Comms Dealer

Exclusive's acquisition of Singapore-based VAD Transition Systems has catalysed the Group's revenues beyond 1bn euros and strengthened its foothold in the APAC region.

Transition Systems, a cybersecurity and infrastructure VAD, is the largest acquisition in Exclusive's history and takes the company to 1,200 employees while adding 18 offices in eight countries including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Exclusive already has offices in Australia and New Zealand and 25% of total revenues will now come from the APAC operations.

Olivier Breittmayer, CEO of Exclusive Group, said: "Transition Systems is a large, influential regional player with similar business DNA to our own, as well as having important vendors, technologies and a strong value adding culture in common.

"This acquisition adds significant capabilities to our overall proposition. Our partners around the world now have greater in-country presence to support global projects across Asia, while our Asian reseller partners have the full spectrum of Exclusive Group services to support their deals into more than 100 countries worldwide."

Jonathan Juay, Group MD of Transition Systems, added: "This marks a significant opportunity for our partners, customers and people as we become part of the global Exclusive family.

"We are already looking at starting BigTec, Exclusive's hyperconvergence business unit, into several countries here, and exploring synergies with strategic Exclusive vendors and global SIs."

Less than a month after acquiring KCOM's national fibre networks (excluding Hull and East Yorkshire) for £90m CityFibre has begun to commercialise them with the launch of a Bristol Gigabit City project in partnership with local ISP Triangle Networks. "This is the first of many new Gigabit City launches to come on our expanded footprint of 36 cities across the UK," confirmed Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre.

Triangle Networks is committing a minimum of 100 new customers on the network by year-end and will work closely with CityFibre to encourage businesses across the city to connect to the pure fibre network and take advantage of Gigabit-speed-as-standard services.

The network will complement Bristol's smart city strategy which has already made the city a test bed for innovative digital projects.

These include Bristol university's city-sensor network called Bristol is Open, a laboratory exploring big data solutions to problems such as traffic congestion and air pollution, as well as trialling driverless car technology.

Mesch added: "Bristol is already a UK leader in digital innovation but its business community has not yet had the opportunity to take full advantage. This project provides that opportunity and there is nowhere more exciting to begin our latest project.

Paul Anslow, MD at Triangle Networks, commented: "We have been watching demand for ultra-fast services grow exponentially in recent years and this project has the potential to unlock a tide of demand for faster, more resilient and more affordable services.

"As this is a pure fibre network, Triangle will be launching services that are Gigabit-speed-as-standard, far faster than those possible on FTTC networks that are still restricted by the limitations of copper wires.

"This enables businesses to stop concerning themselves with bandwidth restrictions and start to make the most of new ways of working that will improve their experience and drive the bottom line."

Bristol Gigabit City will be officially launched at an event in February at which point a city-wide marketing campaign will begin, raising awareness of the benefits to businesses from the Gigabit speed services on offer and enabling CityFibre to map demand for local network expansion projects.

BT has two new contracts with the European Commission to deliver public and private cloud services across 52 major European institutions, agencies and bodies - including the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Defence Agency.

Both framework contracts awarded in December run for up to four years with a combined worth of more than 24 million euros.

Following execution of the framework contracts, BT will implement the contracted private cloud services, and becomes one of five providers that will compete for public cloud projects. These are the third and fourth European Commission framework contracts that have been awarded to BT in 2015, all of them following open calls for tenders.

The services will be hosted from several geographically spread data centres within the European Union, keeping all customer data will remain within the EU. They will be integrated and managed from BT's Compute Management System (CMS) - a single, federated portal which delivers IT services from anywhere in the world.

Corrado Sciolla, President Europe and Global Telecom Markets, BT Global Services, said: "This is a milestone in our journey to be the leading global cloud services integrator, and demonstrates how we minimise the complexity, risks and costs for our customers as they move to the cloud. I'd like to take this opportunity to, once again, thank the EU for putting its trust in BT."

Last August, BT signed another framework contract with the European Commission, with a value of up to 15.2 million euros over seven years.

That contract included voice services across 21 major European institutions, agencies and bodies. This followed a large framework contract signed in March 2015 - with a maximum value of 55.7m euros over five years - for the delivery of dedicated internet access to all major European institutions, agencies and bodies across the 28 member states.

IDC estimates global PC shipments fell 10.6% yr/yr in Q4 to 71.9m, just a slightly smaller drop than Q3's 10.8%. Gartner is once more a little less downbeat, estimating shipments fell 8.3% to 75.7m.

