Comms Dealer

Large numbers of ICT resellers are turning to third party support companies for reasons that are all too evident. Here, we explore why outsourcing is the focus of growing attention among resellers wanting an ingrained partnership that is also an extension of their business.

The big customer support handover has begun and the chemistry between outsource providers and their partners is more potent than ever, based on the evolving comms market and its knock-on effects on many ICT resellers. In line with these trends Comms-care has taken steps over the past 12 months to respond to big changes in the technology industry, which saw its channel partners require access to a broader range of professional and managed services to sell on to their customers.

"Developments in the technology industry have created a shortage of skills, especially in the area of higher end professional services, so we have made acquisitions such as Platform Consultancy and increased our efforts to attract apprentices who can be trained in key competencies and add value to our clients," said Rob Darby, Sales Director.

Comms-care's reseller partners want the firm to become more ingrained in their businesses, so rather than just ask Comms-care for a quote they want the company to be involved in the whole end-to-end sales process. This new dynamic is reflected in the split between its services. Maintenance services account for 50 per cent, managed services 10 per cent, and professional services 40 per cent, with the bias in favour of managed and professional services happening over the last year.

"We are not just about break/fix maintenance - a business that we are still proud of - but can offer a much broader set of professional and managed services to our clients' customers as part of their own propositions," added Darby. "Our ambitions are still very much focused on growth, whether that's organically or through further acquisitions, concentrating on delivering our channel-only business strategy.

"But the skills shortage is the biggest challenge facing any company operating within the technology industry. As skills become more rare, they become more expensive and employers have to fight to attract them. Unless we find ways to nurture new people through apprenticeships or other channels, this problem will only get worse."

The speed of change in the market was also underlined by Paul Benson, Managing Director at National Telecoms Installations (NTI), who during the past 12 months has witnessed a big increase in requests from dealers for installations of hosted systems across a number of different platforms. Just 12 months ago these installs amounted to one per month, NTI now installs two or three sites per week for its dealer customer base.

"While hosted is still not right for every end user client, the format is certainly a trend we are adapting to serve," stated Benson. "The increase in hosted telephony installations has also driven demand for our cat5e and cat6 cabling services as dealers look to remove older PBXs on traditional CW1308 cabling and replace them with hosted telephony on a proven certified LAN."

Benson has not, to date, seen a drop in demand for NTI's PBX installation and maintenance services. On the contrary, the move of existing systems from ISDN and analogue to SIP is on the increase, and sites with larger more complex needs often don't suit the hosted model, he pointed out. "We find the most successful resellers have expanded their portfolio to ensure they are selling a solution handpicked from a toolbox of products which includes traditional PBX, hosted, PSTN and SIP technologies, rather than focusing on one or the other," added Benson.

Agilitas' main area of expertise is in Inventory-as-a-Service. "By extending our wholesale Inventory-as-a-Service portfolio to provide inventory support, training, repairs, hardware sales and technical support, we've developed our offering and grown turnover by 30 per cent in the last year as a result," said Shaun Lynn (pictured above), CEO of Agilitas.

The growth of the cloud and mobile workforce has changed the demand for spares, focusing on delivery in data centres with less on-premise hardware. "We've seen dependence on IT rise fast," added Lynn. "Having the right parts available when required is becoming ever more important to businesses. At the same time, we see the wider industry facing a number of challenges. The continual squeeze on margins is making organisations look at new ways to maximise revenue, and post and pre-sales services are now an integral part of all profitable product sales and processes."

The company has grown its partner base by approximately 18 per cent and found Inventory-as-a-Service to be in most demand. "However, this service is being increasingly adopted in conjunction with technical support or training," added Lynn. "This enhances the service offering and introduces elements of differentiation to partners. We're also expecting to see a significant increase in cloud-based data storage and the criticality of uptime in onsite and offsite infrastructure."

Agilitas has developed two key opportunities for growth - identifying new partners and extending its capability into additional product sets and markets. "We constantly need to adapt in order to be ahead of the curve, and continuously improve service levels to meet expectations while investing in skills and development to maintain current product experience," said Lynn.

