Comms Dealer

VoIP Unlimited put its full support behind the Southampton University Formula Student Team (SUFST) which competed in the the annual Formula Student UK competition at Silverstone.

The team competed against almost 100 university teams from across the globe in a single-seat racing car event.

Returning for its 17th year, the three-day event saw the next generation of world-class engineers and drivers racing for record times. SUFST beat the likes of University of Exeter and City University London in the overall class 1 results, achieving 71st place.

Having entered the competition for the second year running, the team achieved its most impressive result in the business presentations judging, earning a covetable 23rd place out of the 97 teams.

acked by industry and high profile engineers, including Patron Ross Brawn OBE (former team principal, MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS F1 Team), the competition aimed to inspire and develop enterprising and innovative young engineers.

Challenged to design, build and race a single-seat racing car, the SUFST enlisted telecommunications company VoIP Unlimited as title sponsor at the start of the academic year, enabling students to design and engineer a car to withstand the dynamic event.

VoIP Unlimited's MD Mark Pillow said: "VoIP Unlimited has been more than proud to sponsor SUFST - even more so now the team has earned a well-deserved place in the record books!

"It was a joy to see the students' progress over the year with the design, build and on the final race day. They achieved so much in just a few short months."

SUFST team leader Dan Castro, added: "It's been great to have had VoIP Unlimited as a main sponsor for our team. Their knowledge, connections and experience within motorsport have proven invaluable to our development; both technically and with raising the profile of the team."

Almost half (48%) of UK SMEs are set to increase their spending on cloud computing services over the next 12 months according to the results of GE Capital's annual Capex Barometer.

Two thirds of SMEs already use cloud services to some degree with more than one in ten (14%) using it for more than 25% of their total IT requirements.

The findings echo a report earlier this year from market intelligence firm IDC, which predicted that the EMEA market for cloud infrastructure will reach almost two fifths (39%) of total expenditure by 2019.

Gabriele D'Uva, UK Managing Director, Equipment Finance at GE Capital, commented: "As we enter the era of the 'industrial Internet', the key drivers of technological change and user behaviour are coming together to accelerate change.

"On an industrial level, key business services such as telephony and big data, which once required high levels of investment in hardware and software equipment, are now moving into the cloud space. All you need is a handset and an Internet service.

"Meanwhile, a new generation of workers are transferring their experience of using cloud computing in their personal lives to the business world, creating increased demand.

"The barriers to accessing cloud computing are also lowering. In the UK, there has been a real drive in national infrastructure investment, particularly in broadband speeds, which is accelerating the performance and take-up of cloud.

"As a consequence of this trend we are seeing increased demand for leasing finance as businesses look for more flexible ways to finance hosted cloud services rather than the more traditional method of buying hardware or software outright".

Increasing demand for cloud services is also creating new growth opportunities for the UK telecoms industry. One UK business that has recognised the rising demand for cloud services is Berry Telecom.

Jo-Anne Udy, Finance Director of Berry Telecom, said: "This is an exciting year as, in addition to growth from upgrading hardware and software for existing customers, we are forecasting increased new product sales due to increasing market demand for cloud.

"In response to this we are launching a cloud-based system that offers assured voice quality, short-term rentals and experienced staff to support the installation and maintenance of the phones. This will be supported by investment in hiring and marketing to raise awareness of our offering in a competitive market."

Logitech has unveiled the Logitech Collaboration Program (LCP) which aims to deliver an enhanced, integrated collaboration experience to customers.

Charter members of the program include Blue Jeans Network, BroadSoft, C2G, Lifesize, Vidyo and Zoom.

"The Logitech Collaboration Program will focus on the user experience by enhancing business communications with end-to-end solutions that simply work," said Jason Moss, general manager of Logitech's collaboration group.

"Working together with technology companies on the integration of Logitech products will provide improved product functionality, customised user experiences, and will accelerate new innovations into the collaboration market."

The LCP plans to enhance virtual meetings with solutions for distraction-free communication, group collaboration, face-to-face collaboration and mobile communications.

Video integration features may include pan, tilt and zoom, far-end camera control, software presets, and H.264 video compression. Audio functions such as call/session answer, end and mute, hold and resume, and volume up and down can also be integrated into a solution.

NG Bailey's IT Services division now boasts more Ekahau-certified Wi-Fi network engineers than any other organisation in the UK, after nine of its team achieved the wireless network specialist's Ekahau Certified Survey Engineer (ECSE) qualification.

NG Bailey's specialists join just eight other certified individuals in the UK and 250 globally.

The accreditation confirms NG Bailey as having fulfilled the training requirements to design, deploy and troubleshoot Wi-Fi networks using Ekahau's specialist range of tools.

