Comms Dealer

Content Guru's multi-channel outbound customer engagement application, storm CONTACT:OUTBOUND, boasts new features such as automated and live agent dialling and fully integrated campaign support across SMS, IM, email and social media, enabling organisations to deliver outbound services on any scale.  
   
CONTACT:OUTBOUND is a component of the multi-channel Cloud Contact Centre Suite.

Administrators can provision campaigns through the secure, web-based storm administration interface, selecting agent groups, data sources, pacing profiles and multi-channel options.

storm then automatically delivers the campaign, mass broadcasting personalised multi-channel messages at specified times, while also assigning agents to automatically contact customers.

For agents, all interactions take place in a blended inbound and outbound environment within the DTA (Desktop Task Assistant). 

Agents can handle multi-channel inbound enquiries and then be automatically connected to an outbound call when they are available, which is closely monitored by storm in real time.

Using predictive dialler logic, these storm generated outbound calls are only connected to live agents if they are successful, increasing efficiencies as agents no longer have to waste time dealing with unanswered calls and answerphones, and are instead better able to deliver multi-channel support.

Administrators can also set business rules to ensure that outbound dialling rates are synchronized with agent availability and that abandoned calls are kept within regulatory Ofcom limits.

OUTBOUND also leverages storm's database, DATA MANAGEMENT, for campaign delivery.

Mush Rahman, Project Management Team Leader for Content Guru, commented: "Organisations are under more pressure than ever to meet heightened consumer expectations. Being reactive is no longer an option, businesses must proactively engage with consumers, who are becoming increasingly wary of standard dialler campaigns and less receptive to legacy call centre methods.

"It is now more important than ever that organisations deploy contact centre solutions that align with these changes in consumer receptiveness to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty as well as strengthen their brand image.

"Demands are increasing for convenient interactions and tailored content. OUTBOUND's multi-channel and intelligent routing capabilities empower organisations to manage mass outbound campaigns in a more personalised, streamlined and dynamic way that complies with industry standards and consumer expectations, while also boosting agent productivity, morale and overall contact centre efficiency."

North east UC specialist ITPS has been appointed to G-Cloud 7 in two categories, infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service.

Garry Sheriff, MD, said: "Bidding for public sector contracts was previously a long and drawn out process that put off a lot of SMEs and smaller companies from pitching for work. It also saw public sector bodies spend a lot of time and effort whittling suppliers down to a shortlist.

"Public sector bodies looking for cloud IT services can now go straight to the list to find pre-approved suppliers like ourselves, and have the reassurance that we have the expertise and track record for the job.

"It's a very cost-effective, efficient way for the public sector to buy ICT services, and helps SMEs access a huge potential market.

"We were confident we could meet the criteria for inclusion on the approved list of government suppliers, so it is great news to have received the official stamp of quality on our expertise."

CensorNet has acquired Danish multi-factor authentication vendor SMS PASSCODE.

CensorNet will integrate SMS PASSCODE's adaptive multi-factor authentication technology into its cloud-based Unified Security Solution, which brings together email and web security.

"This gives us the full range of security solutions," CensorNet CEO Ed Macnair tells IT Europa.

"The fast growing security business and its channels need to offer comprehensive tools, especially covering the area of applications.

"Most organisations have no idea what applications are being used and how their data is being accessed. A multi-faceted security solution to see all - email, web and apps is what is required.

"Our vision is to provide organisations with a single pane of glass that gives them visibility and control of web, cloud applications and email.

"With weak or stolen passwords still being the major source of network breaches integrating SMS PASSCODE's authentication capability to our solution was a no brainer."

Automated communications specialist ANT Telecom has added VoipSec's cloud-based voice security solution, EasySBC, to its SIP trunk offering, allowing customers to deploy secure SIP without the need for significant upfront costs for security hardware.

The company also becomes VoipSec's first reseller of EasySBC in the UK.
 
Prior to its partnership with VoipSec, ANT Telecom faced the challenge of selling SBC hardware with a significant upfront cost that often negated the ROI of SIP trunking.

"With reports that ISDN is going to be phased out by 2025 over the next decade, there's going to be a mass migration towards SIP," said Paul Smith, Managing Director, ANT Telecom.

"While we have been determined to offer a full SIP trunk package including security, the additional hardware costs proved difficult for many organisations, particularly small and medium sized companies that didn't have the budget.

"As VoipSec is a software only service, we're able to simply add on the security in line with our existing commercial model, giving us a unique advantage and differentiator in the market."
 
Paul German, CEO, VoipSec, added: "ANT Telecom faced the same issue that all SIP trunk resellers have, which is to either move forward and sell non-secure SIP trunks or continue to implement hardware-based SBC which impacted on the take up of SIP.

"Our solution is created to fit easily into a reseller's existing proposition and ultimately support their sales and business growth by ensuring customers experience the cost benefits of SIP without exposing themselves to unnecessary risk."

Systems integrator and managed services provider Maintel has been named as one of London Stock Exchange's 1,000 Companies to Inspire Britain. The report is a celebration of the UK's fastest growing and most dynamic small and medium sized businesses.

To be included in the list, companies needed to show consistent revenue growth over a minimum of three years, significantly outperforming their industry peers.

Angus McCaffery, Director at Maintel, said, "It's an honour to be recognised as an important industry player and to be included alongside many influential British companies.

"With a great team behind us and by acquiring companies which add greater value to our customers, we've achieved more organic growth over the past few years than many of our peers."

Xavier Rolet, Chief Executive, London Stock Exchange Group, said: "High growth SMEs are the driving force behind the UK economy, developing the skills, jobs and growth we need."

