Comms Dealer

EE is to invest £1.5bn between now and 2017 as part of a new manifesto called 'signalling the Future' designed to tackle the UK's changing digital infrastructure needs.

In this second phase of its network strategy EE will focus on extending its 4G network to more than 99% of the population and 90% of the UK's geography.

EE CEO Olaf Swantee said: "Stage one of our network strategy saw us overhaul UK mobile networks, launching 4G and changing the way people and businesses use their smart devices.

"This revolution of the mobile landscape has made the UK a leader in global communications once again.

"Today we're announcing the next stage with a commitment to radically improve mobile coverage, this time with a strong focus on rural UK, all while continuing to increase speeds and capacity with deeper coverage in more cities."

Tech firms in the UK will grow four times faster than GDP in 2015 with business leaders predicting an average 11% growth. The results of Barclays' latest Fast Growth Tech survey also showed that 58% are expecting their business to grow by up to 10%, with 18% forecasting 10% and 20%, while 9% predicted significant growth of over 20%.

Sean Duffy, MD and Head of Barclays' Technology, Media and Telecoms team, said: "These remarkable growth predictions reveal the optimism and drive of the UK's tech sector.

"The fact that many firms are expecting further growth in 2016 shows that this trend isn't transient and the UK is a launchpad for innovative tech businesses.

"Investors are seeing the UK as an international talent magnet and a platform to grow or launch their business for a number of reasons, including the culture, light-touch regulation, supportive Government policies and access to finance."

Duffy also noted that strong leadership 'rang out loud and clear' as being critical for growth, particularly important in the first few years of a business' life. "Leadership is even more relevant for fast growth businesses experiencing unique stressors and demands on their cash flow, requiring their leaders to make many major decisions at speed in order to keep pace.

"It takes an extremely strong and dynamic individual to have a clear vision and the energy to lead their workforce to success in this type of supercharged environment."

Exclusive Group has posted 627m euro in revenue for 2014, up 91%, and is on course to reach its 1bn euro target within two-three years.

The value added services company has expanded its presence in new and existing territories as well as developing new service capabilities.

The result has seen year on year revenue almost double bringing it to within striking distance of its stated 2017 target of 1bn euro. Organic growth with both established and emerging vendors has continued to be extremely strong at 36%.
 
"These are outstanding results, but we remain fully focused on making 2015 another record breaking year as we strive for more organic growth and bring on stream substantial new capabilities in financing, leasing and global services support," said Olivier Breittmayer, CEO of Exclusive Group. 

"We anticipate more growth in 2015 and good uptake of new services."
 
Exclusive Group made significant inroads into new markets in 2014 with the purchases of value-added distributors Bilisimcim in Turkey (January) and WhiteGold in Australia/NZ (August), and expanded existing Italian operations through the acquisition of Sidin (October). February saw the launch of Exclusive Networks operations in Denmark. 
 
The acquisition of ITEC Intelligent Services in December has further enhanced the Group's global services capabilities and reach into 90-plus countries worldwide and bringing in-country presence into the United States and mainland Asia for the first time. 

The Group's latest acquisition of Fibail System and subsequent launch of Exclusive Capital, a new IT asset financing/leasing division fell outside of this reporting period, but will have a major impact on future service revenue growth.
 
Among the other highlights of Exclusive Group's 2014 financial performance is the first full year of its Big Technology value added distribution division, focused on data centre transformation opportunities. 

BigTec Germany, Spain and Benelux have all set up in recent months alongside the UK and France, with the combined entity posting nearly 40m euro in revenue for the year. 

Elsewhere, revenue for Exclusive Group's Passport brand of professional services, 24/7 local language support and training has also performed well, with double-digit growth for the period.
 

Dimension Data has been certified as a Top Employer: Europe for its 'outstanding' employee offerings.

Dimension Data Europe has 4,500 employees and is one of the few companies to achieve the Top Employers Europe 2015 certification being certified in seven countries in Europe - Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK.

The Top Employers Institute's annual international research recognises leading employers around the world that provide excellent employee conditions, nurture and develop talent across all levels of the organisation, and strive to optimise employment practices.

Judith Oude Sogtoen, director of International Business Development for the Top Employers Institute, said: "Our research concluded that Dimension Data Europe forms part of a select group of employers that advance employee conditions worldwide."

Andrew Coulsen, CEO of Dimension Data Europe, added: "We invest in all our employees from graduates to fast tracking our young talent to providing mentoring, and online learning and development opportunities open to all our 4,500 people in Europe.

"As a service led business we know we can only be as strong as our people."

Salford-based JMC IT has won the highest three star status from Best Companies for the fifth consecutive year and is named as one of The Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to Work For in 2015 for the 11th year.

JMC displayed high levels of employee engagement with staff providing detailed anonymous survey feedback in categories including personal job satisfaction; managers' ability to care and motivate staff in fulfilling their potential; and overall excitement about the company's future.

The survey also achieved a response rate of 86 per cent from JMC's staff, who spend on average 12 years at the company.

Andrew Burgess, JMC's MD, said: "We truly believe our employee engagement engenders excellent client service, which in turn creates a 'virtuous circle' whereby clients love our staff and love working with JMC. It takes a huge team effort to achieve this, so we're delighted that everybody's hard work is continuing to pay off."