For the whole of 2015, IDC estimates shipments fell 10.4% to 276.2M. The firm notes adding detachable tablets to its count would respectively provide ~6% and ~3% boosts to Q4 and 2015 growth rates. The Q4 figures suggest Windows 10 (available as a free upgrade to Windows 7/8 users) and Intel's Skylake CPU launch provided only a modest sales lift.

IDC: "The PC market continued to face persistent challenges [in 2015] from longer-PC lifecycles and competition from mobile phones and tablets, despite the slowing growth in those markets. However, economic issues like falling commodity prices and weak international currencies, as well as social disruptions in EMEA and Asia/Pacific that disrupted foreign markets were a larger factor for 2015." IDC VP Loren Loverde still thinks PC replacement rates will pick up in 2016.

"Commercial adoption of Windows 10 is expected to accelerate, and consumer buying should also stabilize by the second half of the year. Most PC users have delayed an upgrade, but can only maintain this for so long before facing security and performance issues." Counting detachable tablets, IDC expects 1%-2% 2016 growth. Gartner forecasts a 1% decline.

Lenovo remained the PC market's top player: IDC estimates Lenovo's shipment share rose 140 bps Y/Y in Q4 to 21.4%. Second place HP's share rose 10 bps to 19.9%. Dell's rose 70 bps to 14.1%.Apple and Asus were tied at fourth with 7.9% shares - Apple's share rose 110 bps, and Asus' 90 bps. Apple's revenue share could be closer to 15%. Non-top 5 vendors, hurt by their relative lack of scale, collectively saw their shipment share drop 420 bps to 28.7%.

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VIA has supplied retailer and lifestyle brand Bombay Duck a new voice platform incorporating Microsoft's Skype for Business and additional features including a conferencing facility and an 'automated attendant'.

More than 1,000 stores stock Bombay Duck's products across the world and staff spend much time liaising with different retailers.

Laura Burch, Partner, Bombay Duck, said: "VIA Voice has helped our team to communicate more efficiently and work more productively, especially when dealing with overseas customers."

Alex Tebbs, Director, VIA, added: "Bombay Duck is a vibrant and stylish global brand and we look forward to working alongside the company as it continues to grow."

Daisy Group's Business Continuity division threw a connectivity lifeline to customer SuperBreak Mini Holidays when the River Foss burst its banks over Christmas.

The festive season Yorkshire floods disconnected the York-based holiday firm but
after being notified of the outage just before midnight on 27th December, Daisy's Wakefield Business Continuity Centre was prepared for the arrival of 25 SuperBreak employees at 9am the following day.

SuperBreak Mini Holidays CTO, Tim Wadhams, said: "It was an extreme set of circumstances that led to us having to vacate our office, but the Daisy guys made it a relatively pain-free process."

Following four days at Daisy's Wakefield-based Business Continuity Centre, SuperBreak's staff were able to return to their premises.

Daisy's MD for Business Continuity Mike Osborne added: "This is just one example of how important it is for businesses to plan for the unexpected.

"The few days after Christmas can be a busy time for the travel and hospitality industry. Without a business continuity plan in place SuperBreak would have suffered, both in bookings and reputation."

Three more of Daisy's York-based customers were placed on standby due to the threat of flooding to their offices.

Daisy Group has 18 work area recovery centres in the UK.

The secondhand smartphone market will be worth $17bn worldwide this year, 2.5 trillion photos will be shared or stored online globally, and a quarter of smartphone users in developed markets will no longer make a traditional phone call in a given week.

These are the predictions highlighted by punters at Deloitte's TMT practice in their 2016 telecoms trend analysis document.

They say consumers will sell outright or trade-in approximately 120 million used smartphones around the world in 2016.

Deloitte also estimates that 2.5 trillion photos will be shared or stored online globally in 2016, 15% up on last year. 

2016 will also see the emergence of Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) and Voice over LTE (VoLTE).

By the end of the year, about 100 carriers worldwide will be offering at least one packet-based voice service, believes Deloitte, double the amount year-on-year, and six times higher than at the beginning of 2015.

According to Deloitte, the number of Gigabit per second (Gbit/s) Internet connections will rise to 10 million, a tenfold increase on 2015.
Of these, about 70% will be residential connections, but they represent a small proportion of the 250 million customers on networks capable of Gbit/s connections that will exist by the end of this year.

