Comms Dealer

Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking has strengthened its Technology, Media and Telecommunications team in London with the appointment of Michael Bond as Mid-Markets Relationship Director.

He joins the eight strong team having previously worked in a similar role looking after clients in the Education, Communities and Government sector across the South East, where he was responsible for helping grow the Bank's portfolio of clients, doubling the size of the team servicing those clients in the process.

With 12 years in corporate banking, he will now be responsible for growing Lloyds Bank's portfolio of Technology, Media and Telecommunications businesses in the capital with a turnover of between £25 million and £100 million.

The team specialises in structuring tailored funding solutions for new and existing clients to provide risk management, financing, working capital and liquidity to dynamic businesses within a high-growth sector.

Simon Bumfrey, Area Director at the bank's TMT team in London, said: "Michael brings with him a great track record of relationship-led banking, in which he has helped grow our client base by ensuring we always deliver the bespoke, tailored funding packages that our clients require to help them prosper.

"By really getting under the skin of clients' businesses, Michael has shown himself able to shape the funding structure that is most appropriate for each individual customer, enabling them to fulfil their ambitions and evolve without putting undue stress on the balance sheet now or further down the track."

Bond added: "This is a sector where the appetite for mergers and acquisitions, and so for a variety of different types of debt funding, is high."

A survey of resellers, MSPs and systems integrators conducted by Agilitas revealed that 54% estimated their customers could lose anything from £10,000 up to £1m from just a single hour of downtime, while 40% are seeing over four hours of downtime when hardware goes wrong.

"Having IT hardware spares available has for many years been essential to business continuity and maximum uptime. However, as organisations become more dependent on technology, SLAs are being shortened and expectations raised," said Shaun Lynn, CEO of Agilitas. "Two hour part-to-site SLAs 24x7x365 are becoming the norm."

The research also revealed that 40% of customers see on average over four hours of downtime when hardware fails; 40% of providers find meeting SLAs the greatest challenge to providing inventory support to customers, and 25% sourcing parts; and 20% are struggling to get parts to customers on time in order to meet critical SLAs.

"Meeting SLAs and reducing downtime through flexible support should be the key aim for service providers," added Lynn.

"Inventory-as-a-service's ability to distribute parts quickly from multiple locations means that providers won't need to worry about getting a part from A-to-B again, coupled with direct access to technical and remote support 24x7x365."

Agilitas also surveyed service providers running their own in-house operations, revealing that a quarter currently run complete in-house inventory operations despite the rising cost of office and warehouse space; over a fifth aren't sure how much storing parts costs each year; and one in seven say the high costs of managing inventory is preventing investment in other areas of their business.

"The increasingly high capital (capex) cost of managing hardware often makes it unsustainable for many IT providers. Organisations want an always-on service, with two hour SLAs met 24x7x365. As a result, organisations moving towards inventory-as-a-service are reducing capex, as the service keeps costs stable, ensuring inventory management is an operational (opex), not capital expenditure," said Lynn.

Hats off to Nimans for collecting the Distributor of the Year award from headset manufacturer Jabra.

Impressive sales performance and expert knowledge combined with 'playing an ambassadorial role' helped Nimans clinch its latest in a long line of over 100 industry accolades.

Nigel Dunn, Managing Director, Jabra UK & Ireland, said Jabra worked with the team at Nimans on a plan for significant growth throughout the year.

"The results have been far better than we imagined and growth has exceeded all expectation," he pointed out.

Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales at Nimans, added: "Winning awards is great testimony to the skills and dedication of our staff coupled with the fantastic support of our loyal customers. We enjoy an excellent working relationship with Jabra which is set to grow even stronger throughout 2016 and beyond based on their innovative product range and exceptional industry reputation."

Last month Nimans picked up the Best Convergence Distributor award in the Comms National Awards.

Almost one third (31%) of CIOs globally are routinely side-lined when it comes to making IT purchasing decisions, but a growing number (42%) are now actively embracing a new internal service provider model in an attempt to stay relevant to line of business colleagues, according to the third annual CIO survey from Logicalis.

The 2015 Global CIO Survey polled more than 400 CIOs worldwide and found IT leaders under growing pressure from Shadow IT.

The phenomenon of Shadow IT, when line of business executives bypass the IT department and CIO in making IT investments, is now a reality for the vast majority - 90% of CIOs worldwide find themselves by-passed by line of business at least sometimes.

With CIOs gradually losing the battle to retain the balance of power in IT decision-making, the survey found that today, two thirds (66%) of CIOs hold the balance of power over spending - making more than 50% of purchase decisions.

This shows that the threat from line of business driven IT choices is forcing CIOs to re-align their IT strategy to better serve the needs of their line of business colleagues, and transforming IT to become the first choice for all IT service provision.

