Comms Dealer

The Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) has approved BT's acquisition of EE.

There will be a distinct EE line of business following completion of the acquisition. This will be led by Marc Allera who will become EE CEO following completion of the deal.

BT Chief Executive Gavin Patterson said: "It is great news that the CMA has approved our acquisition of EE. We are pleased they have found there to be no significant lessening of competition following an in-depth investigation lasting more than ten months.

"The combined BT and EE will be a digital champion for the UK, providing high levels of investment and driving innovation in a highly competitive market. I have no doubt that consumers, businesses and communities will benefit as we combine the power of fibre broadband with the convenience of leading edge mobile services."

A prospectus will be issued in the week commencing January 25 with the deal set to close on January 29 when Deutsche Telekom and Orange will receive shares in BT. BT will report its Q3 2015/16 results on February 1.

Following completion of the deal Deutsche Telekom will have 12 per cent of BT shares and Orange will have four per cent. A representative of Deutsche Telekom will be appointed to the BT Board in due course.

Polycom's just-launched cloud-ready collaboration infrastructure software, Polycom RealPresence Clariti, offers a simplified per-user licensing model with a lower entry point, and enables the mass deployment of video collaboration across businesses of all sizes.

Clariti also offers a hybrid cloud capability allowing users to 'burst' into a cloud service for planned and unplanned spikes in capacity demand.

Customers have multiple options for deploying the RealPresence Clariti solution, including on-premises, through hybrid or hosted IaaS offerings from partners, or directly in their own cloud networks.

The RealPresence Clariti solution includes Polycom RealConnect capability, allowing both Skype for Business users and those who use other platforms to seamlessly connect.

Ashan Willy, Senior VP, Product Management & Worldwide Systems Engineering, Polycom, said: "As visual collaboration enters the hyper connected phase employees have high expectations of being able to connect from anywhere, and from any device at any time.

"The RealPresence Clariti solution offers simple, easy-to-use, collaboration software that provides cloud economics, cloud deployment options, and cloud hybrid capabilities to Polycom's infrastructure suite."

Polycom has also expanded support for developers to extend capabilities with the new Polycom Sandbox. This virtual lab will provide access to Polycom's rich set of APIs and SDKs so that partners, ISVs, and customers can build applications and integrate visual collaboration directly into their workflows.

Polycom will offer a full set of support tools, including a community-based resource designed to facilitate the open exchange of information in the pursuit of innovative application development and workflow integration.

Polycom is also expanding the RealAccess service delivery platform across the entire RealPresence Cloud platform to provide organisations with diagnostic insights and data to help organisations more effectively manage their entire collaboration solution.

The role played by Avnet in driving Cisco's growth in the data centre market earned the distributor Cisco's EMEA Data Centre Distributor of the Year 2015 award. The accolade also marked the fifth anniversary of their partnership.

Miriam Murphy, Senior VP, Avnet Technology Solutions, North region, EMEA, said: "We have evolved into a specialist data centre solutions distributor, offering an integrated set of converged solutions that have helped our channel and vendor partners grow profitably."

Joint Avnet and Cisco partners also benefit from Avnet's SolutionsPath methodology that includes business intelligence tools, education and lead-generation resources designed to help partners grow their businesses and enter new markets.

Response Data Communications (RDC) has bagged ShoreTel's 2015 Circle of Excellence Award in the Global Theatres category for the second year running.

"It's satisfying to have our commitment and hard work recognised in this way," said Jason Evans, MD, RDC.

Adrian Hipkiss, VP of EMEA, ShoreTel, added: "The Circle of Excellence Award is presented to ShoreTel's top global reseller partners, and each year less than one-half of one percent of all partners earn this distinction.

"We're proud that RDC surpassed the strict criteria required to earn Circle of Excellence status for the second year in succession."

The addition of an audio conferencing service to Nimans' Network Services proposition offers resellers more revenue potential, according to Mark Curtis-Wood, Head of Nimans' Network Services.

The solution is based on virtual geographic numbers and a monthly rental.

"Resellers can now provide secure conference services based on simple and straightforward adoption, with immediate set-up and access to provision, amend and also manage services through our portal," he said.

"Audio conferencing is a valuable and flexible new way for resellers to increase their margin and revenue potential."

Kroll Ontrack has witnessed a 54% spike in demand for its data recovery and ediscovery services over the past six months and resellers are also capitalising on cross-selling opportunities.

Phil Bridge, MD for Western Europe, said: "Our resellers tell us that demand for third party data recovery services continues to grow, and 90% of our partners say that their clients purchase additional products and services as a result of working with them on data recovery projects.

"As well as driving extra revenues, more than three quarters of resellers believe that offering data recovery services builds customer loyalty and reduces churn."

Big Data will become an important slice of the server market in the next few years, claims IDC which says that Big Data-related server shipments will increase from 6% of all servers shipped in EMEA in 2015 to 16% by 2019, and server values from $1bn in 2015 to $2.7bn by 2019.

IDC has completed what it says is an in-depth market sizing of the EMEA Big Data infrastructure market focusing on servers, storage, and cloud resources used for Big Data-related activities. These include value creation from merging different data sources, various analytics, log files, and metadata that help identify patterns and generate predictions.

While most current Big Data projects are starting off in companies' own data centres, analytics workloads are increasingly being moved to the public cloud while sensitive data needs to remain on-premises in many cases for compliance reasons, it says.

