Comms Dealer

BT is to create 1,000 permanent UK jobs as it works to meet its commitment to answer more than 80% of BT Consumer customers' calls from within the UK by the end of 2016.

BT's Consumer division has already filled an extra 1,000 roles in its UK contact centres to enable it to service more of its consumer customers in the UK.

The company will beef up its numbers by the extra 1,000 between now and April 2017.

The first place to benefit from the announcement will be Swansea where the company will recruit an additional 100 customers service roles to add to the 50 extra advisors recently hired at the site.

The rest of the jobs will be spread across the UK at BT's other existing contact centres. Further details will be announced in the coming months.

All of the jobs will be frontline roles in customer care.

The company wants to recruit new advisors to answer customers' queries, as well as apprentices and some graduates.

Libby Barr, MD of Customer Care at BT Consumer, said: "We announced in September 2015 that BT Consumer is going to answer more than 80% of its customers' calls in the UK by the end of 2016 and this means we need more people in our UK contact centres.

"We will have created 2,000 permanent UK jobs by the end of this process, including agency transfers, which is a fantastic boost for the UK economy and many regions where we are already a significant employer.

"Our advisors have recently agreed to support our investment back in the UK by voting to adopt a new work pattern to ensure we have more people available to answer calls in the UK at weekends and in the evenings."

BT Consumer is spending an extra £80m over two years to boost performance, in addition to the hundreds of millions of pounds it spends each year on service.

Nimans says it is taking wireless communication to the 'extreme' with a series of digital cordless telephones that boast a talk range of up to 2km.

The EP 802 is part of the company's range of comms solutions from Engenius. Described as the most powerful consumer rated cordless telephone in Europe, the device combines a stylish design with a six floor building penetration.

The EP 802 complements the original EP 801 version and includes user friendly features such as a ‘walkie talkie' style function, easy set-up and nine handset expandability.

Nimans' Head of Conferencing and Telephony Sales, Ian Brindle, says the compact unit also boasts a 50 entry phonebook, speakerphone, built-in 2.5mm headset jack and a 38 digital channel autoscan.

In addition, the intercom facility will still function even if there is a power outage, as the handsets can communicate with each other and broadcast emergency messages.

"This is the second version of our popular Extreme telephone that is fully compatible with the original model," he explained.

"They live up to their name, ensuring people can talk longer and further. They can be easily expanded for the ultimate long range cordless flexibility, across a host of many different industries and environments, from car showrooms and warehouses to farms and office complexes."

Aa more robust model is also available, the EP800. This IP20-rated device has a speakerphone function, 50 phonebook entries and is expandable up to a maximum of four bases units and 36 handsets.

Industry hopes for greater competition in the UK mobile market have been quashed by the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) approval of BT's £12.5bn takeover of EE, according to ITSPA.

Despite the CMA concluding that the deal will not significantly impact competition, Eli Katz, the Chair of ITSPA, believes that the acquisition is a deep concern for the industry and he questioned why the CMA's final report did not consider potential wholesale mobile remedies when approving the proposed BT/EE merger.

"Particularly, given the panel had expressed differing opinions in its provisional report around the merger's effect on the wholesale mobile access market," he explained

ITSPA says the wholesale market is 'highly restrictive' and hampers the ability of new entrants to compete, and that MVNO access to mobile operators' networks is reducing, therefore restricting their ability to compete.

"The CMA panel was split in its provisional findings report as to whether the BT/EE transaction would lead to a significant lessening of competition in the market for wholesale mobile access," claimed Katz.

"ITSPA members have differing opinions on the BT/EE merger but it must be taken into context with the wider market consolidation currently taking place, particularly the proposed tie up with O2 and Three.

"This would be extremely damaging. There is already substantial evidence in other European markets to suggest that prices rise when the number of mobile operators in a national network decreases from four to three operators."

Katz called for a review of the wholesale mobile access market and effective remedies agreed before any merger between O2 and Three can be considered. "We would urge the EU Commission to consider these recommendations in its current inquiry," he stated.

"A fully functional wholesale mobile access market would encourage innovation, competition and result in improved outcomes for UK consumers. The UK's mobile market could become as competitive and innovative as it is currently for fixed telephony."

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."