Comms Dealer

SMEs need to take cyber security seriously or face being frozen out of the procurement process, according to a KPMG survey
 
SMEs risk being disqualified from bidding for work because of the lack of importance they are placing on looking after their valuable client data, finds a survey of procurement managers by KPMG.
 
A multi-sector KPMG survey of 175 procurement managers across the UK from organisations with over 250 employees revealed that the general consensus (70%) of procurement managers is that SMEs should be doing more to prevent cyber attacks and protect valuable client data.
 
The vast majority (86%) of respondents said they would consider removing an SME supplier if they were hacked and nearly all of the respondents (94%) confirmed that cyber security standards are important when awarding contracts to SME suppliers. 
 
George Quigley, Partner in KPMG's cyber security practice, commented: "Cyber security is not just a technical issue anymore, it has become a business critical issue for the UK's SMEs. 

"Larger companies are placing an increased emphasis on the cyber security of their suppliers and increasingly the onus is on SMEs to show that they are tackling this issue head on.
 
"Unfortunately many SME still take a blasé approach towards cyber security and mistakenly don't see themselves as targets of cyber criminals. Unless these organisations take a more mature approach towards cyber security now, they face the risk of being frozen out of lucrative supplier contracts."
 
Already two-thirds of procurement managers ask their suppliers to demonstrate cyber accreditations (ISO27001, Cyber Essentials, IASME certifications or PCI DDS) as a part of their procurement assessment, with this number likely to increase in the near future. 

In addition, SMEs are increasingly being asked to self-fund their own accreditations. In the absence of accreditation, two-fifths (41%) of procurement managers expect their suppliers to pay for their own accreditations and reach a certain level of cyber maturity in the near future.
 
Quigley added: "In order for businesses to be awarded some public sector contracts they already have to demonstrate a certain level of cyber maturity and this is increasingly becoming the norm in the private sector as well. Companies are also embedding cyber security in their supplier contracts with about half (47%) of existing contracts already stating that suppliers are contractually obliged to tell if they have been hacked. 

"This means that if a SME supplier is breached and doesn't deal with it appropriately, they could be looking at the termination of an existing supplier contract.
 
"The government is looking to increase the cyber maturity of UK businesses, with accreditations like the Cyber Essentials Scheme. We can only expect the bar to be raised higher in the coming years. There is no time like the present for SMEs to start taking the  initial steps towards increasing their level of cyber maturity."

Avnet says it had strong performance in the September quarter as revenue came in at the high-end of expectations at both operating groups driven by strength in our EMEA region.

Both EM and TS EMEA grew revenue over 15% year-over-year in constant currency and even when you adjust for the estimated impact of our extra week, our combined EMEA region's organic growth was over 11% in constant currency.

Driven by the strong growth in EMEA revenue grew 8.4% year-over-year in constant currency to $7 billion which equated to a 1.9% reported increase.

Avnet TS EMEA grew revenues 16.1% in constant currency year-over-year and organic revenue increased 6.4% in constant currency driven by growth in our central and eastern regions.

Patrick Zammit - President, Technology Solutions, Global says that he sees TS EMEA market conditions "remaining solid".

"We feel pretty confident across the board on the guidance at this stage.

"Europe came out of the crisis later than in the US and we believe the investment cycle has been delayed so what we see is that companies have delayed investments because of cash flow issues and uncertainty about the future. Outlooks are improving in Europe and so the investment cycle especially for IT is accelerating so that's one thing.

"On the margin the reason for the slight decline in margin is a pure mix issue in fact we had significant growth in Southern Europe and Eastern Europe and the margins are slightly lower than in the West and in the South."

Ingram Micro's Q2 revenues came in at $10.5bn, within the guidance range and representing an increase of 2% on a currency-neutral basis.

The strengthening of the dollar had an 8% negative impact on revenues in dollar terms. Recent acquisitions contributed 2 percentage points of growth.

Gross margin was 6.31%, a 56 basis point improvement over last year.

Europe revenue of $2.9bn was up 8% year-over-year on a currency neutral basis, but down 8% in dollars.

Local currency revenue strength was driven by strong iPhone demand and solid sales of advanced and specialty solutions.

Additionally, the acquisition of ANOVO added 2 percentage points of growth. Demand in Germany, the largest regional contributor, improved in Q3 with strength from corporate resellers in categories including networking, data capture point-of-sale and mobility.

France and the UK also contributed strong growth and Italy and Spain delivered double-digit growth supported by an uptick in advanced solution sales in both countries and strong mobility sales in Italy.

