Comms Dealer

CAD software maker Autodesk has put $100m on the table and challenged developers to create new cloud friendly design automation systems on its Forge development platform.

Autodesk, famous for its AutoCAD computer aided design (CAD) system, explains that it wants the cloud-based Forge system to catalyse a change in the way products are designed, made and used.

The initiative consists of three major components, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, a developer programme and a $100 million investment fund.

The Forge Platform is a set of cloud services that span early stage design, engineering, visualisation, collaboration, production and operations. It offers open application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs) for developers wanting to build cloud powered apps and services.

The Forge Developer Program provides training, resources and support and will host an inaugural Forge Developer Conference in June 2016. In addition to financial support for companies that quality for the developer fund, Autodesk will give business and technical support.

The logic of the scheme is that industrial production methods used to design, make and use products is changing and new technologies disrupt every aspect of the product lifecycle. This can make production risky, since investments are poured into the creation of a new product line only for the market to be destroyed by some other invention before the manufacturer can launch their products.

Cloud computing, by creating a more flexible fluid economies of design and manufacture, could help make CAD systems adapt to the new market conditions, according to Amar Hanspal, senior VP of Products at Autodesk. "Autodesk is launching Forge to help developers build new businesses in the changing manufacturing landscape," said Hanspal.

"We are inviting innovators to take advantage of Autodesk's cloud platform to build services that turn today's disconnected technologies into highly connected, personalised experiences."

The European Commission has, after over a decade of delay, made a political commitment to reform copyright levies. The decision to tackle this thorny issue comes as part of a Communication on how the Commission intends to reform copyright more widely next year.

In addition to addressing old problems like the inefficient way levies are collected to compensate rights holders, the Communication also addresses more recent issues such as how to deal with ancillary copyright and data mining.

In its Communication the Commission identifies a need for action to ensure that the levies imposed by some countries don't distort the single market. It also asks whether any economic harm is incurred by artists when their works are copied by private individuals. Levies are seen as a way to compensate artists for private copying of content such as music or movies from one digital device to another.

The Communication also promises to address the issue of double payments. You often pay twice or more times for the same copyright: first when you buy a CD or a download, and then every time you buy a new storage or copying device, such as a smart phone, laptop, tablet, external hard drive, USB stick or printer, even if you don't use that device to store or copy the copyright protected material.

"We are delighted that the Commission has finally acknowledged what a mess the levies system is. We have been raising these issues with lawmakers for over ten years by now and urging them to reform the system in light of the digital technologies most of us now use every day of our lives," said John Higgins, Director General of DIGITALEUROPE.

Levies are a lucrative source of revenues for the organisations that collect the levies. The Commission is sure to come under pressure from them to maintain the status quo. "We urge the Commission to stick to its guns and not be swayed from this important reform," Mr Higgins said.

In addition to levies, the Commission's Communication addresses the issue of ancillary copyright, where an Internet portal carries snippets of news articles from newspaper websites.

There are calls for some form of compensation to the newspapers for the snippets. However, news publishers themselves are divided about whether such compensation is necessary, with many in France, Spain and Germany now arguing that the traffic to their websites that these snippets generate is worth more to them than any compensation.

EU antitrust regulators have charged Qualcomm with abusing its market power to thwart rivals, putting the world's number one mobile chipset maker at risk of a hefty fine.

The accusations by the European Commission are the latest antitrust problems for the company as regulators in the United States, China, Japan and South Korea look into its licensing model and its dominant patents in mobile networks and devices.

The EU executive's accusations, set out in two charge sheets known as statements of objections, followed a formal investigation begun in July. The EU competition enforcer said Qualcomm might have illegally paid a major customer for exclusively using its chipsets and it also sold chipsets below cost with the aim of forcing a competitor out through predatory pricing.

"I am concerned that Qualcomm's actions may have pushed out competitors or prevented them from competing," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. Qualcomm said it has been given several months to respond to the charges of predatory pricing between 2009 and 2011 and of exclusivity payments since 2011.

"We look forward to demonstrating that competition in the sale of wireless chips has been and remains strong and dynamic, and that Qualcomm's sales practices have always complied with European competition law," Qualcomm general counsel Don Rosenberg said in a statement.

It could face a $2.7bn fine, equivalent to 10% of its 2014 worldwide revenue, if found guilty of breaching EU rules. In February it paid a $975m fine to end a 14-month investigation by the Chinese government into anti-competitive practices.

The predatory pricing case against the company followed a complaint from UK phone software maker Icera, which later was acquired by Nvidia Corp in a bid to enter the market for smartphone chips and compete with Qualcomm.

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.