Comms Dealer

From school days to nowadays Liquid Voice UK co-founder and Managing Director Chris Berry has shown a resilient entrepreneurial spirit that is reflected in his channel ambitions and sharpened appetite to go head-to-head with major global vendors following new investment.

In January this year SVL Business Solutions secured a 25 per cent equity interest in channel partner Liquid Voice, the developer of call recording and contact centre solutions. Following the deal, SVL Business Solutions, a NICE Systems Platinum Partner, plans to set up a new division to offer the Liquid Voice range of products as well as its SmartVoice portfolio of PCI compliance, customer satisfaction and contact centre training solutions. According to Berry, the deal enables Liquid Voice to maximise new business opportunities and extend its presence in the contact centre, financial and public safety markets. "We are working on an arm's length distribution agreement with SVL being our first fully accredited services partner," he said.

Prior to his appointment as Liquid Voice's Managing Director Berry was Sales Director, a post held since the company was first formed. Aside from two brief stints as a corporate employee Berry has spent most of his working life as an owner and Director running his own businesses. His ambition was evident at an early age having set up his first IT consultancy business mid-way through his A levels. "I spent time as a CTI consultant with Comino/Civica where I was responsible for the design and commissioning of IVR and ACD systems fully integrated with their CRM and EDRM solutions for the public sector," said Berry.

Leeds-based Liquid Voice was established by Berry and Andrew Barrett in 2005 having brought Civica/Comino's suite of computer telephony applications to market. "Our original strategy was to capitalise on the growing demand for contact centre solutions with a focus on call recording, quality management and integration," added Berry. "Liquid Voice fills the space where manufacturers don't do so well in terms of service and delivery, providing added value to customers."

The business has been profitable from the outset and after building the product portfolio and establishing a customer base Liquid Voice switched to an indirect sales model. "The transition presented a number of challenges and we have learnt what a software-based business needs to have in place to support the channel and the attributes of a good channel partner," said Berry. "The move to indirect sales through channel partners with accreditations and distribution models is a key factor in Liquid Voice's success in all countries where we operate."

He noted that technological evolution is prompting resellers to become SIs that offer a one-stop-shop so customers do not have to deal with multiple suppliers. "There should also be a focus on raising the level of professionalism throughout the industry with solution sales that meet the ongoing needs of customers rather than only looking for short-term profits based on where the best margin is available," said Berry.

Liquid Voice is now an international operation with offices in the UK and New Zealand and circa 600 customers in a range of market sectors including utilities, retail, financial services, public sector and outsourcing. "I am proud of the way that Liquid Voice has continued to grow despite the uncertainty that the economy has experienced over the last few years," commented Berry. "Liquid Voice has become a well known brand and has the technology and products to effectively compete with the world's largest manufacturers, which presents an opportunity for channel partners to come on board and join us."•

Ahead of the education sector's summertime ICT buying period Comms Dealer highlights the areas of opportunity for resellers and spotlights the technologies and integrated solutions under consideration by schools planning their summer break upgrades.

Bound by pressure to keep costs low, many education authorities have a technology agenda that takes the 'more for less' scenario to a new level. "The focus this year is on hardware, security and connectivity," said Phil Scanlon, Commercial Director of IT Services at Elitetele.com. "Online learning and online curriculum activities are also a priority, enabling pupils to study in or outside school and have the same experience, while removing the need for paper trails, physical books and paper study notes for revision. Pupils need access to coursework, notes, revision, tests and help wherever they are, especially outside of school hours."

Scanlon also noted the trend of schools opting to become academies and highlighted the challenges that are associated with this migration. "In becoming an academy a school needs to transition from local authority control into a more commercial-like organisation," he explained. "They need software to manage areas of the organisation that were previously handled by the local authority, such as financial accounts, payroll and property maintenance. We are also seeing a number of academies coming together to form multi-academy Trusts that require the centralised delivery of software applications. As the number of academies joining multi-academy Trusts grows ICT buying will become a more centralised function with a focus on reducing costs through increased buying power."