Non-GAAP operating margin was 62 basis points. The European technology solutions business continues to deliver year-over-year improvement with expanding gross and operating margins, Ingram Micro says. However, this progress was diluted by efforts to build out the higher margin strategic businesses, including in mobility and to expand the cloud marketplace throughout the region.

CEO Alain Monie said: "For Q4, we continue to see stable markets globally, and we expect demand for higher value solutions to continue to outpace average IT growth rates. In our core business, we expect SMB to remain healthy broadly."

Sennheiser has unveiled its new wired headset series Culture Plus, designed to maximise the adoption of Unified Communications solutions, and certified for Skype for Business while compatible with all major UC and softphone brands.

Sennheiser Voice Clarity, which is based on wideband sound, provides a natural listening experience while the noise-cancelling microphone ensures optimum speech intelligibility by filtering out ambient noise. Sound enhancement profiles automatically adjust to optimise for either voice or multimedia, and with advanced ActiveGard technology, users are protected against acoustic shock and sudden sound bursts.

Calls can be managed intuitively and seamlessly via the functional in-line control unit, which also operates the switchable Noise at Work limiter compliant with EU's Noise at Work Directive. When not in use, the headset can be stored and transported in a practical carry pouch.

"Headsets are an important consideration in any UC deployment," says Lars Riis Rasmussen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, EMEA, at Sennheiser CC&O.

"Culture Plus is for organisations that want their office workers to rapidly adopt headsets in a UC environment. It combines Sennheiser sound quality and instant wearing comfort for a communications experience that will make it easier to enjoy the benefits and achieve the full potential of UC solutions."

The addition of the Culture Plus wired series complements Sennheiser CC&O's product portfolio of headset and speakerphone solutions for contact centres, office and UC environments.

Ghosts, ghouls and scary characters roamed the offices of comms specialist Nimans as a Halloween inspired theme day proved a 'spooktacular' success.

Ghoulish games, themed cakes and a pumpkin making competition proved popular as staff from across the business entered into the 'spirit' of the day, arriving for work as witches, monsters, scary film characters, zombies, Kiss rock stars and even a set of Mrs Brown's Boys lookalikes. Company Chairman Julian Niman also joined in the fun.

"We have many great characters, although they don't normally look this scary," joked Investors In People Manager Sue Goldfine.

A network security solution launched by Daisy Wholesale is certified against the regulations of PCI compliance, a compulsory requirement for all businesses that take card payments.

Called DaisySentry, the solution comes at a time when data breaches are again making the headlines.

"For resellers that are already selling broadband connections, DaisySentry provides a great value-add opportunity, with no internal upskill requirement," said Nick Harvey, Business Development Manager at Daisy Wholesale.

"Cybercrime is on the rise and it is not just large corporate businesses that fall victim to data breaches. The 2015 UK Government Data Breach Report claimed that 74% of small businesses had reported that they had suffered a security breach and these can be devastating for a business. Not only can they ruin the trust between a business and its customers, but the cost to the business can range upwards of £75k on average in the SMB space1."

Cybercrime has become a regular tenant in the headlines of late and for the very first time, the Office for National Statistics has included an estimate of fraud offences in its annual report. It published an estimate of five million instances of fraud last year in England and Wales - half of which are reported to be cybercrime offences.

"In our experience, there are a lot of businesses that aren't even doing the basics when it comes to securing their data networks," added Harvey. "Particularly in the SMB space, they struggle to find adequate security solutions without the in-house IT expertise."

DaisySentry simplifies the process of securing and managing a business' local area network (LAN) through an automated and fully-managed service, essentially taking the burden off the end customer.

Harvey concluded: "Built with the SMB market in mind, it provides enterprise-class network security at a low monthly cost - there are no large upfront sums involved. Customers can be safe in the knowledge that DaisySentry is providing network security and addressing the technical requirements of PCI and can concentrate on running their business."

The DaisySentry device provides firewalls, WiFi and LAN segments, 4G failover, VPN and content filtering - all managed via a cloud management portal that enforces pre-configured security templates.

With built-in Daisy WiFi, the customer is also able to provide compliant public hot spots and in turn enhance their customers' shopping experience, said the firm.

Easynet, an Interoute company, has integrated netEvidence's Highlight cloud-based monitoring and reporting service within its Matrix Management Portal (which provides 1,000-plus partners across the UK with a transparent view of network and application performance).

Mike Ayres, Managing Director of Channel Partners at Easynet, said: "Management tools like Highlight are vital in helping our partners to grow their businesses. With Highlight, partners can differentiate their offer in the market by delivering a unique level of visibility and transparency for their customers.