Investing in the future has also been a priority for Maintel which created a new partner services team following its merger with Proximity. It supplies two main types of service - Professional Services (including engineering, installation and consultancy) and Managed Services (including maintenance and support). Over the last year Maintel has increased its number of partners by around 10 per cent.

The key requirements in demand are taking on the support of legacy systems, specialist skills complementing its channels' own resources, and providing a single point for consolidating all unified communications, contact centre, workforce optimisation and data networking needs. "Tactically, the requests have been for our skills, expertise, geographic coverage, availability and breadth of portfolio," said Chris Bain, Director of Partner Services, Maintel.

"There will be a natural progression for systems integrators and outsourcers to want to address a bigger market. For telcos, they will need to focus their energy and effort on current systems, not legacy devices, so will need partners to do that. Channels need a partner who will allow them to keep what they have now and move to the future. Resellers need to show value beyond the traditional sales model. They will need to assist the customer at the beginning and end of investment cycles.

"Partner services enable resellers, outsourcers, systems integrators and telcos to do this without major investment in personnel. Our partners look for a company to not only provide the services they don't have, but also to be an integral part of their customer engagement and growth plans."

Juniper Bridge is an outsource provider to the industry supplying customer support software, 24x7 support services and device logistics solutions to more than 80 telecoms and IT businesses. The firm has also witnessed a growing requirement to create flexible support models, and for the delivery of enhanced customer support technologies where cost of ownership is too high for a service provider.

Resellers wanting to get to grips with new technology approach Juniper Bridge for discussions that are becoming increasingly collaborative and partnership focused. "Clients approach us for a diverse set of reasons," said Simon Johnson, Commercial Director. "Scalability and flexibility are of course key considerations, but they are also looking for tangible value adds for their own propositions. As a result, we spend a lot of time developing our systems to deliver solutions that, ironically for us at least, seek to reduce the customer support cycle. The trick is about creating a continuously improving relationship with a client and to openly look at process and system integration."

Historically, Juniper Bridge's revenues have mostly been driven by outsourced technical support contracts which are still growing, but resellers' support requirements are changing as they move to converged technologies. "There is more demand for cloud-based products (particularly hosted PBX and Wi-Fi), IT desktop (Microsoft 365) and support for network monitoring systems (for example, proactive fibre circuit and leased line monitoring)," noted Johnson.

"Revenue has doubled in the last 12 months following growth in sales of our technical support software which has been complemented by a number of large CPE logistics wins. We have invested in R&D and in our CloudKeeper technology. The software provides a full technical back office solution that unifies with multiple technologies, carriers and technical support models, including our own. Our CloudKeeper portal has developed beyond recognition over the last two years and we are constantly bringing on new enhancements."

Link Connect is a network and IT hosting company based in Hampshire. It uses outsourcing to bring flexibility to its customer support model. Operations Manager James Smith said: "We use an outsourced provider for our front of house which gives us a true lights-on first line support capability with readily available agents to answer our calls. They follow our processes, ensuring the customer receives a consistent high standard of service."

This enables Link Connect's tier 2 technical team to focus on serious incidents and put customers' change requests, security matters and managed services before line issues and other time consuming tasks that 'just need doing'. "Offering legacy ISP services with our managed services means we have volume calls and faults that require carrier management," added Smith. "Our outsource partner takes this pain away, looking after our products like leased lines, VoIP, Wi-Fi, DSL and email.

"This is not without some risk to the customer support model, and shows why outsourcing must be viewed as a partnership. Choosing a partner with the right support tools and flexibility to their approach is key."•

Rampant claims to market differentiation are often ballooned out of all proportion according to TeleWare's CEO Steve Haworth who punctures the 'trusted advisor' bubble and points to the substantial stand-out factors that really matter in today's fast-evolving marketplace.