When it comes to UK colleges, there is an aim for fewer, larger and more financially resilient organisations. As a result, many colleges are in the midst of a merger or have already merged with another local college, presenting a new opportunity for ICT suppliers. "There is potential for resellers to get in front of colleges during the merging process," explained Daisy's Public Sector Sales Director Justin Collins. "When the time comes to choose one single supplier their name is already in the hat."

Another important trend is distance learning. Colleges have a target to conduct 25 per cent of their teaching online. If they haven't already done so colleges will be looking for the infrastructure to successfully support the ability to interact remotely with large numbers of students. "This opens up talks for BYOD solutions, Wi-Fi and cloud networking, not to mention the security of those networks," added Collins. "And the fast pace of the mobile industry drives a more regular refresh cycle to ensure that the latest devices can be supported by the wireless infrastructure around the sites. We are dealing with Digital Natives here, so high quality connectivity is a must, along with the ability to access the network from wherever students are located and with speeds fast enough to do whatever they need to do."

Another area of focus, which is often underplayed, is a telephony refresh. Many education sector institutions are sat on 30 year old telephony infrastructures that need replacing, and with BT set to turn off ISDN by 2025 many schools and colleges are doing a SIP migration at the same time. "It's important that their telephony has the ability to scale up and provide the flexibility to merge services," noted Collins. "This is particularly important when it comes to demanding situations like clearing. That is why the option of Skype for Business is often an attractive one in these cases - it's cost-effective, easy to deploy and does what schools need it to do."

In terms of mobility, schools need staff members to be contactable on and off school grounds and able to access features remotely so that they can ensure parents or guardians are kept up to date. "For example, when a school trip is running late it's important that staff have a method to update the school's main announcement service," pointed out Craig Rimmer, Partner Account Manager, Panasonic Business. "There is more focus on cost saving, but an increased requirement for call recording and mobile integration. The infrastructure behind newer technologies such as mobile integration can be a challenge, and in some cases it's difficult to find cost-effective solutions that meet the requirements of some organisations within education."

Distributor ICON works closely with channel partners in the education space and the recurring theme is connectivity and safeguarding. Schools, teachers and students want to be part of the connected world but the challenge is to meet the network and connectivity needs of all those involved without compromising the duty of care to either party. "ICON worked hard to secure the 4ipnet product simply because of its suitability in tough markets like these," said Mark Shane (pictured), Sales Director at ICON. "Not only does 4ipnet provide fast wireless networking and role-based connectivity restrictions, it is also approved for wireless voice which is desirable today."

ICON continues to witness strong demand for wireless communication devices as this sector needs to communicate with the core faster than ever before. There is also high demand for tablet-based classrooms and e-learning. This will create channel opportunities not just for tablet hardware and support but also for the wireless and fixed network infrastructures. "Schools want to provide students with Internet access but at the same time need to restrict and manage the bandwidth they consume," added Shane. "Some schools want to allow Facebook access during lunch time but not at other times. Because of these complex requirements we have seen growing interest in better Wi-Fi management."

Interest in 4G connectivity also continues to grow and ICON has been consulting with partners and their clients to understand what they want to achieve from this technology. Wireless networking has also been enhanced with the release of 802.11ac Wave 2. "New, faster networks are always needed in schools as the older infrastructure often fails to cope with up to 30 students in a small area all turning on notebooks at the same time," commented Shane.

"The initial surge of pulling down their roaming profiles from the network can make a Wi-Fi network grind to a halt. ICON has partners who have sold as many as three wireless network upgrades to the same school as demand for faster more robust wireless networking increases."
The days when a teacher simply regurgitates text books are long gone. "The new approach in many primary and secondary schools is an 8-10 minute screen cast at the beginning of the lesson to outline the learning objectives," commented Shane. "The lesson itself will then use various mediums to support the learning objectives. This is becoming more and more dependent on Wi-Fi and results cannot be achieved without a robust wireless network. We all know the frustration of trying to work in a hotel on a poor Wi-Fi connection, imagine trying to learn while using one."