"The key benefit of Highlight is that we are using the same tool as our partners and their end customers - it's a single consistent view across everything.

"With this common view we can proactively identify and fix any problems. And when critical applications are reliant on any number of parties - including ourselves, partners, carriers and end customers - a single indisputable view of what is happening removes any unnecessary finger pointing."

Highlight's browser-based window offers full visibility into how, where and by whom critical business services and applications are being consumed. Highlight leverages the intelligence already available in networks, moulding enormous volumes of information into a clear, intuitive dashboard that can be understood by executives, managers and engineers alike.

Ayres added: "We needed Highlight to equip partners with full visibility of the applications that are driving the workspace including both internal and cloud-based services. The challenge is to deliver not just reliable services but to ensure critical applications are given the correct priority.

"We receive calls from partners relating to what they believe are network faults but are in fact poorly performing applications. We find that when partners and their customers start to look at Highlight's application views, they are often surprised at the applications being used such as Skype for non-work purposes."

Riverbed Technology, specialist in application performance infrastructure, has named Chris Elsmore as Vice President Channel Sales for EMEA.

He will be responsible for leading the Riverbed channel sales team and driving partner strategy, execution, and strategic sales programs in the region.

He will report to Kristian Thyregod, Senior Vice President, EMEA.

Elsmore joins Riverbed from Guidewire Software where he was Vice President Global Alliances & Business Development, responsible for partners worldwide and business development.

Prior to this, Elsmore held global and regional senior channel leadership roles with Panopticon Software, SAP Business Objects, and i2 technologies.

Kristian Thyregod, Senior Vice President, EMEA, at Riverbed said: "As the market evolves we have a huge opportunity to meet the challenges of the hybrid enterprise and deliver solutions for software-defined networks.

"With the vast majority of our revenue generated through our channel sales model, Chris' proven experience will be instrumental in driving our partners to embrace and sell our portfolio of solutions as part of the Riverbed Application Performance Platform."

Elsmore added: "Our partner ecosystem is key to our success so I look forward to strengthening and deepening the relationships we have with our channel community across the region, to drive maximum impact and significant growth."

Arrow Electronics has announced plans for a set of seminars on the Internet of Things (IoT) across Europe.

The IoT in Focus tour will encompass locations in Germany, France, UK, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland and cover connectivity and embedded applications, system integration, big data and the cloud.

Arrow has a broad range of expertise and a network of suppliers with IoT capabilities, enabling it to advise and assist organisations that want to capture value from the explosion of the IoT.

The IoT in Focus seminars will cover where the IoT is now and where it is going. With a predicted future of billions of connected things, the correct selection of platform, technology, communication and data management architectures are essential for a scalable and secure IoT implementation.

As with any new innovative emerging market, new standards, evolving designs and applications present challenges of implementation, but also offer significant opportunities for growth, increased operating efficiencies and the delivery of more value to end users, said the firm.

BroadSoft has unveiled Project Tempo, a new initiative based on BroadSoft's UC-One offering, and envisions new UC-One cloud services that will allow individuals and teams to reach new levels of productivity by integrating real-time communications and collaboration, cloud applications, and contextual intelligence, into a unified end-user experience, claims the firm.

The first step in the rollout of Project Tempo will be the release of a beta version UC-One Hub, in the first quarter of 2016. UC-One Hub is a cloud service that integrates real-time communications with cloud applications and offers contextual intelligence - allowing users to be more efficient and productive.

The beta will initially run on BroadSoft's UC-One Communicator using Google Chrome, and feature off-the-shelf cloud application integrations with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive, in addition to Concur, Redbooth, and Twitter.

Today, BroadSoft believes that workforce productivity in the enterprise is suffering because various tools and off-the-shelf applications used by teams and workers to communicate only address niche solutions, and are disjointed from workflow processes. This often creates scattered communications, ineffective meetings, and fragmented workflows decreasing productivity and decision-making.

"The fact that BroadSoft supports 26 of the top 30 global service providers demonstrates our success," said Michael Tessler, chief executive officer, BroadSoft. "We believe that Project Tempo is an innovative initiative that extends BroadSoft's position, creates new revenue sources for service providers and meets the communications and collaboration needs of the emerging millennial workforce majority."

Service providers will have the flexibility to deliver BroadSoft UC-One and Project Tempo services via the BroadWorks platform, or as a fully managed hosted service from BroadSoft's cloud infrastructure, BroadCloud.