Comms Dealer

EMC is reviewing channel programme changes even as its acquisition by Dell is proceeding.

It is intent on building its presence in the mid-market, it told a press briefing this week.

EMC's UK channel head Kevin Sparks said that the channel was involved in around 99.9% of deals in this space, even though EMC itself had some 50 staff working on sales.

It is engaged in a struggle for recognition that it is not just as enterprise company, he said.

This was confirmed by Sarah Lellow, MD of EMC partner Reciprocal, who praised the high level of market funds available to them, but also suggested that the partner programme was in need of some revision.

As a Silver partner based on revenue, she said the jump to Gold was just too high.

Eamon Campbell, MD of EMC partner and insurance/financial services IT reseller Norisco, said that EMC might want to look into having a specialist accreditation for those, like his business, who were expert in their fields.

EMC itself has highlighted the need to work with more specialist partners as part of its future plans.

Sparks confirmed that discussions are taking place on revisiting the programme, but EMC has a lot on its plate at the moment, what with the Dell take-over, and is also working on a new collaboration tool for service providers, resellers, distributors. Although details are sparse, this is planned for 2016.

The role of distribution for EMC in this market is also under review since both partners agreed that the two tier model worked well as an introduction to the vendor, but they used their own resources after that.

Sparks named distribution as key to its idea of increasing coverage by locating and bringing in new partners.

Distribution's role in credit and in delivering cloud SLAs and contracts is still useful, it was agreed, but technically, the partners rely on their own expertise.

Distribution is useful for introducing new vendors, said Eamon Campbell, who also confirmed that he was approached every month or two by EMC rivals, including US-based start-ups, looking to sign him up as a partner.

The appointment of Gavin Lyons to the post of Executive Chairman at Pinnacle Technology Group underlines the firm's plans for securing acquisitions and keeping the overall strategy on track.

Lyons takes over from Dr James Dodd, Non-Executive Chairman, who will remain on the board as a Non-Executive Director until the company's annual general meeting in March 2016. 

Lyons has much experience in the TMT sector, most recently joining IT security specialist Accumuli as CEO in 2012 and spearheading a successful buy and build strategy that saw it sold to NCC Group for £55m in October.

Prior to Accumuli Lyons was Head of Telecoms and Utilities UK&I at SAP and he held various senior positions at Trend Micro, having also worked at Xerox, Compuware and The Caudwell Group.

During his career Lyons has been involved in three exits, generating close to £100m in value, as well as completing several acquisitions and integrations.
He is also a Partner at MXC Capital, the AIM-quoted technology-focused merchant bank, appointed by Pinnacle to advise on the company's strategy and identify acquisition opportunities.

Non-Executive Director of Pinnacle Technology Group, Tom Black, said: "Gavin's experience of buy and builds and track record of achieving transformational growth will be a powerful asset to the company.

"As a result, we believe we will be better positioned to expand our solution set across a growing base of customers."

Pinnacle offers a range of managed IT Services, IT security, connectivity, mobile, telephony and infrastructure services. It operates in the SME market and the broader mid-market and public sector.

A surprising uptick in PBX shipments during 2016 was not enough for distributor Nimans to reserve its judgement on the speed of hosted comms adoption.

"We are still seeing growth in PBX sales," stated Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales. "But 2015 was undoubtedly the year of change in terms of a shift towards hosted.

"For the best part of three decades we were known as a voice specialist and we have thousands of resellers who rely on us for their 'tin' technology. Nimans will never move away from that, but we also see resellers moving across to hosted."

The transition to hosted represents a key point in the histories of reseller businesses, and also Nimans.

"Just like our resellers we've had to ask some searching questions ourselves, so we understand the pain points many will have to go through. In many ways 2015 has been a grasp the nettle year."

Nimans has also witnessed a turning point in collaboration trends, noted Head of Conferencing Sales, Ian Brindle.

"The market is moving into a new area of activity where smarter and more advanced technologies are driving collaboration forward," he said.

"2016 will see collaboration trends strengthen and open up more sales opportunities or resellers."

James Vickerage has taken over from his father to lead Imago ScanSource UK&I as VP.

He joined Imago in 1997 and held senior sales and marketing roles before becoming Head of Northern EMEA in 2010.

"We are at an exciting point in our development having seen the emergence of a new business grow from the ScanSource acquisition a year ago," said Vickerage.

"This means that there will be many opportunities as well as key challenges ahead."

Imago ScanSource was formed out of the acquisition of Imago Group by ScanSource and operates as a separate business unit under the guidance of founder and former Imago MD, Ian Vickerage, who is now President of ScanSource's European Communications business.

Nimans has added two new dimensions to its GS-hosted voice proposition, providing resellers with more ways to maximise margin potential on their own terms, according to the company.

The distributor says resellers can access the service for a low per-month cost with a phone, three years service and bundled minutes all included. They can also choose to take up to 60% profit upfront using GS Hosted finance.

"A reseller can have their cake and eat it with contracted recurring revenue and up to 60% upfront margins," said Group Sales & Business Development Director Richard Carter.