For reasons such as this there are less schools that want to buy technology at a low price, and more that want to engage with partners who can help them understand how to achieve their goals. "There is also greater demand for enhanced support and maintenance packages as schools become more dependent on the technologies deployed in them," commented Shane. "Technology will continue to play an important role in education. Purchasers in this sector are becoming more aware that a wait and see approach to technology is not a workable model. Being married to a maths teacher has also opened my eyes to how technology is being used in schools and colleges. It has changed a lot since I was in short trousers."•

In his strategic reactions to new market opportunities hSo Managing Director Chris Evans is not short of a dead cert growth plan. Here, he reveals the strategies and drivers that will double company revenues within three years.

Evans has key markets and channel expansion directly in his sights and is pushing forward a strategy to double revenues within three years via a mix of organic growth and acquisitions that he hopes will generate a 10 per cent EBITDA profit margin. "The organic growth will be powered by investments in growing our presence in channel, wholesale and public sector markets," commented Evans. "A key development for hSo (HighSpeed Office) has been getting on the RM1045 Network Services Framework and gaining Crown Commercial Service supplier status. That enables us to bid for Government contracts to supply data connectivity, IP telephony and traditional voice services, and resulted in us winning many millions of pounds of additional business."

hSo is currently a circa £10 million turnover company with around 40 employees. Its enterprise team targets organisations with 100 to 1,000 employees and those with multiple sites. The channel team tends to work with IT support companies while the wholesale operation mainly deals with hosting firms, ISPs and service providers. "We are working to grow the wholesale side of our business," added Evans. "Our acquisition of Goscomb Technologies boosted our wholesale and channel offering substantially. We can now offer services in over two dozen data centres and have many more wholesale customers as a result of the acquisition. It also improved our economies of scale, enabling us to offer better prices to our channel partners and customers."

Evans describes hSo as a network service provider specialising in bespoke cloud solutions for voice, data and IT security. "We were founded in 2000 to become the Broadband Office of the UK," he explained. "We bid to provide IT and telecom services to buildings owned by a consortium of property owners. We won the tender but the dotcom boom turned to bust and we lost our funding. Thankfully, the property owners saw our potential and agreed to fund us."

hSo has wholesale relationships with all UK telecoms carriers. "Resellers have been poorly served by the major carriers," claimed Evans. "As a SME, hSo can focus on customer service, responsiveness and tailoring solutions to individual customers. This is something resellers appreciate as well as keen pricing. We always listen to the feedback from our customers and partners and respond accordingly by developing appropriate products. We prefer to be led by customers' needs rather than speculatively developing products that may or may not have a market."

hSo serves customers nationwide but its base in London brings a requirement to occasionally leverage partnerships in the regions. Evans hopes to plug these gaps with potential bolt-on acquisitions that extend hSo's geographic reach while on boarding local people to serve customers locally, as well as acquisitions that increase scale or strategic and product options. "We continue to look for complementary products for which there is growing demand," he added. "In recent years we have added public cloud connectivity and hosted voice services based on BroadCloud and Asterisk. We're open to filling gaps through organic development or via targeted acquisitions."

Another key factor driving hSo's growth is cloud computing. "We now provide connectivity to public cloud platforms AWS and Azure and have our own private cloud platforms based on Citrix and VMware virtualisation," commented Evans. "A challenge will be to deliver services that combine the pricing of the public cloud with the security of the private cloud."

