Comms Dealer

February 1st marks the launch of Eclipse's third annual Fastest 4 reseller incentive promotion and again features Ex-Stig Ben Collins who 'can't wait to get cracking' with the winners on race day.

The challenge to sell Eclipse's fastest four connectivity products (with the addition of Managed WANs this year) runs until 30th April and is open to the whole reseller channel.

Resellers with 40 points or more will join Eclipse at Palmer Sport to race some of the fastest cars in the world including the BMW M4, Ariel Atom and Caterham 7 Superlight.

Former Stig Ben Collins will oversee the contenders and giving tips from his days as James Bond's stunt driver.

Collins stated: "Fastest 4 is always a blast and I can't wait to get cracking again. I'll be doing another SuperRide in the Palmer Jaguar JP-LM for those who want the full Le Mans experience."

Henry West, Head of Channel at Eclipse, added: "Fastest 4 is a great experience for all involved. We have serious ambitions in this market and welcome the opportunity to reward our partners whenever possible. The gives resellers an even faster way to qualify."

Eclipse has rolled out a colo promo that offers resellers who sign up to a three year contract a free rack for one year and free installation.

Eclipse's colo solution provides rack space, power, cooling and connectivity with multiple levels of redundancy built-in.

"The offer is available to all Eclipse partners looking for multiple data centres including our Docklands-based Tier 3+ environments," stated Henry West, Head of Channel Sales.

"Colo offers a way to significantly reduce the cost of customer infrastructure with no upfront costs and no ongoing utility and maintenance bills."

The deal aims to give resellers a hosting entry point for their customers and the opportunity to consolidate in-house hosted services into one place, including hosted PBX, email and web hosting etc.

"Our partners have the opportunity to realise 100% margin on colocation sales for the first year with this deal," added West.

The offer is available until the 31st March 2016.

Nine Group has achieved Gold standard for Investors in People, joining the top 7% of accredited organisations across the UK that are dedicated to realising the potential of their staff. Nine secured the Silver standard in 2013.

HR Director, Helen Chamberlain, said: "we are a customer-centric business and heartily endorse the maxim that happy staff is the first step towards happy customers.

"The accreditation process threw up a number of challenges for the leadership team at Nine to respond to, but these only served to increase the levels of drive, enthusiasm and engagement across the business.

"The Investors in People Gold standard is an important accolade and a key milestone for Nine Group, representing a welcome endorsement of our commitment to staff excellence."

Investors in People is the UK's leading accreditation for business improvement through people management and provides a wealth of resources for businesses to innovate, improve and grow, with a focus on good people making great business.

Paul Devoy, Head of Investors in People, said: "We'd like to congratulate Nine Group on its Gold standard.

"Such a high level of accreditation is the sign of great people management practice and demonstrates a commitment to staff development, showing an organisation committed to being the very best it can be."

Nine Group will be benchmarking its progress by entering the Investors in People awards for 2016 and looking to carry off the award for Gold Employer of the Year.

Chamberlain also noted that Nine has its eye on the Platinum standard.

D-Link has promoted Paul Routledge to the role of Country Manager UK&I five years after he joined the company. He first worked in the European Business Development team prior to becoming Sales and Marketing Manager UK&I in 2014 and leading a team that delivered 25-plus per cent growth year-on-year.

Routledge's extended responsibilities include post-sales and service delivery and developing new channels to market for D-Link's cloud-enabled smart solutions, while gaining market share for business wireless and switching and driving D-Link's IP surveillance solutions.

Routledge said: "The UK channel is constantly evolving and it is up to us to meet and exceed the changing needs of our channel partners. Looking at the wider business strategy from a D-Link perspective, what we have to do is drive growth of technologies with real potential and focus on cloud enabled products and solutions."

He will report into Luigi Salmoiraghi, Sales and Marketing Director Southern Europe and UKI, who added: "This is a more expansive role for Paul with a strong focus on bringing products to the market via D-Link's channel partner community."

Routledge has over 20 years experience of developing channels in the UK and across Europe. Before his appointment at D-Link he held Business Development and Channel Sales Management roles with vendors and distribution partners including CCI Distribution, Adaptec and Eurologic Systems.

Howard Watson has been named CEO of BT Technology, Service and Operations (BT TSO) and Group Chief Information Officer following Clive Selley's appointment as Openreach CEO.

Watson is currently BT Chief Architect and Managing Director for Global IT Platforms.

He joined BT in 2011 from Cartesian, a telecoms software and consultancy company where he was Managing Director. Prior to that, he was Chief Technology and Information Officer at Telewest and Chief of Transformation and Technology at Virgin Media.

In his new role Watson will be in charge of the company's 'engine room', responsible for its core networks and IT systems across the globe.

BT TSO manage the company's internal and external platforms - including TV, Mobile and Conferencing - as well as BT's research and development arm at Adastral Park, Suffolk.

BT TSO employs 12,000 staff and 8,000 contractors across the world.

Watson also led the technical teams behind the launch of BT Sport in August 2013.

He said: "The next few years promise to be transformational in terms of how people communicate and I look forward to making my contribution."

Gavin Patterson, BT Group Chief Executive, said: "Howard has done a great job since joining BT in 2011 and is absolutely the right man to oversee the integration of our network with EE's. Fixed mobile convergence is an important trend and Howard will help consumers and businesses take advantage of it."

CityFibre has completed the £90m acquisition of national network infrastructure assets of KCOM Group, excluding the Hull and East Yorkshire areas. The deal was initially announced on the 14th of December last year.