Pictured (l-r) Xavier Rolet KBE with Angus McCaffery

Saga, the provider of financial and travel products for the over 50s, has engaged contact centre technology specialist Sabio to support its contact centre infrastructure at sites in Folkestone and Thanet.

In addition to providing 24x7x365 coverage for Saga's existing Avaya technology estate, including the core Avaya Aura Communication Manager platform, Sabio's Enhanced Support approach will feature its advanced Monitoring-as-a-Service offering to enable more proactive service management.

Sabio will also work in partnership to drive the development of Saga's customer engagement technology roadmap, helping the business to ensure that customers continue to benefit from the highest quality of service.

"The customer is at the heart of Saga's approach, so it's critical that our contact centre infrastructure keeps performing optimally," said Simon Godfrey, Head of IT Operations at Saga.

"In selecting a new support partner we wanted an organisation that not only had an in-depth understanding of our Avaya technology, but could also help to shape our next generation customer contact strategy."

Sennheiser has confirmed telecoms supplier Duplex as an official distribution partner.

The deal follows significant year on year double-digit growth in Sennheiser sales.

"Duplex has performed admirably and we can't think of a better fit when choosing a direct partner," said Jane Craven, Sales Director IT/Telecommunications, UK & Ireland at Sennheiser.

Established in 2006, Duplex is a supplier of telecoms products to a range of industries.

In a bid to reduce the need for costly air-conditioning Microsoft has tested a prototype of a self-contained data centre that can operate hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean, reports Rachel Gordon, Technology Analyst, IDTechEx.

Thermal management is becoming an increasing important and expensive part of industrial and enterprise computing.

Microsoft believe that putting the servers under cold ocean water could cool the data centres without air-conditioning.

Being heavily reliant on passive cooling means the interfaces must allow excellent thermal conduction away from the heat sources to the environment.

This solution could also address the exponentially growing energy demands of computing, because Microsoft is considering harvesting electricity from the movement of the surrounding sea water.

One aspect of the project that has potential is including either a turbine or a tidal energy system to generate electricity.

For years, the main cloud computing providers have been seeking sites around the world, where they can utilise green energy and take advantage of the surrounding environment.

The demand for centralised computing has been growing exponentially. Microsoft manages more than 100 data centers around the globe and is adding more rapidly.

The company has spent more than $15bn on a global data center network. In 2014, engineers in NeXT at Microsoft Research began thinking about a novel approach to accelerate the process of adding new computing power to cloud computing systems.

Microsoft produced a large, white, steel tube, eight feet in diameter, covered with heat exchangers, with its ends sealed by metal plates and large bolts.

Inside is a single data center computing rack that was bathed in pressurised nitrogen to efficiently remove heat from computing chips.

This solution might lead to strands of giant steel tubes linked by fibre optic cables placed on the seafloor, or suspended beneath the surface to capture the ocean current with turbines that generate electricity.

The company recently completed a 105-day trial of the steel capsule 30 feet underwater in the Pacific Ocean off the Central California coast. The trial proved more successful than expected, even running commercial data-processing projects from Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service.

The new undersea capsules are designed to be left in place without maintenance for as long as five years.

That means the servers, including all the interface materials and adhesives, have to be hardy enough to last five years without needing repairs.

That is longer than is currently expected of these materials, and they will have to improve in order to operate for this long in the underwater capsule.

If these data centres do not need maintenance, it becomes possible to redesign their physical alignment. Servers are put in racks so they can be maintained by humans. Without maintenance, it may be possible to reorient them in a more efficient way.

By using these underwater capsules, it may be possible to shorten the deployment time of new data centres from two years to just 90 days, offering a huge cost advantage and much more flexibility.

The underwater server containers could also help make web services work faster. Much of the world's population now lives in urban centers close to oceans. Data centers are usually built in rural locations where land is cheap. The ability to place computing power nearer to users lowers the latency experienced by users.

Such a radical idea could run into stumbling blocks, including environmental concerns and unforeseen technical issues. The researchers had worried about hardware failures and leaks. The underwater system was outfitted with 100 different sensors to measure pressure, humidity, motion and other conditions to better understand what it is like to operate in an underwater environment, where on-demand repairs are not possible.

The research group has started designing an underwater system that will be three times as large. It could be built to incorporate an ocean-based alternative-energy system. The Microsoft engineers said they expected a new trial to begin next year, possibly near Florida or in Northern Europe, where there are already extensive ocean energy projects underway.

IBM and VMware are partnering to deliver a software-defined data centre architecture on IBM Cloud.

The move would enable businesses to migrate existing IT workloads via VMware's virtualisation software without the need to modify them, which companies have described as a key barrier to cloud migration.

The two companies also will collaborate on marketing and selling new offerings for hybrid cloud deployments, including seamless workload migrations, disaster recovery, capacity expansion and data centre consolidation.

IBM Cloud senior VP Robert LeBlanc says that 80% of enterprise clients are looking for this kind of hybrid cloud strategy, saying "We're moving to the next phase of the cloud. This is going to accelerate that shift."

ScanSource has partnered with SATO, a global provider of auto-ID solutions, to offer value-added automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) and point-of-sale solutions to European resellers.

Under the terms of a deal, ScanSource will be selling SATO's barcode printers and will provide resellers with AIDC and POS solutions as well as logistics, sales and technical support.

Neil Batchelor, General Manager, SATO Europe, said: "This new partnership will enable us to expand our reach to resellers throughout Europe, providing them with access to the full line of innovative SATO barcode printer solutions."

Marcus Ollenbuttel, Vice President of Merchandising, ScanSource POS and Barcode, Europe, added: "SATO has long been a partner of ScanSource in the United States, and we are pleased to now be offering these solutions to our reseller partners in Europe."

SATO offers auto-identification, RFID, barcode/marking, printing, AIDC solutions, hardware manufacturing and system integration.