It is a challenge Evans is certain to overcome given his previous working experiences which are wide ranging. He trained as an accountant with Ernst & Young in the 1980s and was based in Reading which at that time was the UK's nearest approximation to Silicon Valley. "Having worked on fundraising for a client, Dolphin Telecom, I was asked to join the company," recalled Evans. "Dolphin Telecom was a network provider that combined GSM phone and push-to-talk technology in a single handset. I then joined hSo in 2001 as Financial Director. But in 2003 the Board asked me to replace the existing CEO. Back then my role was focused on establishing systems and processes. Now, my day-to-day tasks are orientated more around growing the business by attracting the right talent and increasing revenues. The biggest challenge is determining what developments are going to be the next big thing that can be used by the business world to improve performance."

Again, this is a hurdle that Evans will surely overleap given his eye for an opportunity and ability to turn opportunities into market realities that generate revenues. His foresight is evident in the decision to achieve important accreditations to win new business, such as ISO accreditations and RM1045 which are responsible for public sector contracts worth £3 million being won during the past year. Evans described the uptick as 'transformational'.

He also believes that strong customer relationships will grow in importance due to tougher conditions ushered in by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) within the context of a stringent data protection environment. "This will make winning new business, which is hard at the best of times, even tougher," commented Evans. "Resellers with a close personal contact with their customers will be in a stronger position to defend and grow the business relationship. Cultivating customer relationships will become more critical."•

For a man with the unswerving courage of his own convictions, Steve Soper's plan to build Beta Distribution into a £500 million business within five years is entirely plausible.

Soper's longer-term growth strategy confirms what those familiar with Beta Distribution have long known - that the company is a sleeping giant and sooner or later the industry would wake up to its growing influence. According to Soper, that time has come. He grasped the reigns as Managing Director in 2008 after a seven year stint in the firm's FD seat, taking over from founder Gary Wilson, now Chairman, who established the company with his wife Irene in 1980 as a fixer of Canon calculators, moving into print distribution. Those days are long gone. "During the past 10 years we've transformed the business from a niche print distributor with revenues of around £30 million into an international operation approaching £220 million," said Soper.

The printer consumables market still accounts for over 50 per cent of Beta's business and gave the company a broader footprint across the reseller channel. Alongside this Beta established a Technology Solutions division to capitalise on the growing data storage market, becoming an authorised distributor for the likes of Fujifilm and Maxell based largely on tape back-up products. "In recent years we have entered the hardware and software side of this market with new distribution agreements," added Soper. "This business has a service led proposition so we now provide VARs and MSPs with a range of pre and post-sales services through technical experts."

Last year Beta set up Digital Media Solutions which provides end-to-end digital signage solutions, covering the supply of the product through to final installation, and offers a content creation service. "The signage market is set to undergo a significant change in the way it is sold as Samsung, in particular, is targeting a model where users can effectively rent screens through Samsung Capital, allowing hotels, retail outlets and many other verticals to entertain large scale projects on an opex rather than capex basis," noted Soper.

Beta employs circa 140 people and trades with around 3,000 resellers of all descriptions including IT resellers, MSPs and VARs. In particular, Beta is increasing its presence in the data/technology market through new vendor and customer trading relationships and the recruitment of skilled staff such as Solutions Architects.

The company is also growing its presence in more regions at home and overseas. "We have expanded into Europe with sales operations in Benelux, France, Germany and Poland, which are all serviced from a warehouse in Maastricht," said Soper. "This European business, that didn't exist three years ago, now generates annual revenues of 40 million euros. In the UK we have our head office in London and warehouse in Birmingham as well as two recently opened sales offices in Reading and Leeds."

To say that the past three years have been strategically active would be to greatly understate the extent of recent developments at Beta. "We have added 35 more vendors since 2014, largely in the enterprise storage arena," said Soper. "We have introduced a ten-strong Technology Solutions sales team to provide the expertise needed to support MSPs; and we have completed a number of high profile technology based projects from concept to final installation."

Projects such as this show how IT distributors can do more than simply provide product and credit to the channel, observed Soper. "To survive distributors will have to look at services and solutions to protect their margin and act as a partner to resellers rather than merely a source of credit," he added. "It's all about services. VARs will need to transition their business and become solution providers and they will expect their distribution suppliers to support them in this transition."

