Comms Dealer

Two thirds of UK Plc plan to move their entire IT estate to the cloud, according to new research from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).

Of those organisations already using Cloud, three quarters expect to increase their usage in 2016.

CIF has launched its latest White Paper into the levels of cloud adoption in the UK based on detailed market research conducted in Q4 2015 which polled 250 senior IT and business decision-makers from both the public and private sectors.

The cloud adoption rate among UK-based organisations now stands at 78% - the same level as the previous year, but substantially higher than when the research was first conducted in 2011 when it stood at 53%, pointed out CIF.

Of those organisations that use cloud, three quarters (77%) use at least two services and one in eight (12%) have deployed five or more. These figures represent a healthy increase in Cloud service penetration in UK businesses from the levels reported in 2014, suggesting that organisations' engagement with Cloud is deepening.

"This is the sixth major body of research we have conducted into the UK end user community, and while we are continuing to analyse and report on trends and adoption rates within the UK, we also wanted to explore the issue of digital transformation and how cloud computing is facilitating business change," stated Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF.

"It should come as no surprise that digital transformation is creeping up businesses' agendas as they seek to stay ahead of the competition. Cloud is very much part of the digital transformation agenda, and it is clear from this research that those companies with plans to digitally transform struggle to do so without the delivery model.

"The IT landscape is clearly shifting as businesses become more open to receiving IT as-a-service and arrive at their natural technology refresh cycles.

"The proportion of organisations operating on-site servers/data centres has dropped from 85% in 2014 to 76% today. This change could be attributed to the increase in those organisations that consider infrastructure refresh to be an opportunity to adopt alternative deployment models such as cloud, which has risen to 85% from 71% a year ago.

"These findings once again indicate that there are significant benefits to be had by businesses that pursue both digital transformation and cloud strategies in tandem."

Global IT distributor Ingram Micro has been snapped up by the Chinese investment firm Tianjin Tianhai for $6bn.

Shareholders will receive $38.90 per share in an all-cash transaction.

The deal, termed a 'merger', will see Ingram Micro operate as a subsidiary of HNA Group, a Hainan-based Fortune Global 500 enterprise organisation that specialises in aviation, tourism and logistics.

Ingram Micro is expected to remain headquartered in Irvine, California, and its executive management team will remain in place, with Alain Monié continuing to lead as CEO.

Adam Tan, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of HNA Group, said: "After the transaction, Ingram Micro would become the largest member enterprise of HNA Group in terms of revenue, and facilitate the internationalisation process of the group.

"With the help of Ingram Micro, HNA Group would have access to business opportunities in emerging markets, which have higher growth rates and better profitability.

"Furthermore, the addition of Ingram Micro would help the logistics sector of HNA Group transform from a logistics operator to a supply chain operator, and provide one-stop services while improving efficiencies."

Monié added: "As a part of HNA Group we will have the ability to accelerate strategic investment, as we continue to capitalise on the constant evolution of technology and emerging trends by adding expertise, capabilities and geographic reach.

"Additionally, Ingram Micro will now be part of a larger organisation that has complementary logistics capabilities and a strong presence in China that can further support the growth and profitability objectives of our vendor and customer partners."

In conjunction with this announcement, Ingram Micro is suspending its quarterly dividend payment and its share repurchase programme prior to the closing of the transaction.

All Ingram Micro lines of business and all regional and country operations are expected to continue unaffected.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2016 and represents a premium of approximately 39% over the average closing share price of Ingram Micro for the 30 trading days ended February 16, 2016.

Castle Street Investments has acquired C4L for £20.2m, paying £14.2m in cash with the rest covered by the issue of 18.4 million shares at 32.5 pence per share. The deal follows Castle Street's acquisition of Selection Services Investments in January. C4L Chairman Mathew Hawkins will join Castle Street's board as CTO, while Simon Mewett, C4L's CEO, becomes COO.

C4L's current trading in the three months to 31st January 2016 has delivered an annualised turnover of £14m and run rate EBITDA of £2m with further growth expected.

Founded in 2000, C4L is a successful and growing network services and data centre hosting business. C4L owns and manages core network infrastructure and data centre assets.