Ekahau Site Survey (ESS), a key component in Ekahau's suite of testing, planning and maintenance tools, allows Ekahau-certified engineers to simulate the coverage and capacity of a proposed Wi-Fi network.

ESS makes it possible for engineers to implement network adjustments and reconfigurations in order to optimise performance prior to assembly, saving organisations both time and money further down the line.

Indi Sall, technical director for NG Bailey's IT Services division, said: "With bring your own device and remote access initiatives gaining real traction, understanding how Wi-Fi capacity and performance can be maximised is now critical."

Ben Hasselblatt, head of global sales, Wi-Fi tools at Ekahau, added: "Following this certification, NG Bailey is now equipped to master any Wi-Fi design project, be it an intricate office environment or major stadium complex."

ESS is a Wi-Fi tool kit used by tens of thousands of Wi-Fi engineers globally. It helps design the wireless network by simulating the environment in three dimensions, as well as validating and troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks.

It has been calculated that ShoreTel delivers the lowest first-year and five-year costs against eight competitors in a study by Nemertes Research for IP telephony and on-premises Unified Communications.

In addition, ShoreTel is judged to have the lowest operational costs for both and the lowest implementation costs for on-premises UC, according to the study.

Nemertes conducted a study of 264 organisations to gather real-world cost data for nine leading IP telephony and Unified Communications vendors. The companies interviewed and surveyed represented a range of industries and sizes, primarily in North America.

ShoreTel's first-year costs for IP Telephony across all size rollouts are $566 compared to a median of $717 across all vendors. ShoreTel also maintains the lowest first-year operational costs for all size rollouts, as well as the lowest five-year TCO for 200, 1,500 and 10,000 endpoints. For on-premises UC deployments, ShoreTel has the lowest operational and implementation costs.

"What's important to highlight is that this research is based on what companies are actually spending on their solutions. Operational costs are the most important of all, and organisations using ShoreTel spend significantly less to operate their systems than those who use other providers," said Robin Gareiss, president of Nemertes Research.

"Based on the data, ShoreTel customers spend less initially and over time on their solutions. The IP Telephony and UC environments are changing rapidly and we recommend IT leaders negotiate hard, run cost models for five-years out, and pay particular attention to implementation and operations costs."

Softcat has welcomed 56 new staff who will be based across its five UK offices - the additions bring the Leeds office up to almost 25 staff within six months of its opening.

The majority of the new starts have joined as sales executives and support assistants for corporate and public sector customers, with others joining the company's technical graduate scheme.

Softcat currently has positions open for 14 different roles on its website, spanning sales roles, technical roles, graduate roles, admin and ops, and apprentices.

Martin Hellawell, CEO, said: "A key ingredient of Softcat's development is constantly bringing in more talent to the organisation to drive our future growth.

"Finding the right kind of talent - bright, enthusiastic, passionate people with a great attitude and strong work ethic - is far from easy. We spend an inordinate amount of time on finding and recruiting that kind of talent. The work never stops, we are now working hard on filling the next three intakes scheduled over the next six months."

NetPay Merchant Services has announced its support for Apple Pay, launched in the UK on 14th July.

With the launch of the iPhone 6 and new Apple watch, Apple has analysts predicting increased growth of mobile commerce and the digital wallet.

Carl Churchill, MD of NetPay, stated: "With the advancement of mobile commerce, we are excited to be able to offer our customers the ability to accept the Apple Pay Digital Wallet. Speed is of the essence to many consumers, therefore being able to tap and pay for goods and services will reduce queues and be more convenient for the consumer.

"Apple Pay can now be accepted across all of our terminal devices where contactless has been enabled, giving our merchants access to customers whose phones are permanently glued to their hands."

Analyst Dell'Oro Group says that, from this year on, cloud data centres will emerge as the sole growth driver for server shipments, as unit shipments into enterprise data centres decline. Server unit shipments are expected to continue to grow overall during its forecast period.

"Our recent interviews with end users, component vendors and system integrators, indicate that Cloud adoption is occurring faster than industry expectations," said Sameh Boujelbene, Director at Dell'Oro Group.

"The substantial increase in cloud uptake stems from both a declining scepticism of the Cloud among enterprise accounts, and the willingness of Cloud vendors to hear their customers' concerns, mainly related to security and resiliency, and to provide platforms to meet their needs. We currently expect cloud servers to reach 50% of total server shipments by 2017; a year earlier than previously projected," stated Boujelbene.

The report indicates that servers' migration to cloud holds significant implications for server form factor, even challenging the basic definition of a server.

The analysis also discusses the various Ethernet network connectivity options for each server form factor for cloud versus enterprise/premises deployments, and reveals that a minimum of eight network speeds are expected to co-exist for server access over the next five years.