The two accolades add to a list of previous employment awards for JMC, which has led to the company playing an active role in promoting these initiatives to the wider industry.

JMC has been asked again to sponsor the upcoming Salford Business Awards Best Employer category, encouraging other local businesses to enter the award in recognition of their commitment to employee development and creating a rewarding place to work.

Nimans' reseller support for its hosted telephony service GS-hosted has moved into a new phase and the distributor is urging more resellers to become authorised suppliers.

Demo kits, white label marketing and training support are on hand to help resellers drive their GS-hosted sales, said the firm.

GS-hosted was launched last year and includes a three year hosted seat licence with every handset purchased.

A choice of three models are available with upfront margin potential of 45% or recurring margins of 65%, said the distributor. As part of the expanding service resellers can now add music on hold functionality.

Nimans' Group Sales and Business Development Director, Richard Carter, says becoming an authorised partner is the best way for resellers to develop their sales.

"Resellers simply need to carry out a short online test to become fully accredited and open the door to a world of compelling support services," he explained.

"We are constantly adding to our support strategy to ensure resellers can maximise every sales opportunity. In addition they can use an official 'authorised partner' logo on their marketing and sales material to reinforce their overall expertise.

"We are also sending out a quarterly newsletter to keep resellers up to speed with all the latest developments."

US-based Perforce Software says the number of partners selling the company's portfolio of version management and collaboration software grew by 50% in 2014, bringing in-country customer support in nine of the world's ten most spoken languages.

Partners who joined the program in 2014 include: EDAWay in Italy, InTENSO in Poland and Cohort (previously Legal Softwave)in Russia. Perforce offers a version management and collaboration platform, aiming to protect customer IP and to enables teams to collaborate without conflict on any type of file-from source code to industrial designs to business documents.

"We understand that our international customers want the option of in-country support and we're committed to fulfilling those needs with an array of top-class partners across the globe," said Dave Robertson, vice president of channels. "Our channel network brought in a substantial amount of new business in 2014, and we expect the same to continue this year, especially with our forthcoming product announcements and enhancements."

Perforce continues to expand its partner network across multiple territories. "There is strong growth potential for Perforce-based solutions in multiple markets and we will continue to address this opportunity through the expansion of our channel," said Robertson.

The rebrand of Peach Telecom to Peach Technologies marks the beginning of a new chapter in the company's history, according to CEO Darren Scott-Healey (pictured).

He noted a strong period of growth, the acquisition of an IT MSP and a new focus on bigger business clients as catalysts for the revamp.

"We have always specialised in small to medium-sized businesses, but we are naturally progressing into the mid-market so we needed a slicker look which is more appropriate for enterprise organisations," he said.

Peach Telecom was formed in 2006 and its expansion prompted the creation of a new identity, website and logo, underpinned by the a strapline 'Making technology simple'.

"This heralds an exciting time for Peach," added Scott-Healey. "We now have a consistent identity and use the word 'technologies' in our name to reflect our telecoms and IT offerings.

"The logo gives us a more professional look and feel for entering the mid-market arena, while reflecting the company's dynamism and innovation."

Peach's new logo is made up by four colours representing the main product areasof systems, mobile, data and networks.

Nimans has taken delivery of a new audio conferencing solution from BT - the X300 model which features two rechargeable wireless microphones and is available exclusively from the distributor.

The X300 boasts a large base speaker for high quality sound, 50 name and number directory, dynamic noise reduction, echo cancellation and full duplex capabilities for natural two-way conversations.

Nimans' Head of Conferencing Sales, Ian Brindle, says the compact unit is a suitable solution for standard meeting rooms of up to eight attendees.

"Microphone talk time is five hours or 70 hours in standby mode and they have up to a 3m pick-up range," he explained. "The X300 certainly packs a punch at a competitive price point. It boasts many features as well as high quality audio performance."

The X300 follows on from the launch of the X500 which has four wireless microphones.

West Berkshire Council has completed an 18v month £200,000 upgrade of its main data centre with help from Redcentric.

The Council, which covers half of Berkshire, runs two data centres supporting the day-to-day operations of 1,800 council staff as well as delivering online services to 155,000 residents.

Its data centre refresh focused on uprating power, cooling and building management capabilities to reduce its PUE from 1.99 to 1.43, as well as upgrading its switching provision. This allowed the Council to preempt any performance issues as the demands on bandwidth inevitably increase over time.

Redcentric's projects team looked at a number of scenarios and equipment vendors before recommending a 10 gigabyte top of rack switch-based solution using Brocade.

It met the needs for port density within a set footprint, would integrate seamlessly with the existing architecture and offered future upgrade options.

Redcentric also leveraged its relationship with Brocade to enable the team to put forward what it deemed to be an optimum solution at the right price point.

Andy Best, ICT operations manager at West Berkshire Council, said: "We knew that this was giving us exactly what we needed technically, operationally and commercially. We were now free to focus on testing the configuration and evaluating the equipment, prior to the go-live."

Uprated bandwidth has ensured West Berkshire has sufficient capacity going forward to maintain speed and availability. The investment in new switches has helped safeguard the ongoing reliability and continuity of service to both council staff and residents.

The Brocade deployment has also allowed West Berkshire Council to maintain system and application availability SLAs during this major in-situ data centre upgrade, within tight project budget constraints.