Comms Dealer

Simon Smith has been named as Elitetele.com's first Head of Cloud Sales.

His remit is to educate new and existing customers on hosting infrastructure, expand Elitetele.com's cloud services and launch a series of new offerings in 2015.

Smith is well practiced at advising teams on the security, application, connectivity and disaster recovery aspects of cloud solutions, and has successfully managed business for international companies.

This new hire builds on Elitetele.com's acquisition of a data centre in 2014, a move that completed the company's transition from a switchless reseller to a full ISP with carrier capabilities and multiple data centre facilities.

With the acquisition, Elite officially launched a range of data centre services, including managed firewalls, unified threat management, colocation and its very own hosted PBX, Elite Plus Talk, which is embedded within its own core MPLS Network.

Smith said: "Cloud is an area many organisations still struggle with and Elitetele.com has a successful track record in understanding its customers' issues and providing quality solutions underpinned by great products."

Matt Newing, CEO of Elitetele.com, added: "With over a quarter of our customers using three or more of our services we're in a strong position to build on this with our new cloud offerings launching later this year. I know Simon will help us reach our goal of providing our customers with the right cloud services."

Hampshire-based M12 Solutions has secured a deal to supply a SpliceCom VoIP system to Port Regis Prep School in Shaftesbury, Dorset.

The deal encompasses the main equipment, phones, maintenance, SIP trunks and calls.

M12 Solutions MD Andrew Skipsey said: "We worked closely with the school to provide a solution for many years to come. We recognise that Port Regis, with its boarding facilities, needs a mission critical level of round-the-clock backup as well.

"With our conversion from ISDN to SIP lines which work over the school's Internet connection we can reduce the costs of lines and calls which helps to provide a strong cost justification for the new platform."

Virtual1 has been awarded a two star rating on the 2015 Best Companies accreditation. The rating categorises Virtual1 as 'outstanding' in the Best Companies ranking.

The annual accreditation standard recognises the UK's most engaged and supportive employers - based on employee feedback and an audit of policies and practices.

The three star scale ranks employee engagement from one star (first class), two stars (outstanding) to three stars (extraordinary).

Virtual1 CEO Tom O'Hagan said: "As an employer of over 60 people it's crucial that we measure, improve and recognise all areas of employee engagement. Myself and the leadership team at Virtual1 very much believe that we should look after our people and let them look after our customers.

"We're proud to see our employees rank us so highly on key areas. However, we will also be looking at what we could do better and will be working towards the three star ranking next year."

The company is putting in place a series of employee engagement strategies to build on the findings and to also maintain its employee retention rates (almost a quarter of the workforce has been with the firm for longer than three years).

Ash Patel has joined Cobweb Solutions as Director of Business Transformation.

Patel has been in the IT industry since he was 16 years old. Beginning as an IT lecturer at Uxbridge College, he went on to deliver networks for the RAF and the Commonwealth Games as a Wireless Strategy Architect at Locustworld, deploying wireless cloud infrastructure across sites around the world.

Patel joins Cobweb from Insight where he recently led the EMEA Cloud strategy programme.

Paul Hannam, CEO and co-founder, said: "Ash joins us as we prepare to show the world a transformation. We will soon be sharing new services with our partners and customers, giving them a brand new way of looking at the cloud."

Patel added: "I'll be working with the team transforming 'core' Cobweb as we evolve into an ever-more strategic IT partner for our customers. Our goal is to build mutually beneficial relationships with our partners and customers in order to help each other grow."

Jola was 'born in the cloud' almost one year ago and to mark its upcoming anniversary the company is launching an automated quotation tool for dealers.

Sales Director Lee Broxson said: "Ultimately the dealer decides the price to their customer and we share the recurring margin 50/50. The same with all our products, they set the price and we automatically pay them half the margin - every month. We offer as much assistance in sales and marketing as needed and we will never compete with our partners. We also handle billing, commissions and 24/7 support."

Andrew Dickinson, MD, added: "We have no base of calls and lines to protect and no leased circuits coming out of contract at 20% of the margin they went in at. This means we can be disruptive and we offer Premium Broadsoft licences with voicemail, SIP trunk, call queue, auto-attendant, UK landline calls and UK mobile calls for one low monthly rental."

Phoenix has bolstered its relationship with Redmayne-Bentley, one of the UK's largest independently owned stockbroking and investment management firms, with an additional fully managed IT contract.

