Comms Dealer

The EU and Japan are to invest 12m euros over the next two years in 5G-related projects such as a development of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and Big Data platforms.

They will also expand their collaboration on joint research and innovation projects, according to an agreed joint vision which includes setting up a joint funding mechanism to help finance the R&I projects and strengthen work towards common policy aspects, such as Open Science.

The deal will also lay foundations for joint research works around the ICT and aeronautics as well as help stimulate scientific exchanges between Japan's JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and the European Research Council (ERC), it says. This new agreement, additionally, comes as a part the EU's efforts towards building a Digital Single Market in Europe, it says.

Earlier this year Japan and the EU signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Japan's 5GMF and an EU-based 5G Public-Private Partnership with regards to close cooperation on 5G mobile technology. The EU is separately investing 700m euros by 2020 under its Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Prior to this agreement, the EU and Japan were already established partners in the field of R&I with Japan being an active participant in the EU's 7th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. This means that the total of all the signed deals including Japanese organisations brings the EU's contribution to 9.8m euros as of May 2015. The EU also supported the Japanese researchers and co-financed joint projects across the ICT and aeronautics, materials and energy sectors.

"Europe and Japan must tackle many of the same challenges such as energy security, ageing populations or access to critical materials. So it's only natural that we also work together closely to find solutions to these challenges. The joint vision endorsed today will take our cooperation to the next level," said Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.

Gunther H. Oettinger, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, added: "5G will be the backbone of our digital economies and societies worldwide. This is why we strongly support and seek a global consensus and cooperation on 5G.Our agreement with Japan is a milestone on the road to a global definition of 5G, its service characteristics and standards. It shows that our countries are ready to take leadership in building our digital future."

Financial services institutions are sitting on thousands of hours of voice recordings that could hold the key to better understanding customers and improving service.

However, almost 15% of organisations say they plan to make separate, expensive customer analytics investments, rather than reuse existing systems, according to a new TeleWare-sponsored whitepaper.

Financial sector organisations are mandated to record all company calls to comply with Financial Services Authority fraud and security regulations.

The voice recording systems used are capable of complex capture, consolidation and analysis of voice data. However, authors and industry analysts Ovum, found that the same technology is not being used to analyse call content, understand individual customer behaviours, take corrective action and make business improvements.

"Organisations are missing a huge CRM opportunity by not reusing existing compliance-related voice recording and analytics systems,", said Rik Turner, senior analyst and report author, Ovum.

"Customer service typically operates under significant cost constraints, but is under pressure to be more effective. Call analysis can improve efficiency, drive product development and better customer relevancy."

In the whitepaper, Ovum found that around 15% of organisations say they intend to make separate customer engagement technology investments. Re-use of existing voice monitoring and analysis technology, argues TeleWare, would override this fresh and mainly unnecessary spend.

Steve Haworth, CEO of TeleWare, said: "We're seeing a classic case of financial services organisations not knowing what they have. They have voice recording and analysis technology in place to meet compliance requirements, but they don't see how the same systems can extract customer insights that could differentiate service and improve sales."

Train to Win.tv founder Julie Mills along with a hard core of customers have completed the Tough Mudder challenge raising £2,500-plus for the Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity.

The 12 mile extreme assault course also marked a milestone for Mills who celebrated five years in the clear having been diagnosed and successfully treated for breast cancer in 2010.

She said: "I decided to do something outside of my comfort zone to commemorate my five years all clear as well as raise money for a very personal cause.

"This was the hardest thing I have ever done, but the knowledge that the money we raised will go towards finding a cure for this awful illness spurred me on."

Comms Supply has added the software-based PBX 3CX Phone System for Windows to its portfolio, a move that also augments 3CX's expanding network of SIP trunk providers.

Paul Clarke, Sales Executive UK and Ireland at 3CX: "We fully support Comms Supply's determination to push the SIP trunk market to the next level and believe in a strong and lengthy partnership."

Karl Alderton, founder and MD at Comms Supply, added: "This relationship with 3CX is a core element of our long-term strategy for supplying the channel with SIP trunks and PBX systems."