Every industry spawns its hype and comms is no exception. The trick is to create substance, and resellers can only do this by sharpening their focus on what they do best and then strive to do better, according to Haworth. "Stop wasting time worrying about what everyone else is doing and make sure you execute well," he stated. "Create a specialism or halo proposition that helps you to stand out. Too many ICT suppliers claim to be one-stop-shops and 'trusted advisors'. These labels are no longer differentiators."

Haworth aims to help resellers step closer to their goals with a boost fuelled by the benefits of analytics. "Right now we are adding multi-mode, multi-media and analytics to all of our products to help drive greater insights across the business and bring more revenue opportunities to our partners," he explained. "The intersection of mobile, cloud and Big Data to enhance the customer experience, governance and compliance are important drivers. We have invested heavily in gaining new data capture and analytics capabilities to take advantage of this area as we see it exploding over the next few years."

While highlighting the lack of market differentiation, Haworth does not lack the ambition to elevate TeleWare's partners above the crowd. "Part of our proposition is to help partners stand out and differentiate themselves," he stated. "We have to challenge ourselves to do the same. We live in a world of over-supply in so many areas. How and why you do things is just as important as what you do."

In more detail, TeleWare routes, records and analyses communications to improve customer service, governance and compliance. The company focuses on markets that require the agility to cope with flexible customer demand, where a high proportion of employees are mobile or distributed, or have specific regulatory requirements. Retail, leisure, finance, healthcare and utilities are particularly strong markets for TeleWare.

The firm finished last year with over £10 million in revenues and has a headcount of circa 80 staff. "We set out a growth plan to double revenue over a three year period and we hit our profit target within the first six months of this year," commented Haworth. "We have invested more in our new products and services as well as partner recruitment, and have some exciting products coming to market this year."

Haworth wants to build a dozen 'great partnerships' over the next two years, to jointly focus on creative propositions that differentiate partners and drive their value. "We want to find partners who share our values and vision and believe in the power of communications to drive business performance," he commented. "Our partners are likely to come from different areas so that they can work together. Some might be the more traditional communications players while others more Microsoft and IT, although these are merging fast. New areas for TeleWare are the creative digital agency or data analytics driven partners who can drive additional value from the data that communications provide."

That said, Haworth still sees a place for the more commoditised products and services delivered easily and with APIs for partners to create 'great solutions'. But he believes that these solutions have more value when integrated with other technologies and made easy to buy, sell and service. "This is where we see real value in a distribution partner," Haworth said. "Our current priorities are recruiting partners who will get the most benefit from our new products and services. We see Microsoft as a key partner in this space and helping other partners to leverage these technologies, complement them and integrate with other platforms is where we are spending much of our time."

Adaptation is the most potent of survival methods, but managing change is never easy. "The shift to the cloud was a particular challenge," added Haworth. "We have always focused on great software but the cloud requires a different mind-set and business model. So we have expanded our services to make it easier for partners, while remaining focused on the areas that have made us a great company. We have also witnessed massive growth in mobile and communication recording and see these areas as huge opportunities for partners.

"Finding partners who have a strong knowledge in specific markets, and helping them to develop more differentiated offerings that drive greater value is where we see our future. We leverage and build upon the great work of others to help partners hit their own goals. For example, by adding value to their cloud strategy and integrating third party cloud services where required, or building secure private services for industry verticals such as health and finance."

Transforming the TeleWare business into a Software as a Service operation is perhaps Haworth's crowning glory. "This is my biggest career achievement to date because I underestimated the challenge and didn't expect the undertaking to involve every aspect of the business, from people to technology to finance. Many of our partners are doing similar transitions in their business models. I still come across people who see this as a small change in product portfolio rather than a business transformation."

Despite Haworth's years of industry experience, business transformation does not get handed over on a plate. He began his career selling ERP software to large enterprises. "We used TeleWare to provide flexible input via phones in offices and mobile phones for engineers," explained Haworth. "I then set up a company selling mobile gateways to corporate customers. They were spending 20p per minute to a mobile and 80 per cent of their bill was from calls to mobile phones. The recurring revenue model got me hooked, so when the opportunity came to work for TeleWare I jumped at the chance."