Total handset sales are expected to grow from 1.88 billion to 2.16 billion units between 2014 and 2020 at a compound annual growth (CAGR) rate of 2.4 per cent, reckons analyst firm Ovum.

Smartphones will comprise 95% of global handset sales by 2020, up from 65% in 2014, and will first exceed 2 billion unit sales in 2020.

Android and iOS devices will continue to lead the market with 80% and 14% smartphone volume market share respectively in 2020, almost identical to 2014. Handsets based on Microsoft's Windows Phone OS will capture most of the remaining market with a 4.2% market share in 2020, equivalent to 86 million unit sales.

Africa and the Middle East and Latin America will lead the smartphone market in terms of growth over the next six years with a CAGR of 17% and 11% respectively, reaching a combined 576 million units sales by 2020, up from 254 million in 2014. In Asia Pacific, the Chinese market is reaching saturation with an expected CAGR of only 4.1% in the next six years, versus 19.7% for India and 16.3% for Indonesia. North America and Western Europe will be trailing behind with a CAGR of only 2% in the next six years.

Ronan de Renesse, lead analyst in Ovum's Consumer Technology practice, commented: "Smartphones are leading the path to digital transformation and therefore have yet to unlock massive opportunities in many markets. The fact that almost all handsets to be sold in 2020 will be smartphones will lead to great socioeconomic achievements across the world in the next five years."

Most of the growth in the smartphone market will come from the sale of sub-$100 devices in developing as well as developed countries. This price tier will represent more than 40% of global smartphone sales by 2020, up from 13% in 2014.

Ovum's global study of handset prices revealed a steep decline in smartphone prices: between 4Q13 and 4Q14, the median price of prepaid and SIM-free smartphones (representing 56% of all operator offers worldwide) decreased 28%, from $360 to $258.

This decline is largely attributed to a structural shift toward lower-end smartphone models rather than price decreases in particular segments. With 40+ manufacturers recorded via this study, the low-end smartphone segment is also the most diverse and competitive.

"The entire device value chain is bending backwards to manufacture and distribute cheap smartphones at an acceptable level of quality. The benefits of transitioning a feature phone user to a smartphone are significant for operators and for digital service providers like Facebook and Google, to the point of becoming a strategic imperative," added de Renesse.

Sabio has optimised BGL Group's customer engagement with pro-active outbound SMS messaging, leading to a 12% reduction in call volumes across key customer touch points.

BGL Group, a financial services business with more than eight million customers, worked with Sabio on the project to strengthen multi-channel customer engagement through the addition of context-sensitive SMS messaging.

Following an initial consultancy engagement and a successful messaging trial, BGL is now deploying outbound SMS messaging across its multiple businesses, providing pro-active support for customers at key touch points where, previously, they would have had to contact the company themselves.

The project, fulfilled through Sabio Network Services, has seen BGL significantly increase its volume of outbound SMS messages - from an initial volume of 50,000 every three to four months to a rate now approaching 500,000.

Key to the success of the BGL outbound project has been a determination to only deploy SMS messages at the right points of the customer journey. Areas identified - including customer confirmation messages, critical calls to action, and the sharing of address details for documents - followed a joint analysis exercise with Sabio identifying specific instances of caller frustration.

"Customers quite rightly expect to be kept informed on insurance policy details and claims, however we need to be smart about the communications channels we use.

In trialling outbound SMS we were determined to identify only those areas where we could intervene that would be both beneficial to customer engagement as well as our own internal processes," commented Paul Thorley, Senior Project Manager, Fusion Contact Centre Services at BGL Group.

"Working closely with Sabio, we have clearly been able to show how the appropriate use of outbound SMS confirmations across brands has proved helpful for customers - indeed we've already seen a 12% reduction in calls from customers wanting to confirm the status of their no claims documentation, and a similar improvement in customers registering for our online self-service portal."

Before deploying outbound SMS, BGL's Fusion Contact Centre Services team first worked with Sabio to identify current industry best practice in this area, and developed a set of specific BGL guidelines for SMS outreach.

Central to this approach is the need to simplify processes for customers, whether by pre-empting a customer's need to call, alerting them to upcoming card payment issues, or providing contact details.

"BGL was already strong in multi-channel customer engagement, however just because a business is active across a range of innovative online channels doesn't mean there still isn't a role for more traditional communications such as outbound SMS," added Sabio Director, Kenneth Hitchen.

"Detailed repetition analysis for BGL showed a number of specific areas where challenging contact centre demand via SMS was appropriate, and it's clear from BGL's analysis that this is a solution that works well for both customers and the different BGL businesses that have added SMS outreach to their contact channels."