A top performance from staff at Nimans raised £100-plus in aid of two theatre-based local charities. The firm staged a movie style theme day with staff dressing up as characters from films such as Despicable Me, Grease, Men In Black, Clockwork Orange, Kelly's Heroes and St Trinians.

Chairman Julian Niman and the company directors doubled up their leading roles, taking their cue from Reservoir Dogs.

Event organiser Sue Goldfine said: "The day was a spectacular success and proves just how many great characters we have working at Nimans."

A significant number of cloud providers are not doing enough to support customers' migration to the cloud, according to research from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) which found that 35% of IT leaders think that their cloud suppliers could have provided better support to migrate to the cloud.

The figures show that many suppliers are yet to mature in the cloud market and end users need to make more careful assessments before choosing a provider.

Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery said: "Moving to the cloud is often more complex than just flicking a switch to get an off-the-shelf-service.

"Depending on the cloud service being adopted, data will have to be transferred and staff migrated to new ways of working. It can be a complex process.

"IT leaders looking for a provider should first assess their existing in-house skills and experience to understand how reliant they will be on the supplier to ensure a smooth transition.

"Equally, cloud suppliers need to be more sensitive to their customers' requirements and tailor their service to the level of support needed for successful cloud adoption."

The research polled 250 senior IT decision-makers in companies with UK-based operations and was conducted in February 2015.

Problems in service delivery could be caused by a number of factors. The stack of cloud services on offer may be poorly constructed, leading to complications with integrating services with a customer's legacy systems.

There could be a lack of knowledge within the cloud provider of the customer's existing IT estate, which would make it harder to achieve a smooth migration.

Alternatively, the network of partners established by the cloud provider may not be stable enough so that if difficulties emerge, there may not be clear lines of responsibility to resolve issues swiftly.

"The cloud industry is still reaching maturity and without enough due-diligence some end users could get burned," added Liney.

"However, the CIF research also reported a 90% satisfaction rate and that 70% of IT leaders intend to increase their use of cloud in the next 12 months.

"The most critical factor is for IT leaders to get under the bonnet of their potential cloud provider, make sure that the have a strong and highly integrated stack of partners and a proven track record of delivery for other customers with needs similar to their own."

By Anton Le Saux, Head of Connectivity and Partner Sales at O2 Telefónica UK: As M2M solutions develop and improve and customers become clearer about exactly what they want, the M2M evolution is gaining momentum.

The market isn't seeing product growth alone, but more of an organic development that is touching more parts of every business and putting pressure on providers to widen their solutions.

This is great news for M2M providers, but also introduces short-term challenges. To achieve maximum impact from an M2M installation the best route is an end-to-end solution. Being a provider of smart connectivity is great, but customers are now looking for end-to-end capability, including connectivity, devices, solution and managed services in a single package. As customers become better educated, their requirements become more specific and all-encompassing, so end-to-end services are in demand.

Most analysts predicted this evolution with providers moving from pure managed connectivity to aggregated solutions, and potentially even further into fully integrated M2M services providers. It is an organic progression, but development rates will vary and some providers will struggle to keep up.

Few providers are in a position to offer a genuinely end-to-end, fully integrated system. So it makes sense for businesses to come together in a partner ecosystem to broaden their offering and extend their reach. This is why the M2M evolution is taking the shape of partnerships rather than product development alone. It gives providers an opportunity to quickly reach new customers rather than remaining dependent on the more time consuming process of product expansion.

For more information emailanton.lesaux@telefonica.com or visit partnersdigital.telefonica.com

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: What exactly is marketing? Some might say marketing is 'making things look pretty'. I disagree. Marketing is about making things desirable.

Most of us eat potatoes, but why don't we all buy the 'value' ones? I was a victim of the marketing game last week. I bought National Trust potatoes at a far higher price than the value ones. Why did I do that? Do I really think eating an expensive potato will get me closer to living in a stately home with perfectly manicured gardens? Aspirational potatoes, that is fantastic, and I of all people fell for it. Although I must add they tasted good.

My superior potato experience got me thinking that it was the great content marketing that the National Trust do that made me so engaged with their brand. Traditional marketing is about how to sell a product or service. The message to buy product X is blunt. Think of a TV advert or a press release.

