Comms Dealer

Norbain has cemented its position as ACT's top UK customer having been crowned numero uno by the Access Control provider.

In recognition of its achievement Norbain was presented with an award, called The Thinker and hand fashioned from 4,200 year old Irish bog wood by a local artisan.

Mark Field, Norbain's Supplier Relations Director, said: "Norbain and ACT have long enjoyed a strong and fruitful relationship and we're delighted that it's continuing to thrive.

"We pride ourselves on working closely with our suppliers to develop a true understanding of their business goals so that we can best support them.

"This award from ACT recognises all the hard work both companies have put in to ensure strong and profitable growth."

David Tymlin, ACT's MD, added: "The two companies have been working together since May 2004 and Norbain is now ACT's largest customer in the UK.

"The work that Norbain has done to promote ACT's products and build upon its brand image has been excellent."

Pictured left to right: Nigel Palmer, CEO at Newbury Investments and Shay Moran, Chairman at ACT.

A 'Train and Retain' policy that places apprenticeships at the heart of recruitment has seen Pennine Telecom being shortlisted for a top business award.

The Bury-based data and telecommunications specialist has reached the finals of the North West Business Masters Awards 2015 having been nominated in the inaugural Apprenticeship Scheme category.

The company's nomination cited its forging of partnerships with local education providers such as Bury College and Bolton College and its commitment to both recruiting and retaining apprentices.

Currently some 20% of Pennine's 65 staff have successfully completed apprenticeships, including Sales Director Geoff King and Managing Director Andrew Roberts who joined Pennine as an apprentice from Bolton College.

10 other staff are now pursuing apprenticeship programmes across a range of disciplines including Customer Service, Business Administration, IT, Sales and Engineering.

"We're delighted that the North West Business Masters Awards have recognised the strenuous efforts we put in with our education partners to identify, recruit and nurture local talent," commented Pennine Telecom's HR & Business Support Manager, Ann Barnes. "Train and Retain delivers real skills and career opportunities while helping boost our productivity, quality of service and profitability."

Barnes pointed out that since a 2003 management buy-out the company had focused greater energies on personnel development, including securing the Investor in People standard. This has seen productivity per employee rise by more than 800% while staff turnover has dropped from 7% to less than 1%.

Company apprentice Ben Howarth is also now using his experience at Pennine to promote the value of in-work training to school students across Greater Manchester.

The former Tottington High School student has been selected as a Lead Ambassador under the Apprenticeship Ambassador Programme which was developed by Manchester City Council in partnership with the Greater Manchester Learning Provider Network.

The Government's nationwide rollout of superfast broadband has now reached more than two million homes and businesses, according to Government figures.

The rollout is delivering superfast access to those properties not covered by existing commercial networks and is on track to take superfast access to 95 per cent of the UK by 2017.

The UK already leads the EU 'big five' nations when it comes to superfast access and take-up and the programme will ensure it stays ahead, said a Government statement.

The communique went on.... 'Government recognises the importance of a fast Internet connection to individuals and businesses alike, and its £1.7bn investment in the rollout is a key part of the Government's long-term economic plan. Around 80 per cent of the UK already has access to superfast speeds, and the rollout is currently reaching an additional 40,000 homes and businesses every week'.

Culture Secretary Sajid Javid said: "Today there are two million more UK homes and businesses with access to superfast broadband than there were two years ago as a result of this ambitious project. This is a tremendous result that is already making a huge difference to millions of people.

"We want everyone in the UK to be able to enjoy the benefits of superfast broadband, that's why we've begun work on reaching the last five per cent of communities not covered by existing plans."

Faster broadband is a catalyst for economic growth, and its estimated that the Government rollout will result in the creation of 56,000 more jobs in the UK by 2024. Superfast broadband will be pivotal in driving profits for local businesses, and rural economies are set to benefit by around £9 million every day due to the work being done now.

Joe Garner, CEO of Openreach, BT's local network business, said: "We're proud to be delivering this great British success story in partnership with the Government, and have committed up to £1 billion of our shareholders' money to the projects.

"The programme is on schedule overall and our people continue to work flat-out on connecting homes and business in the UK's hard-to-reach areas. If we come in under budget, savings can be reinvested to take coverage even further. Funds will also be released if take-up exceeds expectations, all of which is further great value for the taxpayer."
 
Focus is now firmly placed on the hardest to reach areas that make up the 'final five per cent' of the UK not covered by existing plans, and Government has already begun work on extending superfast coverage to these communities.
 
The Government confirmed that seven pilot schemes aimed at helping to reach these areas will now move into deployment, having successfully completed the first stage of a trial period. One of the trials in Exmoor will shortly be delivering superfast broadband to homes via satellite delivery. This is the first time that satellite will be used to deliver superfast speeds to residential customers in the UK at 'affordable prices', said the statement.
 

2015 is the year for small and medium-sized businesses to seize their own opportunity from the economic revival and upgrade their technical capabilities for growth, according to Mike Smith, Director SoHo & SME, Virgin Media Business.

"Driving their online footprint and extending customer reach will be key to how well SMEs fare in the year ahead," he said. "Embracing the ongoing transformation of digital skills and content? will make this achievable.

"This is the year to go for growth. As the economy rebounds and begins to pull ahead, the company that skills up and re-engineers for growth is the company poised for early returns.

"Businesses bold enough to ?invest now in digital skills and technology are likely to reap the benefits, not only in financial terms, but to the betterment of their staff, workplace and customers.