CEO Greg Mesch has said: "By combining the highly attractive KCOM network assets with our own, we are well-positioned to tap into future growth in the rapidly evolving UK fibre market.

"With a significant presence in 36 cities, 21 of which are completely new markets for us, we are now established as a credible alternative, and the largest independent provider of wholesale fibre infrastructure on a national basis.

"Moreover, the £180m funding package we have closed equips us to push hard on commercialising the acquired assets, which we've already begun to do with our first new service provider relationship on the acquired Bristol network.

"It also funds our continued organic growth trajectory towards our medium term goal of dense network presence in 50 towns and cities, with an estimated addressable footprint of 35,000 public sector sites, 10,000 cell sites, 350,000 businesses, and 5.0 million homes.

"This is an audacious acquisition which elevates us to a much more significant place in the UK network infrastructure arena, and we look forward to continuing to prove out our strategy across a vastly expanded footprint."

St Albans-based distributor ICON has reacted fast to the burgeoning WLAN, IoT and critical messaging markets, building on its long-term Spectralink relationship with a revamped product line and expanding its portfolio following the addition of products from global wireless network infrastructure provider 4ipnet, including wireless LAN controllers, access points, hotspot gateways and switches.

"With the Allied Telesis Extricom Wi-Fi solution, relaunched late last year, these additions will enable us to support channel partners who need to deliver traditional or real-time WLAN infrastructure solutions in sectors such as hospitality, healthcare, and the more demanding education and logistics markets," explained Mark Shane, Sales Director, ICON.

"We have also extended our capability to support channel partners delivering critical messaging and IoT solutions by adding Multitone to our Fusion and BlueSky messaging portfolio."

To help realise its 2016 growth ambitions ICON has invested in a year-long campaign to develop the wireless solutions market targeting end users in the hospitality, healthcare, retail and food manufacturing sectors. "We are seeking channel partners to work with us to develop these opportunities," confirmed Shane.

"During Q1 we will also announce a partner support programme for our UC solution Wave IP, designed to strengthen partner margin and generate new sales."

Tata Communications has lifted the lid on its flagship Global SIP Connect service as a white label solution for service providers.

The SIP trunking offering will enable service providers to expand their voice services to customers through Tata Communications' global network reach and unified communications portfolio without major up-front investment in building their own solution.

Infonetics forecasts that 62% of enterprises are expected to use SIP by 2017 for a portion of their voice connectivity requirements.

Anthony Bartolo, President of Collaboration and Mobility, Tata Communications, said: "As demand for cloud-based unified communications continues to soar, SIP trunking is becoming a critical tool for businesses looking for best in class voice services.

"Global SIP deployment can be time consuming and complex to execute due to interoperability and regulatory challenges and our new white label offering enables service providers to overcome these challenges on a global scale while eliminating the huge cost of building new solutions from scratch."
 
Mike Sapien, Principal Analyst, Ovum Research, added: "Our research shows that enterprises of all sizes are expanding globally which increases the difficulty in providing integrated global voice infrastructure to support enterprise communications and applications.

"Global SIP services are now a critical ingredient in creating an IP platform to enable many enterprise applications including all aspects of enterprise voice and unified communications."

The latest leg in Channel Telecom's nationwide partner workshop tour saw Tim Nelson, Head of IP Voice, join forces with BT Wholesale and Broadsoft specialists at the Gotham Hotel in Manchester to hold a face-to-face boot camp style event designed to help partners upskill their salespeople to win more hosted VoIP orders. 

Nelson said: "Given the increasing demand for hosted solutions, training events like this are essential in keeping on top of a growing market".

Channel recently launched the third instalment of its nationwide MPLS workshops in London, with plans to host further workshops and hosted training events in Birmingham, Manchester and again in London.

Clifford Norton, Managing Director, commented: "Providing partners with product specific knowledge and information means that they are more comfortable in selling and supporting the growing number of services we are able to offer."

Cloud-based marketing and analytics Wi-Fi software company Purple WiFi has rebranded to Purple, 'the intelligent spaces software company', to better reflect the organisation's wider scope of focus.

Purple is now focused on visualising data about any physical space, pulling in all sorts of data points, including sensors, security cameras and even overlaying weather data onto purchase pattern data.

When this is combined with the information already available through Wi-Fi data, Purple plans to be able to help brands to predict behaviour.

The firm refers to this process as 'Intelligent Spaces' and can help brands to learn more about their location, customer base and help them to take action.

The evolved Purple offering includes a selection of products and features suitable for both small business and for enterprise.

Small businesses can continue to take advantage of Purple's free guest Wi-Fi product and purchase a cloud software license, which allows open access to marketing and analytics tools.

Enterprise customers have the option of four product lines: Wi-Fi, Location, and two new offerings, Fusion and Provision.

Sir Terry Leahy, Purple Board Director, said: "Being able to have 'Intelligent Spaces' that actually learn and react to customers will help retailers to enhance the planning and efficiency of physical retail spaces.

"It also improves the vital link between online and offline customer data, helping them to build loyalty and trust, and heralding an exciting new era for the high street."

Gavin Wheeldon, CEO at Purple, added: "The world moves fast, and at Purple we are not afraid to change our brand and product to move with it.

"Wi-Fi marketing and data is still and always will be the core of our business, but we've decided we need to offer more than Wi-Fi analytics alone to truly understand what is going on in a venue.

"If you can collect the data about any physical space, including Wi-Fi data, we can visualise it. We are calling this 'intelligent spaces' and it will change the way venues understand and communicate with their customers."