The difference with content marketing is that it's not about direct selling, it's about informing people about how they can use the product, or benefit from a service in a way that the user will perceive the product as desirable. This makes brand value far greater as consumers are engaged with the brand rather than the product, which makes up-sell and cross-sell opportunities more realistic. A few examples of content channels are: Social networking, blogs, webinars and infographics.

Content should avoid self-promotion. It should solve a problem, address a challenge your audience faces, educate them or engage them emotionally. The idea being that your prospects are encouraged to use your content when doing their research, so when they later engage with your sales people your business has the necessary credibility for them to buy with confidence.

You don't need to be Einstein to figure out the future of numbers, according to ICUK's founding Director Paul Barnett, who proposes a radical rethink of the number porting process based on common sense principles.

Barnett has hurled his thoughts 'out there' and is seeking a mandate to overturn the immovable object of the number porting process. His long-term campaign for fundamental change starts here, revealed as a thought-provoking exercise that, he says, simply cannot be rejected - such is the strength of his belief in the need for a full blown revolution.

"I propose some out-of-the box thinking on how we see and interact with phone numbers in the future," stated Barnett. "We all know how frustrating and antiquated the number porting process can be. It's time for a radical change. Although there will inevitably be technical limitations or complexities, my aim is to encourage thought leadership that delivers a solution and rids this industry of the current porting systems and their limitations."

For Barnett, maintaining the status quo is inconceivable, but to win such a vote for change would need a Herculean exercise in cross-industry persuasion. "What I propose is a model similar to that of transferring a .uk domain name with Nominet," he explained. "The Nominet model is unique in the world of domains, in as much as a tag is assigned to a domain and this determines who controls the domain on behalf of the customer. The tag can change from provider to provider with ease, securely and with minimal barriers. Even if the losing provider puts up their own barriers to migration, the tag can still be changed by the owner via Nominet.

"When put into perspective, a number could have a tag which determines who looks after it from a billing and 999 perspective, and instead of name servers for domain DNS handling, you have an equivalent detailing routing for calls. Thus, a number could be held by one provider, a number facilitator, and calls handled by another."

Barnett's plan is to develop a consensus of thought leaders who together could forge a feasible case for change. "We have operated with the current porting model for many years now," added Barnett. "We have all grumbled about it, but see very little in the way of change or improvement from Ofcom.
Alternatives to the existing model have been proposed in the past, but nothing has been followed through. Why not take the chance to remove Ofcom from the equation and design a better solution whereby we can rid ourselves of old world thinking?"

This is a phenomenal approach that makes perfect sense, according to Barnett, who is seeking allies to join his rolling campaign convoy. "We all see a world that is steadily moving towards VoIP, and the traditional physical barriers to exchange boundaries are no longer prevalent," he added. "Yet, in some places number ranges are so scarce that clients aren't able to get numbers that belong to a particular area, with 0207 being the most notable example.

"Is it time that we design a new numbering solution with long-term ambitions to replace the system we know, and from an industry perspective, get frustrated with? Could a new system ensure that we deliver a long-term number solution without the need to change it again in a decade? Is it deemed necessary for geographic boundaries to still play a part? Could a replacement be operated outside of Ofcom, UK Government control, or even country boundaries? Could a replacement be simple enough to remember, having seen the slow adoption of IPv6 where the complexities and misunderstandings are stifling any enthusiasm for change?"

This probing set of questions exposes the limitations of the current numbering system, claims Barnett. On the other hand, he noted that the Internet has no boundaries. "The future of telephony is inextricably linked to data, so why introduce barrier limitations over how we identify and make calls to one another?," he asked. "Sure, it's helpful sometimes to know what country you are calling, but that's mainly from a billing perspective. In a world of data, why should the distance data has travelled dictate cost? The handling of numbers in a virtual space has blended perceptions about who you are calling. No longer is the local number you are dialling guaranteed to be a neighbour."

Having felled all arguments in favour of keeping the current system, Barnett turned his attention to other areas of concern: "Could operating this on an international level help tackle areas such as security, provide a fairer solution for poorer countries, ensure international standardisation for emergency contact information, not to mention the ability to freely trade and transfer numbers between providers?," he said.

"With the move towards VoIP assured, real change is needed. If we can't easily improve on porting as we know it, a coalition of radical thinking must be deployed. It's time to debate how a national, or even international numbering solution, could be designed with the next generation telephony at its core."