"Our SMEs are uniquely placed to make the rebound of UK PLC even more powerful. The latest figures show that the annual income of small businesses grew by 7.4% in 2014, the highest rate of growth for more than 14 years. Businesses that seize the digital challenge will do even better."

A pipeline of 50 resellers are poised to on-board a 'simple to use' video calling solution offered by Nimans.

The distributor formed an agreement last year with BlinkPipe, a company that enables video to be added to calls.

According to Paul Burn, Head of Category Sales at Nimans, the solution puts video conferencing 'within the reach of all businesses, big and small'.

"Users simply walk in, sit down and dial - that's it," he said. "They can experience wide angle HD images, 3x optical zoom and face tracking technology for a fraction of the price of other enterprise room systems. Tiered subscriptions suit different business needs."

Based on 'lip sync' technology (fusing voice over the phone and video over the Internet) users plug a BlinkPipe camera into a TV and a traditional meeting room audio conference unit, and HD video calls can be instantly made and received.

In addition to the camera, a BlinkPipe Hub cloud service delivers group video calls and screen sharing between BlinkPipe hardware, PCs, Macs, tablets and smartphones.

Dave Gwilt, BlinkPipe Co-founder, added: "High quality video gives so much more feedback than voice alone. It can change the outcome of a call."

Timico is campaigning to push disaster recovery (DR) further up the IT manager's agenda and has launched a solution that will help IT bosses plan ahead for unforeseen circumstances.

The move follows a survey by the cloud and hosting specialist that revealed just 34% of IT managers are 'reasonably confident' that their DR solution is fit for purpose. Only 9% reviewed and updated recovery plans once a month or more.

Tom Moores, Sales Director for, said: "IT managers are renowned for having a lot on their plate, but when things go wrong there's nowhere to hide.

"DR plans are effectively worthless if they are not tested, reviewed and updated as there is no way to guarantee whether the back-up plan will pull through.

"From burst water pipes to natural disasters and simple human error, the threat of downtime is more likely than many people realise - which makes an unproven plan a huge risk."

Timico has introduced Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), a cloud-based pay-as-you-go solution that enables businesses of all sizes to protect themselves from downtime.

Moores added: "Disaster recovery is an essential component of IT management, but in the past it has always been seen as a headache with businesses having to invest heavily in duplicate equipment before they could be 100% confident and conduct thorough testing.

"With DRaaS, testing can be conducted with no disruption to the production environment. Using our cloud platform as back-up in the event of a major disruption, precious data is protected almost instantaneously until a business is ready to fail back to its primary site."

Softcat has been named Egress Software Technologies' Top Performing Partner for 2014, recognising the significant sales growth of 100%-plus in Egress Switch encryption services made by the VAR.

Egress UK Sales Manager Kelly McCann said: "Working closely with the Egress team, Softcat has been able to drive substantial business through its local and central government teams, as well as considerable growth across the corporate team with wins in banking, insurance and the gaming industry.

"This effort is reflected in their exceptional year on year Switch revenue growth of over 100% in 2014."

Jamie Burke, Sales Director at Softcat, added: "As one of the fastest growing IT providers in the UK we have built our success on a portfolio of innovative technologies. By investing in a best-of breed-software and service approach we are able to offer our customers solutions that deliver genuine value and end user results. The growth of our Switch business demonstrates the success of this approach.

"What excites us for 2015 is not only the continued progress in traditionally strong markets that include UK Government, but also the number of opportunities being identified by our corporate teams.

"Data security and encryption will be high up on the decision-making agenda for most organisations in 2015, so we feel uniquely placed to take advantage of this opportunity."

Collaboration software and services firm PGi has snapped up Modality Systems, the dedicated Microsoft Lync services and software firm.

PGi funded the purchase through its credit facility.

"Modality Systems is one of the most well-respected Lync practices globally, and we are excited to deliver their value and expertise to our customers," said Boland T. Jones, PGi founder, chairman and CEO.

James Rodd, Modality co-founder and CEO, added: "Since starting Modality in 2007, we have focused on helping organisations improve collaboration, productivity and business processes through the successful implementation of Microsoft Lync.

"PGi shares our focus and dedication to customer success, and we are thrilled to join forces to help companies worldwide reach their business goals through the power of unified collaboration."

With over 75 employees and offices in London, Seattle, San Jose and Sydney, Modality Systems is home to 45 Lync certified professionals, including six Lync Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and three certified Lync Masters.

IBM has opened a new services centre in Leicester and  revealed plans to create 300 new jobs within the next three years.

The new hub will focus on high value application development and maintenance as well as test and systems management services that help organisations benefit from cloud, big data analytics, mobile, social and security technologies.

The centre will also join IBM's globally integrated capability network for public and private sector customers in Europe and around the world.

The hiring process is expected to begin immediately and, since the company will also offer the internships and hunt for local talents, it will work closely with the universities and institutions.

IBM's investment in the city should help increase the economic growth of the region and, to this end, the company will collaborate with Leicester City Council and the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership.

"This investment in job creation aims to inspire the next-generation workforce from local technical colleges and universities who will deliver the technology skills needed to drive business innovation in the UK," said Chief Executive, IBM UK and Ireland, David Stokes.

"The new centre will help to position Leicester as a hub for global businesses and reflects IBM's commitment to developing skills and providing technology services to business across the UK."

Mitel has announced that it will release its fourth quarter 2014 financial results on February 26th, 2015.

The company will host an investor conference call and live webcast on the same day.