Andy Ross, CEO of Castle Street, commented: "C4L combined with our recent acquisition of Selection Services demonstrates the progress we are making towards becoming an integrated IT services and cloud provider.

"C4L has a high quality, next generation infrastructure which has been well invested. Allied to a successful business with high levels of recurring revenue it offers strong growth opportunities.

"The enlarged customer base and product portfolio strengthen and consolidate our position in the industry and as a Board we are excited by this acquisition which supports the next step in the company's development."

MXC Capital acted as lead adviser to Castle Street in originating and executing the acquisition. In a statement it said the aquisition of C4L is a key component in building out Castle Street's platform.

With 45 staff based in Bournemouth and Docklands, C4L provides services to over 800 customers. Over 90% of its revenues are recurring.

Peter Rigg, Chairman of MXC said: "The Board of Castle Street has a clear fix on the market opportunity and we have great confidence in their ability to deliver."

Castle Street said the acquisition will be immediately earnings enhancing and, in line with the company's strategy, will facilitate a broader integrated service offering to a larger client base while focusing on delivering higher margin services.

Castle Street Chairman Jonathan Watts added: "Matt and Simon have done an excellent job in building C4L. We welcome them to the Board and look forward to their contribution as we continue to execute on our focused growth strategy."

DataCore, a provider of of software-defined storage and converged virtual SAN solutions, has advanced its UK and Eire expansion plans following a distribution agreement with Exertis.

Adrian Groeneveld recently joined DataCore from Atlantis Software as Regional Sales Manager for the south of England.

One of the first activities that Exertis will work on is the first EMEA DataCore Parallel I/O Benchmarking Demo Hub, where partners and end users can re-create similar results on SPC-1 like configurations for themselves utilising DataCore's Hyper-converged Virtual SAN software running on Lenovo severs.

The demo hub will also demonstrate DataCore's software working across all types of storage (flash, disk and cloud) to automate and provide easy management.

Brett Denly, Regional Director, DataCore Software, UK & Eire commented. "With Exertis, we see a natural fit with its close partnerships with Lenovo, Dell, Fujitsu and Huawei.

"The combined x86 server plus DataCore software opportunities that these brands offer are limitless for the UK channel, as users become aware that application performance and database transaction issues can be solved with off-the-shelf software enabled servers."

Lily Comms scooped a brace of awards at Pragma's annual Partner Conference held at Whittlebury Hall near Silverstone, collecting the Phone-Link Reseller of the Year and Overall Reseller of the Year gongs.

Other winners on the night included Focus Group, BDR, Rydal Communications, Intellia, Cloudsource Technologies, Ikonix Telecoms and 5G Communications.

Lily Comms MD Chris Morrisey said: "Adding these wins to our hat-trick of Comms National Awards means we have won ten industry awards over over the past two years. The conference was eye opening, the evening was a joy and the entertainment was fantastic."

Pictured: Lily collects the Overall Reseller of the Year award.

Improving the customer experience through strategic partnerships is key to growth, according to TeleWare which is planning to deliver this message firsthand to delegates at its upcoming Partnering for Growth event on March 10th at the Royal Society of Medicine, London.

"Customer experience technology is crucial to future growth plans," stated Steve Haworth (pictured), TeleWare's CEO. "Customers are investing in new technology to improve their experience, and this event will give insights into the technological drivers behind the customer experience industry, the products partners should be offering customers, and how to create further growth by developing strategic partnerships."

Guest speakers from Ovum and Microsoft will join the TeleWare leadership team and present four sessions ranging from how to get started in the 'customer experience' category, the role of technology in delivering an improved experience, the power of partnerships to unlock growth potential, and how a differentiated customer experience offering can create incremental growth. To find out more click here

Mitel has invested in a 5G cloud connectivity platform and expanded its senior mobile management against a backdrop of heightening global demand for 4G LTE services.

According to Ovum, global LTE subscriptions surpassed the one billion mark during the final quarter of 2015, with strong double-digit growth expected for the next five years.