Slick and fast growth can only be achieved by moving to the cloud, according to Planet Hippo's Managing Director Darren Lavender, who built the company from scratch and is now busy turning even bigger plans for expansion into action.

Planet Hippo was formed in 2005 by Lavender and Jeremy Rose, founder and Managing Director of Ocean Telecom, a provider of mobile telephony solutions to corporate users in the UK. "We started out by testing the concept of Planet Hippo with Ocean Telecom's customers, then developed the core elements of the business including the billing platform and website," explained Lavender. "Over the next three to four years we concentrated on enhancing our proposition with the addition of services such as Microsoft Exchange mail, Website Designer packages and Virtual Private Servers on both Linux and Windows."

Planet Hippo is part of The Network Selector Group and has consistently been voted by users (individual and corporate) as one of the top UK web hosting companies on Web Hosting Directory, an online service that rates companies across the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. The firm is growing by around 80-90 per cent every year, driven not only by growing its user base organically, but also by an increasing number of digital agencies that are outsourcing their web hosting operations to the company. "We are also pursuing a programme of strategic acquisitions that will enable us to expand our reach across the UK," noted Lavender.

Another important extension of the company's capabilities was developing its own email platform, pointed out Lavender. "It eliminated overnight the spam and virus problems that customers were having using the shared resources that we used when we started out," he added. "This gave us a reliable and resilient platform that was totally under our control, and enabled us to offer a higher level of service to customers."

Making the move from a single server presence to cloud-based networks gave the company a more flexible platform. With web hosting packages starting from just £1 per month, the company has an agile approach to providing tailored solutions. "We also offer reseller hosting solutions that enable web developers, web designers, freelancers, web hosting agencies and IT professionals to outsource the hosting of their websites," added Lavender. "This eliminates the need for resellers to invest in their own infrastructure, security and support teams to meet the prevailing customer demand for 24/7 uptime."

Planet Hippo also takes care of server maintenance, including back-ups, security, software installations and more, allowing resellers to concentrate on growing their businesses instead of supporting their own hosting service. "The investment we made in building new data centres can be leveraged by resellers to provide clients with a value added service," added Lavender.

His entrance into comms territory was selling mobile phones in the retail sector during 1999. Having achieved success, he moved to selling mobile telephony to corporate clients and won many important deals. A stint in IT marketing followed, working for a company that provided mobile telephony and web-based services including hosting, website development and support. But Lavender's greatest achievement to date is building Planet Hippo from scratch into one of the UK's fastest growing ISPs and partnering with key technology vendors. One of the latest innovations is a partnership with Cisco making Planet Hippo the first ISP to offer the new Cisco Energy Management-as-a-Service offering on an e-commerce basis. This cloud-based solution helps corporate and public sector users to cut IT energy costs by up to 35 per cent and provides 100 per cent visibility into the energy use of every network connected device, according to Lavender.

The Energy Management-as-a-Service solution measures and manages the energy use of all connected devices from any vendor, including switches and routers, desktops and laptops, monitors, wireless access points, IP phones, printers and copiers across distributed office and data centre environments. "We provide a web-based portal where users can access a single dashboard showing wasted and saved energy for every IP-connected device, along with detailed energy data collection information and specific recommendations for optimising energy usage," noted Lavender.

Planet Hippo has also launched a new IaaS solution. It provides corporate users with a scalable, secure and cost-effective way to deploy cloud hosting, offering 99.99 per cent availability and zero packet loss to meet SLA requirements. "It offers greater flexibility and scalability than traditional web hosting by enabling corporate users to accelerate their delivery of cloud services and achieve significant cost reductions," explained Lavender. "This is done by reducing their reliance on premise-based IT infrastructure and eliminating the need for costly and obsolete centralised storage."

Lavender's current focus and priority is moving to the cloud, a migration that will enable the company to grow without the high level of investment associated with running its own in-house infrastructure. "The move to cloud will enable us to deliver a higher quality of service as well as offer faster speeds, increased reliability and redundancy including failovers and back-ups," said Lavender. "Before the end of 2015 we expect Planet Hippo to be a 100 per cent cloud-based operation."