Three focus areas are the new paradigm for Beta Distribution - providing print hardware, consumables and data storage to IT resellers; delivering disruptive data storage technologies, products, services and solutions to VARs and MSPs through the Technology Solutions business; and supplying end-to-end digital signage products, services and solutions (plus off the shelf meeting room solutions) to AV specialists and resellers. "Our main focus is on organic growth across the three business areas," added Soper. "But consolidation is all around us, notably the acquisition of smaller specialist or niche distributors by the big broadliners. We were recently involved in the potential acquisition of Entatech, although ultimately we pulled out. I expect further consolidation to take place and we remain on alert for any future opportunities."

As well as consolidation, the changing demands of end users and how they purchase has an impact on distribution. "As end users move from capex purchases into various opex models such as consumption, pay-as-you-grow and subscription, resellers want support from their vendors and distributors to ease the financial burden sitting just with them," Soper explained. "These models are not just confined to cloud-based services. More and more end users, and therefore resellers, have a requirement for hardware, software and services to be wrapped up in monthly payments.

"Vendors have been adapting their finance and leasing models to accommodate this transformation. Samsung Finance is a great example of how large LFD projects can be deployed in this way. Distribution has to adapt both commercially and operationally to be able to deliver these changing business models with, or on behalf of, the vendor."

Given a magic wand, Soper would dismantle a market structure that allows tier 1 brands to have a monopoly on what resellers, and ultimately end users, see as the only solution to their problems. "There are so many vendors with great technologies and stories that, given the chance, could enhance the end user experience and resellers' margin," he said. "I'll give you an example, we recently designed and helped install the entire IT infrastructure of a new UK clearing bank. It was given the usual tier 1 options, we gave them an alternative that went over and above the customer's requirements and saved them over 25 per cent. Technology Solutions will generate growth by bringing disruptive products and technologies to VARs and MSPs in a direct challenge to the tier one vendors."

Presented with potential new market opportunities such as this, Soper never takes a 'wait and see' stance if he senses tangible potential. But while confident about future revenue growth, there is still much to do. "My biggest achievement is growing Beta to its current size, but the job is far from done," he stated. "Beta Distribution is still one of the industry's best kept secrets. During the next five years the challenge is to ensure more and more resellers have access to us and fully understand what we can offer to the channel." •

Intercity Technology has recruited ex-Virgin Media Business sales director Georgina Lord to head up its inside sales and marketing teams.
 
Lord worked with Virgin Media Business for nine years and became the youngest and only female director within the organisation.
 
Andrew Jackson, CEO at Intercity Technology, said: "Georgina is a talented and hard working individual. Her drive and industry knowledge will be vital in leading the inside sales and marketing team.
 
"This is a pivotal time for the company as we transition from our traditional roots to develop our own technology solutions. Georgina's expertise in sales and her passion for this industry is exactly what we need."
 
Lord added: "Intercity has made some ambitious, strategic acquisitions over the last few years, and I'm relishing the task of bringing together all elements of the business and revamping the sales and marketing strategy."
 
"I already feel like part of the family and I'm looking forward to building our client portfolio and cementing the brand as a key player in the market."

BT has launched a new security service to protect organisations from cyber threats and malware through greater visibility and better monitoring of devices connected to their corporate network.

The BT Managed Endpoint Access Security leverages technology from ForeScout Technologies, an Internet of Things (IoT) security company, to provide real-time agentless visibility and control of devices connected to corporate networks. This includes managed, unmanaged, private devices, Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) and IoT.

ForeScout's agentless approach to network security provides real-time discovery, classification, assessment and monitoring of devices allowing end-customers to see what is on their network, from campus to cloud, and to securely manage it.

ForeScout can also orchestrate a policy-based security enforcement operation, with leading IT and security management products to automate security workflows and accelerate threat response.

