This reached a tipping point during the last 12 months. NFON and our partners find it increasingly easy to discuss cloud opportunities with business customers who have overcome cloud inertia."

According to Houbby, NFON offers a 'true' cloud telephony solution, flying the flag for data protection, reliability and certified sound quality. "It is thanks to this, as well as our 160-plus intelligent features, simplicity, cost-effectiveness and fundamental security features, that NFON has become a successful provider of cloud telephony solutions across 14 European countries," he added. "End user customers can use over 70 device models from different manufacturers with their NFON Cloud Telephone System. These include IP and DECT phones, headsets, conference phones and fax gateways etc. They require no complex configuration, it's just connect and go. We also offer a series of separate add-ons and solutions to drive more value."

NFON was founded in 2007 in Munich and originally focused on the German region before quickly growing its international market share by successfully promoting its cloud telephony proposition across all enterprise sectors. "It's the market evolution that's capturing everyone's imagination," said Houbby.

He has witnessed a large number of newly formed post-cloud resellers and other players (such ISPs and IT-centric VARs) diversifying onto traditional comms territory. "Their lack of legacy seems refreshing to many end users who just want a simple, transparent way of procuring high quality and flexible IT services," added Houbby, who is appealing to a broad range of resellers by targeting specific activities and messages to each segment.
"The objective is to educate and turn these communities onto the opportunities of cloud telephony," explained Houbby. "For comms specialists, this means adding NFON to their portfolio first and foremost rather than supplant other non-cloud providers. For non-comms resellers, it's virgin territory. This is a rich vein of opportunity because the infrastructure-less, no-hassle install attributes of a cloud solution are biased towards resellers who don't have the technical or sales heritage of their comms-centric peers."

As well as the NFON Cloud Telephone Solution the company provides training, marketing collateral, sales and technical support. "Partners receive everything from the kit to the billing if required," said Houbby. "They don't even need to hold any handset stock, while self-install, infrastructure-less deployments means limited time on-site. Free lifelong updates to the platform keep end users and partners at the forefront of technology. It's crucial that we continue to grow our partner base in this methodical and sustainable fashion, always investing in partners rather than 'adding them to the pile'. Managing our growth with the right people and resources is critical to this objective."

Houbby noted that leading NFON UK from scratch to mover and shaker hasn't been plain sailing. At times it's involved the stresses and strains experienced by a true start-up. "Our journey is a big achievement because we've won hearts and minds," commented Houbby. "Usually, technology is all about whether the solution works and its cost, but cloud telephony is very different. People feel strongly about traditional communications versus today's technology, and they generally don't like to face the truth about our changing times." •