The three year contract will see Phoenix provide a new Wide Area Network (WAN) based on an MPLS solution that will cover Redmayne-Bentley's 38 branch offices from Inverness to Exeter including its administrative and settlement operations and all its investment management and execution-only stockbroking services, plus the Phoenix DR and Data centre sites.

The contract will deliver Redmayne-Bentley a fully managed solution including the management of the circuits and router hardware (on-site), active and hardware monitoring along with network support (on-site) and break-fix of all router hardware.

The new contract win complements Phoenix's existing hosting contract which already delivers a Private Cloud service, providing secure hosting and supporting a suite of IT services. These include an 'anywhere, anytime' desktop with managed applications, email and Active Directory services.

Steve Vaughan, Phoenix Chief Executive, said: "The solution will include resilient Internet options and take advantage of the new technologies and network services to allow greater bandwidths to be available at less cost improving upload and download speeds.

"As a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated firm, having a secure IT network that complies with regulatory requirements is critical to Redmayne-Bentley. In addition the company wanted to secure significant savings and generate real efficiency improvements to support the growth of its services to clients."

Keltec, part of the Annodata Group, has been awarded a place on the G-Cloud 6 framework and will offer its IaaS and SaaS solutions via the government's digital marketplace.

The Annodata Group already has a strong footprint in local government and provides a range of communications, print, document management and data services, meaning the move will help more local government bodies take advantage of the G-Cloud.

Simon Pemberton, Sales Director at Keltec, said: "Local government take-up of services through the G-Cloud has not been as high as other parts of the public sector so we hope that our experience and existing customer base at the local level will help improve uptake.

"Local government is a different beast to central public sector organisations and it is important that providers are able to understand their needs to provide a flexible and personalised service."

The G-Cloud framework is designed to make procurement of cloud services by public sector bodies easier and more cost effective. It is also a crucial part of the government's plan to get more small and medium-sized enterprises supplying government.

Pemberton added: "This will be the first time that Annodata has joined the G-cloud framework and it is the latest step for the company as it continues to grow both organically and through acquisition. We are on course to reach our target of £100m turnover by 2016."

Dorset-based 4Com was ranked 12th in the Sunday Times Best Companies Top 100 during a business awards ceremony at Battersea Evolution in London on 25th February.

In 2013 4Com was ranked 45th and one year later rose to 16th.

Chairman and MD Daron Hutt said: "Being just outside the top 10 at position 12 is an amazing result, especially as in 2013 we were at position 45. The progression and improvements have been phenomenal."

NewVoiceMedia has opened a new European development centre in Poland, located in the Hubska Center in Wroclaw, a city which has recently experienced significant growth in the IT services sector and is home to some of the world's leading high-tech businesses.

Chosen for its strong talent pool, the hub is close to Wroc?aw University of Technology which ranks second among the best technical universities in information technology and will provide a base for the company's team of experts while offering capacity for substantial growth.

The centre will support NewVoiceMedia's expansion, strengthen its presence in EMEA and offer the company a facility in which to develop its portfolio.

Jonathan Gale, CEO, said: ""Cloud computing and agile development methods are at the core of our business ethos and the opening of this new development hub reflects our dedication. We now have additional capacity to continuously enhance our platform."

Hosted comms is the de facto lifeline for comms resellers stymied by diminishing revenues from traditional voice, according to Nick Guite (pictured), General Manager, Indirect and International Sales at BT Wholesale.

"Going hosted is the obvious choice," he stated. "The market is changing so resellers need to extend their portfolios and align their strategies with the evolving requirements of customers who want bigger bandwidth, more applications and the ability to work whenever and wherever they happen to be situated."

Connectivity is key irrespective of business requirements, pointed out Guite, and seamless connectivity across all devices can make the difference between success or failure.

"Build a plan and execute now," he stated. "Start your customers on the journey and they will be less likely to churn.

"Moving customers to IPVS and then into the hosted comms world is an option that throws the market wide open. Hosted is no longer the preserve of enterprise organisations, these solutions can be offered to customers of all sizes. If you don't move, your competitors will as they are hungry to acquire your customers."

The delivery of reliable and affordable products underpinned by business-grade connectivity is a proven formula for success, noted Guite, who is on a mission to give resellers a leg up to hosted revenue generation.

"We work closely with key resellers to help build their individual stories through training, collateral, white label information and other support mechanisms such as running end user events," he said.