David Stark, vice president, Security portfolio at BT, said: "By bringing ForeScout's technology into our portfolio we extend our ability to protect organisations against the latest threats through improved visibility and control. Whether it's protecting a head office or a branch site, adding the ability to monitor just about any device connected to the network offers a much required additional layer of security to companies moving into the digital world."

Todd DeBell, vice president of Global Channels, ForeScout, said: "With more devices connecting to enterprise networks than ever before, the attack surface is expanding exponentially. Staying ahead of the game is an ongoing effort for any organisation. ForeScout's relationship with BT will bring additional reassurance to CIOs and CISOs looking for improved security and better orchestration, while allowing us to tap into BT's extensive global reach."

Milton Keynes-based Mirus IT Solutions, a specialist in IT and managed print services, has bagged local partner 2r Systems following a five year collaboration.

The deal takes Mirus's annual turnover to almost £10m, with a projected 2021 target of £15m of which 75% is expected to be recurring revenue.

Network testing and security vendor Ixia has extended its distribution agreement with Arrow to the EMEA region. Arrow already handled the portfolio in North America and Latin America.

Arrow resellers in EMEA can now join Ixia's Channel Xcelerate Partner Program, which aims to help resellers' deliver end-to-end solutions for making their customers' applications and network security stronger.

"Collaborating with Arrow in North America has added a new dimension to our mission of making it easy for resellers to do business with Ixia," said Lori Cornmesser, vice president of global channel sales at Ixia.

"Arrow's strong ties with Ixia technology partners in North America and EMEA will help fast-track end-to-end solutions to value-added resellers and their customers."

Nick Bannister, Arrow senior director and head of networking and security EMEA, said: "Ixia's offering is instrumental to a number of Arrow solution areas including cloud, mobility, SDN and the Internet of Things."

Speaking at the NetEvents IT and security symposium in London this week, Gabe Luis, Ixia senior director of sales EMEA, told IT Europa: "We currently have around 200 partners across EMEA and they will benefit from our new product CloudLens, which enables their customers to measure performance, security and compliance needs across any private or public cloud service.

"Customers have a list of service requirements for every cloud service they use but their cloud service providers do not always deliver on what they promise, CloudLens allows them to check."

Ixia was recently acquired by Keysight Technologies, which is a $2.9bn network optimisation and product design firm.

HPE has boosted its Partner Ready programme with enhancements and a new suite of digital tools and content on hybrid IT, data analytics and edge computing.

New channel competencies and partner resources also aim to make it easier for partners to position and sell the HPE portfolio spanning hybrid and edge solutions.

At the Discover event this week, HPE also unveiled new HPE Pointnext services that partners can leverage to grow incremental revenue streams, plus a suite of digital marketing resources to help partners drive demand and build pipeline in the digital world.

According to Gartner, half of all enterprise content will be machine authored as well as managed on hybrid cloud systems by 2018.

File synchronisation and sharing are expected be a standard embedded Enterprise Content Management business function, while over 20% of all businesses will be managing content from multiple organisations.

These realities emphasise the urgent need for businesses to update and future-proof processes by investing in systems that allow content to be smoothly integrated and easily accessed online, says Gartner.

Across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, legal and retail industries, the demand for ECM and Business Process Management systems to be personalised and hyper-connected is rapidly increasing - magnified by the continuous rise in e-commerce and an increasingly agile workplace and consumer.

Legacy ECM systems, on which many businesses still operate, are unable to integrate structured content and unstructured data, creating significant issues for companies across sectors, including loss of data and inefficient processes. In addition, businesses are facing the pressing challenges of rising data centre costs and increased security demand, as regulated companies want to maintain steadfast control of critical files while also avoiding the stress of massive data centres.

The cloud's ability to bring external stakeholders into internal business processes much more easily tackles a major pain-point for businesses today. Despite popular belief, sharing data and content with business partners is both secure and compliant, which is imperative for heavily regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare.