Comms Dealer

B2B and retail distributor Exertis collected NEC's Fastest Growing EMEA Distributor award at the vendor's EMEA Partner Conference 2015 held in Athens.

John Bird, Head of Systems and Support Services at Exertis, stated: "This award represents the commitment and hard work that our specialist VAD Division and dedicated NEC Business Unit have delivered in partnership with the loyalty, support and dedication we receive from our reseller channel.

"This determination has helped us to deliver year-on-year growth of over 140% across NEC UC Solutions, supported by the only 24x7x365 technical support team within the NEC UK Distribution channel."

Hats off to a team of soccer stars from comms distributor Nimans who a five-a-side football competition. Businesses from across the North West competed in the Barclays' Charity 5s Manchester Tournament with Nimans winning the Plate Final 3-1. The team, made up of staff from across the business, played a total of seven matches, scoring a total of 24 goals and conceding just eight.

Jabra has unveiled the Jabra BIZ 2400 II premium headset for the contact centre industry, a corded headset with an ultra noise-cancelling microphone, acoustic shock protection, enhanced speakers and more comfortable padding.

"Where conversations are at the heart of a hardworking contact centre employee's role, call clarity and all-day comfort are vital," said Nigel Dunn, Managing Director, Jabra UK & Ireland.

"The new Jabra BIZ 2400 II effectively fulfills both requirements to ensure health and safety compliance, as well as increased productivity in order to achieve daily and weekly KPIs.

"It is no surprise that when agents are comfortable and can clearly hear the people they are speaking to, they are more productive - call wrap-up times improve, leading to more calls handled during a shift and as a result, job satisfaction grows - the Jabra BIZ 2400 II facilitates this improved performance."

Venus Business Communications is launching 10 gigabit connection speeds across its Venus Dark Fibre Network.

Changes in demarcation technology, facilitating these speeds, together with the unlimited capacity of the Venus Dark Fibre Network means 10 gigabit per second speeds are available across London.

Venus has invested for many years in building a dark fibre network across London. The Venus backbone connects to points of presence at strategic locations across the city from which fibre service can be provisioned for businesses customers.

The Venus Dark Fibre Network has been built with almost unlimited capacity to support fast connection speeds, beyond what was possible when the network construction began.

Brian Iddon, Director of Venus Business Communications, said: "When we began constructing the Venus Dark Fibre Network connection speeds of 2 megabits per second were considered fast and 70 megabits per second were a dream.

"However, we had the foresight to build a fibre optic network that was future proof and we are now capitalising on that investment as the technology to deliver 10 gigabits per second emerges.

"Our network has the coverage and the capacity to support these speeds and even faster speeds as they become available."

Early adopters of the technology include broadcast media and large developers.

Interest has been high from London's post production houses, working on the next Hollywood block-busters, and developers of multi-tenant buildings looking to supply high speed access of 1 Gigabit per second to each of its tenants from multiple 10 gigabit circuits to the premises.

"Comparing the connection speeds against normal speeds is like comparing the performance of a road going car with a formula one machine," added Iddon.

"The technology to deliver this performance needs to be robust across the whole network.

"A shared office or business park could easily see hundreds of businesses each using a 1 gigabit per second connection.

"The backbone network therefore needs to be able to support thousands of businesses across London using gigabit services."

Charlesbank Capital Partners is to acquire Six Degrees Group (6DG) from Penta Capital. The Boston-based mid-market private equity firm has over $3bn of capital under management and this deal gives it a platform investment in the UK tech sector. Post-acquisition, 6DG will benefit from substantial additional capital to fund the company's ambitious M&A programme.

6DG CEO Alastair Mills said: "We are working with Charlesbank to establish Six Degrees as a leading mid-market converged managed services provider, and we have ambitious plans to achieve this through both acquisitive and organic growth."

6DG was formed in June 2011 and has grown both organically and through acquisition to become a truly converged managed services provider delivering cloud, colo, data and unified communications solutions to the UK mid-market.

Mills pointed to Charlesbank's track record of supporting leading growth companies in the sector, noting that the firm invested in Zayo in 2009 just two years after it was founded, and has been involved in the company's growth from $200m to over $1.3bn of annualised revenue.

"We intend to disrupt and redefine an industry that is ripe for consolidation and innovation," added Mills.

Michael Choe, MD and President of Charlesbank, said: "Having spent close to a year getting to know Alastair and his team, we have tremendous respect for them and strong conviction in the attractive business model they have built.

"As with Zayo, we see a significant opportunity for 6DG to consolidate the fragmented landscape and drive equity value creation in the process."

Rob Sims has been appointed Nexus CEO following a period working as COO in which he built a strong management team.

He's now poised to leverage his skills in business transformation, organic growth, acquisition and integration, taking the company to the next stage of growth.

Nexus was established as a ringtone provider in 1999 and has evolved into a full blown solution provider with growth momentum.

"We work in a fast paced industry with emerging technologies changing the way people communicate," said Sims. "We have to stay on top of our game and offer customers a future-proof multi-service communications solution.

"There was a real synergy between myself and our shareholders about the direction of the company going forward. This has given me the freedom and flexibility to deliver our ideas and help the business to thrive."

Nexus supplies 10,000-plus businesses with services such as calls and line rental, data, business mobiles and phone systems.

The company now plans to build on the range of managed services it can offer to customers through the acquisition of new partner companies.

"We have built up a strong infrastructure and policies as well as a capable, committed team," added Sims.

"We are now looking to build on these foundations with the right strategic acquisitions.

"Integrating other like-minded companies into our business model increases our capability."

A hefty investment in Nimans' Network Services Operations Centre has enabled the distributor to provide a proactive monitoring service to resellers, offering real-time updates on any faults, outages and major incidents.

"Six large screens stream live information to the whole team on news events that could cause outages or disruption, a snapshot of our faults and service tickets, network monitoring of our resellers data circuits along, with an overview of work queues and order volume information," explained Head of Network Services, Mark Curtis-Wood.

The NOC also includes information from the company's interactive partner portal, The Hub, an online service that provides order provisioning and billing capabilities plus useful information.

"After months of development and testing The Hub has gone live, giving resellers the ability to place and track orders and manage quotes," added Curtis-Wood.

"Resellers will experience a more interactive and seamless way of accessing products and services, improving the way they manage and bill their customers."

"With the Network Operations Centre we have brought everything is connected to deliver more enhanced service levels."

TalkTalk Business has launched its annual search to find Britain's next Digital Heroes.

The awards celebrate extraordinary people and small-scale projects that are having a big impact in driving the UK's digital economy and enhancing the nation's skillset through a combination of technology, hard work and passion.

Categories include: Next Generation (Internet self-starters), Skills ( using technology to boost knowledge), Sustainability (technology with environmental gains) and Internet Safety (using technology to help people to navigate the internet safely).

In its 8th year, TalkTalk Business has invested more than half a million pounds in 87 projects across the UK since the awards began.

This year's successful entrants will each receive £5,000 of funding to enhance their projects, with the Next Generation Hero receiving £4,000 and a MacBook Air to give them a further boost.

The Digital Heroes will also be honoured at the House of Commons, where an overall winner will be announced and granted £10,000 prize money.

"We believe Digital Heroes are inspirational individuals, bring people together, offer support to those around them and provide the tools that make the lives of us all a little bit easier with the help of technology," said a spokesperson.

Exponential-e has linked up with IT service provider, Intermedia in a collaboration that combines Exponential-e's desktop solution with Intermedia's business applications to provide a Virtual Office in the Cloud, delivered as a service to any device and from any location.

The cloud network provider's Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) proposition was enhanced following research that found 72% of business professionals struggle with their company's flexible working policy due to technology issues.

In total, six in 10 of those surveyed admitted that they would be more likely to take advantage of flexible working if IT was better.

"Just 1% of the business professionals that we surveyed are satisfied by their existing work/life balance," said Lee Wade, CEO at Exponential-e.

"However, 62% think that this could be improved if they had more access to flexible working.

"Providing access to solutions that enable a more versatile working experience but don't require the business to invest vital resources into managing a complex IT estate is key for today's organisations.

"Our relationship with Intermedia enables us to combine hosted desktops with cloud applications to deliver a scalable Virtual Office in the Cloud that organisations don't have to worry about maintaining."

Using Exponential-e's wholly owned 100 Gigabit Ethernet Network, businesses will be able to run desktop infrastructures in a virtualised environment.

As part of the offering, Exponential-e will also offer companies an uncontended, private connection to Intermedia's Email, Security, Mobility, Archiving, File Share and Collaboration services.

Richard Walters, General Manager for Intermedia EMEA added: "All too often we see businesses spending excessive amounts of time and money on outdated internal computer systems.

"With Office In The Cloud, businesses can pay per month, per user and operate from any device with an internet connection, avoiding the need for any high initial outlay while providing the flexibility, support and peace of mind that all organisations need."

The offering will also support SMBs that need computing resources which can be scaled or contracted to support business needs and future growth.

Unitrends has moved to 100% channel sales model and invested heavily to kick-start the build out of a global channel ecosystem.

Kevin Weiss, President and CEO, said the company no longer wanted to compete with partners.

"We've developed strong channel partnerships and we are now solely focused on nurturing these relationships and forging new ones," he stated.

The move follows the appointment of Mike Dalton as Senior VP of Worldwide Channels and International Field Operations.

Dalton is tasked with defining and driving the channel programme and his strategic vision is clear.

"It is difficult to build a long-term working relationship with vendors when you compete with them on deals," he said.

Founded in 1989, Unitrends maintained a direct sales model for 24 years before launching a formal channel programme in 2013.

In Q3 2015 Unitrends will roll out a new programme built from the ground up based on partner survey results and partner feedback.