Comms Dealer

LA Connect, the telecoms arm of ICT solution provider LA Micro Group UK, has snapped up Maidenhead-based Addition Communications, an independent supplier of fixed and mobile services headed up by MD Mark Stockdale.

He said: "We could see that there were opportunities to provide a wider range of solutions to our customers, but we needed to be part of a larger organisation. It was clear that Addition and LA Connect working in partnership would accelerate growth and enable us to offer a better service to our customers."

Lee Waller, Director of LA Connect who led the acquisition, added: "We'd been talking to Addition over a period of many months, and took our time to find a model that would be right for both parties, ensuring the transition would be seamless and that all of Addition's staff remained with us."

LA Micro Group UK has grown from a turnover of £2.9 million in 2011 to £11.7 million in 2014 and has been named as one of the UK's fastest growing private companies in the Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 awards. LA Connect is planning further acquisitions during 2015.

Derby-based Inform Billing is marking its fifth year of operation with a major software launch.

"We are continually making improvements and launching enhancements, but this is a major redesign with lots of additional features," said MD Shaun Bodsworth (pictured left).

"It's been a balancing act to develop the new product alongside the existing while taking on significant numbers of new customers. But we've stuck with it and are thrilled to be there."

This development shows how far the company has progressed since its creation following a MBO in February 2010.

Inform Billing was founded by Bodsworth and Director Darren Salisbury as a vehicle to sell licences for their Eclipse software.

Bodsworth added: "We both saw that the software had huge potential. The initial version had been developed in-house at PAN Telecom. We saw an opportunity to focus the software onto the channel, adding value through our many years expertise of both telecoms and billing."

Inform Billing's primary focus on providing billing solutions to traditional telecoms resellers quickly expanded to include IT, VoIP, managed print and more recently the Internet of Things.

Salisbury (pictured left) said: "We look towards emerging markets and opportunities where we can use our expertise to streamline processes and help businesses make efficiencies.

"The move towards convergence in the IT and telecoms markets means that there is a greater need to bill a variety of one-off and recurring charges in a simple and accurate way.

"Eclipse brings all these charges together on one monthly bill that the end customer can easily understand."

The company employs a growing team of software developers and support staff and provides services to over 100 customers each month.

Bodsworth added: "Our organisation has seen steady growth. The culture of offering more, doing things differently and grasping the right opportunities is something that I feel stands Inform Billing apart."

A recent survey showed that 98% of customers were satisfied with the support they receive and would recommend Inform Billing.

Salisbury observed: "We aren't the biggest player in the marketplace but we had to stand out. We pride ourselves on the relationships that we build with clients and the time and advice that we are willing to invest in new resellers entering the market. We still use the old saying, 'Inform Billing is big enough to cope but small enough to care'."

Azzurri has been awarded the Government's new enhanced cyber security accreditation, Cyber Essentials Plus.

Cyber Essentials Plus is the more advanced of the two-tier Cyber Essentials Scheme launched by the UK government in mid 2014.

By achieving this highest level of available accreditation, Azzurri's systems and processes were analysed and tested by a team of independent auditors - with a 100% pass rate required to meet the demands of the top-tier.

Azzurri currently provides services to public sector organisations such as the Department for Transport, the Competition & Markets Authority, University College London Hospitals and many local government organisations including Durham County Council, Wiltshire and Cornwall Councils. Azzurri also supports private sector organisations including Severn Trent Water and Bourne Leisure.

"Azzurri has always taken the security of its customers' data very seriously. By adding Cyber Essentials Plus to our security credentials, this should further reinforce our commitment to all our customers, be they in the public or private sectors," comments Chris Jagusz, CEO of Azzurri Communications.

GCI has introduced another dimension to its channel strategy with the launch of a Dealer Programme under the GCI Channel Solutions brand.

According to Head of Channel Sales, Mark Whitehead, the scheme enables resellers to adopt a referral model and unlock new revenue opportunities.

"We didn't want to exclude resellers from entering emerging markets because of a lack of experience, short trading histories and limited capital to invest," explained Whitehead.

"Nor did we want resellers missing out on potential GP because of the risks associated with long-term contracts."

Under the terms of the Dealer Programme GCI owns the contract with the end user and takes on the responsibility, while the dealer earns commission for this recommendation.
 
"We want our established white label partners to be able to make money from sales outside their normal areas of interest, and our Dealer Programme can accommodate this ambition," added Whitehead.

"For example, our biggest Partner buys MPLS and Ethernet from us but introduces GCI directly through the Dealer Programme for cloud sales such as hosted desktop and virtual servers.
 
"This adds a new and exciting string to the GCI Channel Solutions armoury."

Andy Tow has been appointed MD of Excalibur Communications just three months after joining the company as Chief Commercial Officer. The move sees Tow join forces with CEO James Phipps to spearhead a growth plan to boost annual turnover to £25m by 2020. Tow, the former head of Avenir, oversaw a record quarter in Q4 2014 and the firm also recorded its highest number of new customers in the period. IT services alone saw a 30% growth.