Geoff Haworth formed TeleWare with a business partner in 1991. The company began as an R&D project looking into the art of the possible following the release of Digital Cards that connected computers and telephones. "Our first real customer was British Gas via Siemens to help extend the capacity of a phone system and support flexible working," said Haworth. "They bought into the ideas and capability more than a deliverable, but we had to deliver something convincing to win the business. TeleWare grew through a great relationship with Siemens in the 1990s."

TeleWare's biggest challenges and opportunities have always been around technology developments and partnering. "The step from being totally reliant on Siemens and signing partnerships with BT and others created an interesting challenge as we had to learn to manage multiple partners," added Haworth. "As most partners were larger than ourselves they tended to require a level of up-front resource. This was an exciting challenge. In terms of technology, we have seen the migration to the Internet, mobile and the cloud as huge shifts, but the latter was perhaps the greatest challenge as it required a change in business model."

There is now a copious literature on the whys and wherefores of changing business model and it is the knowledge gleaned from the experience of pioneers such as Haworth that will make the process more bearable for those who follow in his footsteps. "Focus and timing is critical," he stated. "When we first moved into the cloud we wanted to do everything. We were driven to move fast but, at times, ahead of the market. We spent much time, effort and money educating the market rather than being laser focused on the biggest issues that we could address, and accepting that fast growth in revenue during the initial phases of launch is not the best KPI. Setting out the next most important goals and doing everything you can to get there is something I learned later rather than sooner. It really does make a significant difference."•

By Anton Le Saux, Head of Connectivity and Partner Sales at O2 Telefónica UK: The IoT provides 'a way of boosting productivity, of keeping us healthier, making transport more efficient, reducing energy needs and making our homes more comfortable', according to a report by The Government Office for Science.

This is certainly a belief that we share and have supported by working with a number of local authorities, offering advice around how to deliver effective services through digital expertise. The IoT is now beginning to make a real impact at local Government level, as more councils begin to adopt the technology and apply it to real life challenges.

One recipient of O2's expertise and advice is Newcastle City Council, which launched its SelfTrav app. The app uses tracking technology to help young people with learning disabilities to travel safely on public transport. The idea was to support the young people involved who want to be able to travel normally, without being conspicuous.

The app empowers them to travel safely and independently, without standing out from the crowd as most young people carry smartphones. The development of the app revolutionises how the council is able to deliver special educational needs and disabilities transport.

The applications for m2m technology in local Government are enormously diverse and can touch on anything from smart lighting and parking to measuring passenger journeys on public transport, traffic flow systems and energy management. There are councils that have struggled to understand how the IoT can be put to work to their advantage, but as more councils adopt the technology and knowledge is shared, the benefits will be widely felt.

(anton.lesaux@telefonica.com - partnersdigital.telefonica.com)

By Andy Grant, Managing Director, Bowan Arrow: Marketing planning is often discussed by partners and vendors but sometimes the process is not taken that seriously or documented.

Many vendors have MDF budgets available for partners to create a credible marketing plan. Partners and vendors already have an agreed business plan with revenue targets and objectives, so why not extend that to a joint marketing strategy? Vendors usually supply a simple template.

A major element of the partnership is the marketing plan. This should concentrate on creating awareness, consideration and action for target contacts in key markets. The marketing plan should include timelines and costs for the major activities that have been discussed and need to be executed.

Partners and vendors should not try to boil the ocean. I always advise them to include no more than four joint activities for a calendar year. Both parties need to be realistic and the activities need to be achievable to create real results.

The partner should insist that the vendor makes their PR team available, and their corporate reach for the initial and ongoing communications, but the actual integrated campaigns should be led by the partner with the vendor's support.

Partners should plan integrated campaigns that have more than one element. Sending a simple direct mail letter and hoping for hundreds of responses will not create leads. If you plan an activity with a number of touchpoints you will have taken the correct steps towards channel marketing success.