GS-Hosted has three different pricing structure depending on the type of handsets chosen.

Carter added: "GS-hosted is all about providing resellers with maximum choice and profit potential."

Nimans has also added the GS-6400 Android-based video phone to its line up of GS-hosted handset solutions.

Cloud Telephones, the specialist VoIP and connectivity services provider, is predicting a surge of activity for its reseller partners around the year-end as PBX maintenance and support contracts come to an end and businesses look to switch to hosted voice services.

Most PBX contracts run for three or five years and the last time they were up for renewal, businesses were uncertain about whether or not they should commit to IP-based telephony.

But attitudes have changed and this time around, most companies will abandon the old systems and switch over to hosted voice services, says John Carter, Managing Director of Cloud Telephones.

"Earlier in the decade many business people were still wary of moving all their telephony over to IP, either because they could not get sufficient bandwidth at an affordable price, or they thought VoIP did not deliver high enough quality and reliability.

"Now that faster and more affordable broadband is widely available, and there is much greater confidence in hosted services, most of the businesses reaching the end of their PBX contracts are definitely going to make the switch to VoIP.

"While hosted VoIP solutions can be deployed quickly, any business that is looking to update its phone system in January will need to start thinking about it now. Resellers that want to make the most of the potential should start running local advertising and marketing campaigns without delay."

Selling hosted VoIP is profitable business, Carter notes, and often opens up a wider set of opportunities for resellers. "As well as the initial commissions, resellers will generate regular monthly, recurring income from all their VoIP sales, and once customers have embraced hosted voice they are often keen to go further and look at other online services, such as cloud backup and Office 365.

"We are already helping many resellers develop their subscription business and with almost every customer, VoIP is the starting-point."

Independent cloud hosting provider Cobweb Solutions has been recognised by Symantec as the Outstanding Cloud Partner of the Year at Symantec's annual EMEA partner conference, held in Madrid.

Ash Patel, Director of Business Transformation, said: "Ever increasing numbers of customers are experiencing the truth that not all clouds are equal, with Cobweb showing UK businesses where true value lies by liberating businesses from restrictive technology."

At the core of 'the Cobweb' is the Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Azure and the rest of the Microsoft cloud solution provider services, plus a portfolio of additional vendor cloud services and the Cobweb London cloud for business applications requiring UK data residency.

Zayo is the latest connectivity provider to launch a point of presence (PoP) at LDeX Group's second carrier neutral data centre facility, LDeX2, in Trafford Park, Manchester.

Zayo delivers dark fibre, wavelengths, Ethernet and IP services to customers in the enterprise and wholesale sectors; and complements LDeX's existing list of Tier 1 carriers and ISPs, which are already on-net in the facility, offering customers that require high capacity bandwidth access to key connectivity locations via diverse dark fibre routes.

Rob Garbutt, LDeX Group's CEO, said: "This point of presence will enable LDeX2 as a carrier neutral data centre and allow its customers to connect to approximately 19,000 on-net locations across Zayo's global network.

"Attracting infrastructure providers such as Zayo to the facility aligns with our strategic plans to be the best-connected data centre operator in the UK.

"Zayo is already a provider of connectivity services for customers at our first London-based colocation facility so this is a logical extension of our relationship."

EE has been selected by the Home Office to provide Britain's Emergency Services with a national mobile network, giving 300,000 critical emergency workers access to 4G voice and data for the first time.

The Government's £1 billion Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP) will ensure that Britain is a world leader in Emergency Services communications, and a 4G pioneer.

The EE 4G network will significantly improve the efficiency of the Emergency Services by giving them access to the type of data and applications that have benefitted private businesses in recent years. Some of the applications that the new network will enable for Britain's Emergency Services are:

EE CEO Olaf Swantee said: "We've worked closely with the Police and Ambulance crews to show the power of 4G in helping save time and save lives. We will now work tirelessly to deliver a highly resilient, truly nationwide 4G network to serve all of Britain's Blue Light and First Responder teams across the UK."

EE's new 4G Emergency Services Network will replace the existing TETRA system from mid-2017 as current contracts expire.

8x8's EasyContactNow (ECN) cloud contact management solution has been accepted for inclusion on G-Cloud 7, the Government's online digital marketplace for the broader public sector.

ECN is a key part of 8x8's Enterprise communications as-a-Service (ECaaS) suite and is complementary to the company's Virtual Contact Centre solution that is targeted at traditional, structured contact centre environments. 

Sharon Maslyn, Sales Director of 8x8 UK, said: "With ECN 8x8 makes it practical for organisations to use sophisticated contact centre capabilities that require efficient, personalized communications with employees, citizens or customers."

ECN offers Government departments features such as call back, IVR workflow builder, call recording, SMS, instant messaging, browser integration, full data management and integration with leading CRM solutions.

In addition to traditional customer-facing deployments, ECN can also be utilised by other key line of business functions, including IT service desks, credit control and facilities management.

This latest extension to 8x8's offerings for the public sector comes just two months after the company's accreditation under the UK Government's Cyber Essentials Plus scheme.