Ed Marsden, Partner and Telecommunications lead at Deloitte, said: "Evolving usage patterns and increasing demand for greater bandwidth may accelerate the supply of Gigabit Internet.

"Video streaming in 4K resolution will be a key driver for improved data connectivity speeds in the coming years.

"Looking further ahead, we estimate that there will be approximately 600 million Gigabit tariff subscribers by 2020."

Cloud UC market penetration is set to triple in the large enterprise segment, grow 7-fold in the mid-market and almost quintuple in the small business segment by 2020, according to a sample of delegates who attended BroadSoft's 2015 Connections conference.

They expressed views on the adoption of cloud and mobile UC solutions, the competitive landscape and how far OTT team messaging and collaboration applications are disrupting established business productivity tools such as email.

The survey deduces that UCaaS and hosted PBX market penetration for new lines shipped could increase nearly six times to 41% over the next five years, with the shift from premise to cloud UC underway in all market segments.

UC will become increasingly mobile, according to 39% of respondents who believe that 42% of UC interactions for businesses of all sizes will occur via mobile devices by 2020, while 33% of small businesses will opt for mobile-only UCaaS/hosted PBX solutions, making desk phones redundant in such circumstances.

OTT integrated messaging and collaboration applications will disrupt the business email market, reckons 83% of survey respondents, with just 16% expecting email to remain the primary business messaging tool.

"BroadSoft believes that these new OTT solutions, when deeply integrated with UC and business applications, will offer service providers a differentiated value proposition, and access to a large and growing market opportunity with attractive margins," said BroadSoft CMO Taher Behbehani.

"Enterprise UCaaS is proving disruptive and this opportunity is not lost on service providers and industry leaders as 92% of survey respondents rate UCaaS/Hosted PBX as their preferred technology solution strategy, while only 8% are leading sales efforts with premise-based PBX."

BroadSoft has over 700 customers in 75-plus countries. According to Frost and Sullivan, in 2015 BroadSoft accounted for 41% UCaaS global market share.

NewVoiceMedia has been recognised as a top technology company to work for by the European Breakout List.

Compiled by Scott Sage, a venture capital investor focused on European tech start-ups, alongside other leading VCs including Chrys Chrysanthou (Notion Capital), Rob Kniaz (Hoxton Ventures) and Martin Mignot (Index Ventures), the list was designed to help job-seekers who want to work alongside some of the smartest and most technical people in Europe, choose a company that exposes them to the best opportunities.

NewVoiceMedia was selected for its high growth and status. The company, which now serves customers spanning 128 countries, grew its international new business by 528 percent in FY'2015.

Sage commented: "Given the growth in the number of interesting start-ups founded in Europe that have rocket ship like traction, it can be difficult for people to know which ones they should be targeting. 

"To make this list, there had to be something exceptional about the team, product, its traction and the market - and in many cases they would need to have several of these factors to make the list.

"For anybody in Europe seeking to learn in three years what the average employee learns in 10, this list will help you start your journey of landing a great position."

Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, said: "This recognition is testament to our strong culture and the commitment and passion our employees bring to the business."

BT Broadband and BT Wi-Fi use increased substantially over the festive season and almost doubled year on year on Christmas Day, as people unwrapped and started using the new smartphones and tablets they received as presents.

BT Broadband use during December 2015 was up considerably on the same period last year, with Christmas Day smashing festive records for internet use - almost double that of the last year (a 95 per cent increase).

There was a surge in broadband demand just before lunchtime on Christmas Day - a 130 per cent jump in online usage compared to the same time last year.

The spike in Internet use around midday was driven by software downloads and video streaming to new smartphones and tablets as people unwrapped their presents and connected them to BT's network.

The festive season also saw a dramatic rise in Netflix use, a 43 per cent increase in five weeks, peaking on the evening of Sunday January 3, the night before most people were due back at work after the New Year break.

Time spent online on BT Wi-Fi over the festive period 2015 was up 35 per cent on the same period in 2014, increasing by more than 725 million minutes and more than 700 million extra megabytes (MBs) were consumed - a 50 per cent rise over 2014.

Pete Oliver, MD BT Consumer, said: "The Christmas period was a record-breaking time for BT Broadband and BT Wi-Fi usage, as people connected their new devices to the internet.

"Getting online has obviously become an essential part of the celebrations during the festive season, whether it's shopping online for presents, actually connecting those devices given as presents, or video-calling friends and family to wish them a happy Christmas or New Year."