"In the past 12 months, Mitel has been gaining traction in the mobile space and picking up speed as adoption of 4G LTE services accelerates," said Rich McBee, President and CEO of Mitel.

"In November we reported that Mitel's global footprint of mobile customers expanded from 17 to 31, an 82% increase in six months."

Pardeep Kohli, former CEO of Mavenir and current President of the Mitel Mobile Division, becomes President of Mitel 5G Cloud Connectivity and will lead all activities associated with Mitel's 5G investments.

"Wireless connectivity is now an essential aspect of everyday life, but we've only just scratched the surface of the economic and social impact it will have in the future as mobile technology continues to advance," said Kohli.

"Mitel's 5G platform is focused on building that future by providing the software to enable billions of mobile devices to access mobile cloud services in a flexible, cost-effective manner."

BG Kumar, a mobile industry veteran, takes over as President of the Mitel Mobile Division with responsibility for the profit and loss, sales, engineering, product line management, and operations of Mitel's Mobile Division.

"With the number of 4G LTE subscribers continuing to increase, Mitel is positioned to capitalise on our large installed base of Tier 1 mobile network operators to expand our market position," said Kumar.

"Our virtualized VoLTE, VoWiFi and RCS solutions offer operators the economic benefits of a cloud infrastructure, the ability to cost-effectively manage the ramp-up of the VoLTE and RCS subscriber base, and the flexibility to rapidly add new communications services and scale as the market evolves."

Voice and data recording company Red Box Recorders has released Quantify Insight, a new application that proactively monitors the Red Box recording system, as well as associated telephony and IT infrastructure, displaying system health and performance on a live dashboard and providing warnings and alerts.

Insight enables IT teams to locate and resolve issues before they can impact business activity.

This monitoring tool will be included as standard with Red Box's core channel recording package, which also includes other applications for capturing and retrieving recordings, as well as live call monitoring.

Recording systems can be vulnerable to many factors including interruption by routine IT updates and storage capacity limits, potentially leading to data gaps, non-compliance with policy and reputational damage.

To combat these risks, Quantify Insight constantly verifies that relevant calls and data are being recorded, important system processes are operational and that data is being stored in line with policy.

Quantify Insight also delivers trend analysis, recommendations and reports to help an organisation analyse performance, predict issues and take appropriate pre-emptive actions.

John Cunningham, CTO at Red Box Recorders, said: "Maintaining your voice and data recording system is vital to ensure operational continuity and policy compliance which may mandate recording for reasons such as event reconstruction.

"Quantify Insight identifies usage trends and potential problems, clearly presenting data that saves hard pressed IT teams time and cost."

Node4 has invested £2m in a major expansion of its Northampton data centre, enabling the company to accommodate new customers and broaden the services it offers.

The Node4 Northampton data centre is nearing capacity so the company will expand its existing 360 rack footprint by 900m2 to a total of 760 racks, spread across three data halls.

The halls have been designed to meet increasing demand for secure, reliable, purpose-built colocation with secure 'caged' areas and higher density racks, using blade servers.

The upgrade will see the data centre built around an innovative cooling system. Instead of chillers, Node4 will be using Hot Aisle containment and cooling its rooms using Adiabatic cooling. This means that the PuE (power usage effectiveness) of the expansion will be as low as 1.1.

Northampton's initial build phase is designed to enable a 550KW of IT load and sees a significant investment of £2m to deliver the services its customers require.

Rik Williams, Head of Data Centre Operations, Node4, commented: "Our Northampton site is a core part of our business and it is vital we continue our investment and presence in the region, especially as the data centre is just an hour away from London."

The latest ONS labour market data for the three months to December 2015 show that employment has increased by 205,000 to 31.4 million and unemployment fell by 60,000 to 1.69 million.

Responding to the update, Neil Carberry, CBI Director for Employment and Skills, said: "While it's encouraging that employment continues to rise strongly, lacklustre pay growth underlines the need for a pickup in productivity before wages can rise faster.

"Propelling innovation by broadening access to existing research and development incentives and not adding to the cumulative burden on businesses, from recent Government policies, will help firms to create more jobs and boost productivity."