Zayo Group Holdings has closed its 98.8 million euro acquisition of Viatel 's infrastructure and non-Irish carrier and high bandwidth business from the Digiweb Group, a full service telecommunications and managed services operator, based in Dublin, Ireland.

The acquisition adds an 8,400 kilometre fibre network across eight countries to Zayo's European footprint, including 12 new metro networks, seven data centres and connectivity to 81 on-net buildings. The Viatel businesses to be acquired are highly aligned with Zayo's existing product and customer set, including a higher proportion of dark fibre revenue.

The new capability significantly expands Zayo's global capabilities, providing Pan-European infrastructure and connectivity to key subsea cable systems, delivering traffic to and from North America, Asia and Africa.

The expanded network and infrastructure solutions are available immediately to Zayo and Viatel customers through their account representatives or via Tranzact, Zayo's innovative platform for purchasing and managing infrastructure at zayo.com/tranzact.

The suite of services available includes Dark Fibre, Wavelengths, Ethernet, IP, Data Centre and Cloud, across more than 92,000 miles, nearly 150,000 kilometres, of Zayo's high-performance network.

"The acquisition of Viatel's European network business strengthens our strategic position in Europe and provides customers with access to our fibre network and expanded connectivity to key international markets," said Dan Caruso, Zayo chairman and CEO. "Because of the complementary nature of the acquisition, we will begin cross-selling our full suite of services to both Zayo and Viatel customers immediately."

Entanet CEO Elsa Chen has been shortlisted as a finalist in a further award programme recognising female technology leaders and their valuable contribution to the industry.

Chen has been named as a finalist in the category of Business Leader of the Year in the Women in IT Awards 2016, organised by business technology magazine, Information Age.

This latest shortlisting follows an earlier finalist nomination in the PCR Woman of the Year Awards and a series of company award wins throughout the year, including the Comms Business Award for Wholesale Service Provider of the Year- Large, ISPA Award for Best SME Business Broadband and CRN Sales & Marketing Award for Best Vendor Account Management Team.

Chen said: "It's an honour to be shortlisted for this award and it's recognition of the strong results achieved by the whole Entanet team.

"We've had a very successful 2015 with significant year-on-year growth, the launch of a number of innovative new tools and systems, onboarding of several key strategic relationships and, of course, success in a number of award programmes. We strive to continue this success into 2016 and beyond with the continued support of our loyal channel partners."

Following another strong year for cybersecurity players, FBR analyst Dan Ives stated: "Our recent field checks heading into 2016 suggest 'robust' deal momentum as enterprises and governments across the board upgrade to next-generation security platforms/software.

"Based on our conversations with channel partners/customers over the last few weeks, closure rates look to be trending higher year over year, with seven-figure deals markedly up in the pipeline. This speaks to the massive firewall refresh that is underway, with hot areas of security (next-generation firewall, e-mail security, mobile/cloud) as the main beneficiaries."

He expects next-gen firewall leader Palo Alto Networks to be a major beneficiary.

Others expected to benefit include firewall/security software vendor Check Point, privileged account security software leader CyberArk, unified threat appliance leader Fortinet, e-mail/compliance security software firm Proofpoint (NASDAQ:PFPT), and Web app firewall and data security software firm Imperva.

Ives is less bullish on malware and endpoint-protection hardware and software provider FireEye, citing execution and product-related headwinds. His note comes three weeks after Citi reported a CIO survey pointed to strong enterprise security spend. FireEye (upgraded), Palo Alto, Splunk, and Imperva were favorably mentioned.

Former Fujitsu CTO Jon Wrennall has joined Advanced Computer Software Group as new CTO.

Wrennall brings 20 years experience to his new role. He spent the last five years as CTO of Fujitsu UK and Ireland, overseeing 1,200 architects and driving change across all areas of the business.

During his time there, the company, which has an annual turnover of £1.7 billion, grew from a largely public sector client base to nearly 50% private sector.