"This is no coincidence," said Phipps. "A man of Andy's calibre delivers results.

"His general management experience will lead the company not just on its turnover and profit growth, but importantly, on all the required enablers, especially structure and people development".

Tow joined Excalibur following a stint as MD of Chess Partner Services in London.

Hats off to Intercity for winning the GCI Channel Solutions African Safari Experience incentive scheme.

The scheme, which offered resellers the chance to win a Safari holiday, was awarded to the reseller who sold the most Virgin connectivity between July and December 2014.

Mark Whitehead, Head of Channel Sales at GCI, commented: "Intercity has been a great partner for us to deal with over the last year. It is also a ServiceMark accredited company which means we really have to perform as a channel service provider.

"Intercity winning our Virgin Media promotion demonstrates that we have both been successful in collaboration."

Entatech UK has struck a new distribution agreement with YEZZ, a global manufacturer of mobile devices.

Paul Olliver, Entatech Retail, Solutions and Displays Channel Manager, commented: "Throughout 2014 we worked hard to establish Entatech as a distributor of smart devices, ensuring that we are catering to the needs of our resellers and the end user.

"The introduction of YEZZ to our portfolio will provide our resellers with mobile solutions for both end user and business use, boosted by Windows and Android technologies and features."

Martin Tufft has been appointed Director of Sales & Marketing at Mainline, the 4GEE distributor and wholly owned subsidiary of EE.

In this new role, Tufft is responsible for developing and implementing Mainline's Sales and Marketing strategy including customer service, product development and partner relationships.

He has more than 20 years experience in the mobile industry across a wide range of disciplines and organisations.

Most recently Tufft was responsible for public sector sales at EE, helping UK public sector organisations make the most of mobile technology to improve productivity and better serve the UK public.

Tufft said: "Today more than ever, mobile technology has the power to change the face of businesses in the UK, allowing them to become more flexible and improve productivity."

Exclusive Networks UK has been named EMEA Distributor of the Year by Fortinet, the specialist in high performance network security.

Up against Fortinet's entire EMEA distributor base, Exclusive Networks received this recognition during Fortinet's Global Partner Conference, held January 8-12 aboard the Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas.

Graham Jones, UK Country Manager for Exclusive Networks, said: "It is an excellent achievement to gain recognition from one of our strategic vendor partners.

"This award is testament to our investment and development in our value add proposition, and showcases our core attributes including exceptional consultancy, sales, marketing, training and technical support services."

David Park, Director Channel & Commercial Sales for Fortinet, added: "Exclusive Networks UK has continued to demonstrate value by investing in resources to address the business needs of Fortinet and our partner base.

"Keeping in step with Fortinet's local strategy, Exclusive has increased sales, technical and support capability to create, demonstrate and deploy Fortinet Solutions.

"The Exclusive team has shown themselves to be a safe pair of hands when it comes to partner development and enablement, increasing the contribution in Bronze and Silver partners from both a revenue and number of partners perspective.

"In addition, their focus and investment to develop skills and ability in the Fortinet Advance Technology suite will drive the relevance of the wider Fortinet portfolio to partners and their customers."

Avnet Technology Solutions UK has launched an Elastic Cloud Infrastructure (ECI) solution combining technology from Cisco, EMC and VMware.

The new addition to Avnet's portfolio will accelerate the success of business partners looking to maximise the potential of the expanding Hyper-Convergence market.

The platform is aimed at smaller service providers and mid to large-sized organisations looking to increase the flexibility and scalability of their next generation data centre environments.

Avnet's ECI solution will also help to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) through the lifecycle of the infrastructure. Avnet business partners can install and deploy Cisco's UCS servers and EMC's ScaleIO storage systems with VMware's vSphere® virtualisation platform to offer one totally integrated solution.

Tom Corrigan, open storage and Cisco business unit leader, Avnet Technology Solutions, UK, commented: "Working with some of the world's most trusted technology providers, we have created a powerful addition to Avnet's portfolio that tightly integrates computing, storage, networking and virtualisation resources in a single package."

Traditionally, organisations were committed to one brand of storage technology that often locked them into long-term contracts. Avnet's ECI solution provides a flexible, scalable, building block approach by allowing storage functionality and capacity in any server to be accessed as and when the organisation needs it.

By offering a common pool of storage, purchasing decisions can be planned over shorter cycles with less impact on budget and scheduled downtime can be reduced said the firm.

Using ECI, Avnet business partners will benefit from incremental revenue from upgrades and services as they work closely with customers to plan capacity in line with real-time operational and financial requirements.

Avnet anticipates that the new ECI solution will appeal particularly to Software as a Service (SaaS) providers who are reluctant to make large initial infrastructure investments but need to scale resource as demands increase.

In addition, education sector organisations implementing Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to avoid investing in large technology stacks for point solutions, such as end user computing, are a key target.

Avnet plans to host a series of webinars on ECI that will give business partners the product and market knowledge they need to address the growing demand for Hyper-Convergence solutions.