Mark Rogers, CEO at Logicalis Group, said: "These results suggest CIOs are at a tipping point. They are just about maintaining overall control of IT spend, but with the democratisation of IT through technology consumerisation, ubiquitous mobility, growth in the cloud and business transformational technologies such as analytics, line of business colleagues' power in decision making is only going to present increasingly tough challenges for the CIO and the wider business executive.

"Unchecked and often unseen by IT, this has serious implications for IT governance and security, especially from solutions designed to directly fire the imagination of line of business executives to the possibilities that technology could have on their business."

Only the most negstive naysayer could see anything bad in the latest figures released by the Office of National Statistics, believes Clive Jefferys of Telecoms recruiter JMA Network.

According to the ONS, unemployment fell by 103,000 people between July and September and for the record 31.2 million in work, earnings grew by an overall 3% in the last 12 months.

"The good news is that despite much-hyped skill shortages, employers are finding additional people to hire and investing heavily in training and development. Any kind of increase in economic activity leads to yet more growth and so on, in a positive spiral." said Jefferys.

As quoted on BBC News, Martin Beck, senior economic advisor to the EY ITEM Club, said: "Looking ahead, with less room for joblessness to fall, a slower rate of decline in unemployment seems likely.

"Moreover, a recovery in productivity also points to a softer pace of job creation as firms extract more output from existing workforces. That said, the same trend will give firms the resources to pay more."

TalkTalk Business now accounts for over 30% of total Group revenue, delivering revenue growth of 6.2% with data revenues up 15%, according to its H1 FY16 financial results (six months to 30th September 2015).

TalkTalk Business' growth has been driven by the strong demand for voice and data connectivity, as well as the evolution of TalkTalk Business' partner channel fuelled by the acquisition of tIPicall.

TalkTalk Business' success has been strengthened by its relationship with existing customers such as the Post Office and Utility Warehouse and its sustained ability to offer wholesale phone and broadband services across 95% of the UK.

H1 FY16 also saw TalkTalk Business offer a wide range of connectivity and data products to customers ranging from SoHo and SME businesses to multi-site enterprises, and generating revenue through long-term relationships.

Charles Bligh, Managing Director of TalkTalk Business, said: "Demand for data will continue to drive growth for TalkTalk Business. As we look to expand capacity on our network and concentrate on developing new and innovative products, we are excited to see TalkTalk Business evolve and continue to deliver innovative and reliable services to our customers."

The pace of digital disruption has left 50 per cent of British businesses and public sector organisations surveyed fearful or worried that their organisations will not be able to keep up with what is still to come over the next five years, according to YouGov research for Vodafone UK.

This potentially means that millions of businesses are in danger of being left behind. However, with nine out of 10 business leaders believing digital technology is essential to a business's success, it is imperative that UK plc and the public sector is sufficiently prepared to take advantage of the opportunities presented by digital technology, now and in the future.
 
The research, which surveyed more than 1,100 decision makers across private businesses and the public sector in Britain, also uncovered the 'universal truths' of doing business.

These are the factors which senior decision makers believe have always been and continue to be true , and almost eight out of 10 businesses (78 per cent) confirm these fundamentals will still apply in 10 to 20 years.

The top five business truths, all of which can be positively impacted by the effective use of digital technology, were delivering quality customer service (74 per cent); providing quality products and services (72 per cent; providing value for money (65 per cent); controlling costs (65 per cent); and delivering profitability/ return for investors (53 per cent).
 
However, while a majority saw quality customer service as a universal business truth, it is clear that achieving this has become more difficult in today's digital economy with an overwhelming consensus that digital technology has changed customers' expectations.

Today's customer expects an almost immediate response to their enquiries (73 per cent); to be able to reach a company through a variety of different channels (such as telephone, retail store, email, web chat, social media, online forums, face-to-face etc); to purchase a product/ service (70 per cent) or ask for help (67 per cent); and to receive a consistent experience online or offline (53 per cent).
 
This will continue to be a challenge for businesses over the next five years with nearly 40 per cent of respondents anticipating that customers' growing expectations (such as around quality of service and responsiveness) will disrupt the organisation and how business is done.
 
"Digital technology has already broken down the old, familiar business models but the effect it will have on the future of organisations' operations remains significant. Britain's business leaders are rightly concerned about keeping up," said Phil Mottram, Enterprise Director of Vodafone UK.
 
"British businesses and the public sector are under constant pressure to meet customers' ever increasing expectations, to do more with less and still find ways to be competitive.

"While the onset of digital technology seems to have exacerbated this scenario for many, by placing pressure on IT departments, budgets and resources, it can also be the means to overcome the challenges businesses face today and tomorrow.

"When used to its full potential, digital technology can generate cost savings, improve operational agility, enable workplace flexibility and support the delivery of higher standards of customer service to meet the growing demands of consumers and the public.
 