IDC expects the public cloud infrastructure share of Big Data workloads to increase from 13% of server shipments in 2015 to 34% by 2019, and new storage capacity deployed on public cloud infrastructure to increase from 25% of Big Data workloads in 2015 to 55% by 2019. Most customers are expected to deploy some form of hybrid solution.

"Big Data and analytics have risen to the top of executives' and developers' agendas as the technology has evolved and mindsets are starting to change in organisations in EMEA," said Andreas Olah, senior research analyst, European Datacentres and Big Data, IDC.

"The main challenge is not the data or its volume, but the ability to generate value from it. Many customers are still at the beginning of their journey and still don't know where to start. Others have high ambitions and clear ideas but are slowed down by increasing complexities and the lack of highly skilled data scientists and developers."

Big Data can no longer be ignored in European organisations in view of heightened competition from disruptive market entrants, Olah added. "While a lot of the focus is on choice of applications, it is crucial to get your infrastructure right to unlock and merge various data sources for value creation while avoiding running out of capacity or going over budget," he said.

"Data and analytics-focused workloads require a different infrastructure setup than traditional applications with features such as in-memory computing, large storage pools attached to servers, linkages to cloud resources, and denser architectures for greater efficiency."

European organisations will only fully realise the benefits of shadow IT on innovation if IT leaders can align themselves more closely with other business units, finds research by Claranet.

The firm surveyed 900 IT decision makers from the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the Benelux, from a range of mid-market organisations and found that only a minority of European IT leaders view shadow IT as a challenge.

Just 13 per cent of respondents stated that shadow IT was a major challenge, a significantly smaller proportion than those reporting security or complexity as a challenge (48 per cent and 39 per cent respectively).

For Claranet's Group CIO, Andy Wilton, the results serve to overturn conventional wisdom that shadow IT is inherently problematic, suggesting instead that it can be a driver of innovation within an organisation.

Wilton commented: "We know that shadow IT is occurring in organisations of all sizes, but the jury is still out as to whether or not it is an intrinsically bad thing.

"Indeed, the data suggests that shadow IT isn't the evil that many in the industry would have us believe; just 13 per cent of IT leaders view it as a major challenge, leaving a sizeable contingent that are either untroubled by it or, within reason, see it as a positive driver of innovation within their organisations.

"It's an incredibly divisive issue, but whatever your view, the occurrence of shadow IT is often indicative of a larger issue: a disconnect between the IT department and the wider organisation.

"Shadow IT does, however, present an opportunity to drive innovation, and businesses view the practice as an important source of feedback and service improvement.

"By monitoring employees' use of unsanctioned programmes, IT leaders may discover unexpected benefits in their approach. By integrating those elements of shadow IT that have business value and eliminating potential pain points in the infrastructure, IT leaders could directly contribute to their organisations' balance sheets.

"Shadow IT is not going away, so IT leaders must work to ensure that, even if software is procured without their direct involvement, it is done in a controlled way to ensure efficiencies in spend and safeguard corporate data.

"Here, closer relationships and better understanding between IT and the wider business are critical, and it's clear from our research that there is a great deal of room for improvement in that regard.

"Three quarters (74 per cent) of IT leaders report having an incomplete understanding of their organisations, and unless this knowledge gap is addressed, they will struggle to harness the potential of shadow IT."

Ombudsman Services has been awarded a contract to provide an alternative dispute resolution scheme for providers registered with the Federation of Communication Services (FCS) and their members.

As of 1st January 2016, Ombudsman Services replaced the Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme (CISAS) in this role.

Under the scheme, customers who have an unresolved complaint with member companies of FCS can ask that their case be referred to Ombudsman Services: Communications who will try to resolve the dispute. Using the ombudsman will be free to the customer.

FCS Chief Executive Chris Pateman said: "With so many small business customers on our members' books, our concern goes beyond just ensuring FCS members are legally compliant. They need to be able to deliver world-class experiences and build long-term relationships, which means swift and professional service even on those rare occasions when there are differences of opinion. Partnering with Ombudsman Services will meet our members' current needs and develop additional services for the future."

Ombudsman Services is an alternative dispute resolution scheme set up for consumers to turn to when a complaint they have made directly with a company has reached a deadlock stage, or has been ongoing for eight weeks or more.

Video and web collaboration specialist Lifesize has split from Logitech and is operating as a fully independent company backed by $17.5m in funding from three Silicon Valley venture firms, Redpoint Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners.

Lifesize is now positioned as a high-growth cloud-based video collaboration and meeting platform company with the $7bn global conferencing market squarely in its sights.

The company has undergone a business transformation to address the video collaboration and meeting platform market with the launch of Lifesize Cloud (its cloud-based video collaboration service) and an integrated approach to connected cameras and HD phones.

Craig Malloy, CEO and founder of Lifesize, stated: "Standing as an independent company will allow us to invest more meaningfully in our product roadmap and be more responsive to the market and our customers."

Logitech will retain a meaningful interest in Lifesize. Guerrino De Luca, Logitech's Chairman, added: "Together with our three co-investors we determined that the capital, SaaS industry expertise and growth-focused approach would be key ingredients to realising long-term value."

Lifesize plans to use its infusion of capital to drive demand generation and customer acquisition, invest in engineering headcount and strengthen the alignment of its brand.