Prior to moving to Fujitsu Wrennall served as Chief Information Officer, Transformation Director and SIRO at the Valuation Office Agency (VOA).

Before joining the VOA, he served as Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs' first Chief Technology Officer, leading the integration of the former Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise organisations.

At both organisations, he drove savings of £600 million and led IT and business transformations that have helped shape how UK businesses interface with the public sector.

Wrennall said: "I cannot think of a better time to join Advanced. The business is going through an exciting period of growth and is investing heavily in software development, so I see this as a massive opportunity to build on the broad set of products and services."

Gordon Wilson, CEO, Advanced Computer Software Group, added: "Jon brings experience to the role as well as a passion for technology and proven leadership skills, which will further enhance our products and take us closer to our goal of becoming a world class business."

Wrennall is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the British Computer Society, founding Fujitsu Fellow and member of the Advisory Board for leading application intelligence company, AppDynamics.

The traditional fixed line and mobile carrier's days could be numbered if the roll out of a new ‘Global Mesh' project by the automotive industry goes to plan.

The project could see the delivery of about 100 million wireless access points per annum in new cars across the planet.

Nathan Stewart from IT and Cloud solutions provider Total Group, who is technical lead for the initiative set for launch in 2021, told Comms Dealer: "Within two years of launch the automotive industry will have more coverage and bandwidth than the existing copper, fibre and mobile networks combined. They will overnight become a super carrier."

It's expected that by 2022 the automotive ‘Global Mesh' will provide 10Gb wireless bandwidth across the globe anywhere within a few kilometres of a modern car.

Stewart says the network will be self-building, self-upgrading, self-powering and, as an infrastructure investment model, existing carriers will not be able to compete.

"Every new car will have an access point. The mesh will have complete global wireless coverage and visibility of over 10 billion devices and approximately six billion people," he said.

"By 2021 we expect that the access points will be ratified at 802.11ax standard or better, providing multiple gigabit bandwidth over many kilometres by 2023.

If the project comes to fruition it could have a huge impact on the existing telecommunications industry. Facebook and Google have similar plans for global wireless coverage. Stewart believes it will change network provision paradigms and will push ICT resellers into completely new business models.

"A free fast global wireless network could be disruptive for personal, residential and SME line rental and connectivity but we think enterprise connectivity will be slow adopters.

"Existing carriers will very likely leverage the network and data products will be available to resellers and distributors.

"I suspect that for the reseller community revenue will shift from providing lines and connectivity to providing solutions, security, data, IT services and marketing products.

"If the network is freely provided the data rights and ability to leverage big data and marketing influence increases.

"By 2022 a further three billion people and 10 billion devices are expected to start using the internet. A great opportunity awaits resellers that adapt and adopt new solutions and prepare to leverage the user and IoT explosion.

"The ability to leverage and profit from free wireless is well proven in the retail and hospitality space and resellers will need plan for how similar models can work on a global basis," added Stewart.

Chess Telecom's acquisition strategy has been boosted by a new £50m finance facility from Barclays. Recent acquisitions have expanded Chess' reach into the cloud, data and hosted space and include IRW Systems, Parachute IT, elbillz, Integra ICT, Avenir Telecoms and The CRM Business. The new deal will enable Chess to refinance its existing facilities and bolster its war chest for future M&A activity.

The facility will also fund a management incentive scheme via a new share ownership plan.
 
Richard Btesh, Director at Chess, commented: "The funding received from Barclays demonstrates the success of our strategy of acquiring small to mid-sized telecoms businesses and our move towards the cloud, data and hosted space."
 
The deal was arranged by Barclays in Manchester led by Richard Faulkner, Relationship Director for Technology, Media and Telecoms, Glenn Clarke and Ed Hastrop, Debt Finance.
 
Faulkner said: "Our industry focus and understanding of the telecoms sector has enabled us to structure a finance solution that fits well with Chess's acquisition strategy.

"We have a dedicated northern TMT team and I am confident the funding from Barclays will allow Chess continued growth and profitability and to maximise their potential."