"By seeing digital technology as an enabler of positive change rather than as something to fear, organisations will be better positioned to overcome some of their key challenges and continue to deliver on the universal truths that are seen to be fundamental to business success."

Independent financial advisor Herbert & Webster has streamlined how employees across the firm's different offices talk to each other by deploying a cloud-based unified communications platform.

The organisation has replaced its legacy phone system with a solution from VIA, the business telephony and communications specialist.

VIA Voice operates over the Internet and completely replaces the need to have a traditional phone network.

It allows employees to talk, instant message, email and video chat across a variety of devices, such as landlines, smartphones, PCs, and tablets, regardless of location.

VIA Voice has helped Herbert & Webster to improve internal communications while also solving the historic problem of not being able to efficiently transfer calls between the company's two offices in Oxfordshire.

Herbert & Webster has also benefitted from VIA Voice's conferencing facility and document sharing feature which allows employees to share information, financial documents and relevant charts with their clients more securely and effectively.

VIA Voice, which incorporates Microsoft's Skype for Business communication tool, also boasts a number of additional features that have been developed internally by VIA's team of experts.

This includes a real-time management portal which lets Herbert & Webster observe trends, evaluate the usage and productivity of its employees, plus monitor costs.

Adam Herbert, Managing Director, Herbert & Webster, said: "We went to the market looking for a solution that could not only replace our traditional phone system, but also would help the business to streamline its communications.

"VIA Voice has helped our organisation to achieve significant gains in efficiency. As the platform is powered by the Internet, it also removed any potential headache during a recent office move, and we were able to get up and running immediately."

Alex Tebbs, Director at VIA, added: "As VIA Voice is a cloud-based solution it really is the perfect choice for companies that are looking to upgrade their traditional telephone networks, especially when moving offices. Through our bespoke added functionality we have helped Hebert & Webster to modernise communications, while also providing value for money."

Headset maker Sennheiser has been chosen by the Environment Agency as sole provider of its headsets and speakerphone equipment in a major revision of its telephony systems.

A number of headsets and speakerphones are currently being rolled out across the agency to its office-based and mobile workforce as part of a refit of the organisation designed to improve quality and reduce costs.

Sennheiser was chosen due to a range of benefits including comfort, long-lasting operation and importantly its strong adherence to environmental factors.

The Environment Agency is in the process of replacing its telephony service as part of a move from traditional PSTN delivery to a VoIP Unified Communications solution. The basic need to communicate effectively and flexibly is of paramount importance, and there is a strong focus on finding a solution that provides quality, clarity and usability while remaining cost-effective.

"We knew that our endpoint devices were an important part of the service," said Ben Thomas, Project Manager for the Environment Agency. "This is a business process change facilitated by technology, so these devices had to be the same standard as the service we were creating."

The Environment Agency chose the Sennheiser SC 660 dual-sided headset, the PRESENCE handsfree Bluetooth headset and the Speakerphone SP20, a portable speakerphone designed to be used both in the fixed and mobile office.

Sennheiser was also judged on less obvious factors. "Due to the nature of our business we took a strong look at the environmental considerations each company takes with its products, including packaging, the materials that come with the device itself, fittings, the background of how the company operates and a number of other criteria," added Thomas.

Zayo Group Holdings, a provider of bandwidth infrastructure and network-neutral colocation and connectivity services, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Viatel's infrastructure and non-Irish enterprise businesses.

Viatel is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Digiweb Group, a service telecommunications and managed services operator based in Dublin, Ireland. The purchase price is approximately €95 million.

The all-cash transaction is expected to be funded with cash on hand and to close by the end of the calendar year, subject to customary closing conditions.

The Viatel acquisition will provide Zayo with Pan-European intercity and metro fibre capability via an 8,400 kilometre fibre network across eight countries.

The transaction will add 12 new metro networks, seven data centres and connectivity to 81 on-net buildings.

Two wholly-owned subsea cable systems will provide connectivity on two of Europe's busiest routes - London-Amsterdam and London-Paris.

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.

"Viatel's long-haul fibre network and colo assets combined with Zayo's existing national UK, France and US networks provides international, seamless connectivity for Zayo's existing and new customers," said Dan Caruso, Chairman and CEO of Zayo.

"Our Pan-European infrastructure capability addresses new growth opportunities, including connectivity to key subsea cable systems delivering traffic to and from high growth regions such as Asia and Africa."

Karl Maier, President of Zayo International, added: "This transformative acquisition positions Zayo to capture significant organic and inorganic growth in Europe and beyond."

Colm Piercy, CEO of Viatel, stated: "The combination of Zayo and Viatel will provide far greater network reach and growth potential for Viatel's customers."