Comms Dealer

ICT services provider PSU Technology Group (PSU) is set to raise funds for its local animal shelter while offering fans of the X-Factor the chance to win tickets to this year's final.
 
The Cheltenham-based company has organised a raffle with tickets to the live TV talent show final at the SSE Wembley Arena on Saturday, 13th December up for grabs. The raffle will raise money for the Cheltenham Animal Shelter which works to rehouse unwanted pets.
 
Everyone that makes a minimum donation of £5 to the Gloucestershire Animal Welfare Association (GAWA) will be automatically entered into the raffle for the chance to win the two X-Factor final tickets. Entries will close at 12.00 lunchtime on Monday 8th December.
 
PSU will also contribute £200 towards the cost of overnight accommodation for the ticket winners.
 
PSU Technology Group's MD Michael Lounton said: "We're delighted to raise funds for the Cheltenham Animal Shelter and will be making a £1,000 donation to get things started. 

"This is part of our 12 Dogs of Christmas campaign to raise awareness about some of the animals in the shelter waiting to be re-homed. We would like to encourage as many people as possible to foster or adopt a dog."

Virtual1 has ring-fenced the IP and assets of its partner portal with the acquisition of Upshot's Trinity Portal division for an undisclosed sum. Upshot is a developer of telecoms portals including Virtual1's 1Portal and the acquisition, Virtual1's first strategic buy, also provides the company with a dedicated resource of developers to focus on planned enhancements for 1Portal.

Virtual1 CEO Tom O'Hagan said: "Our ambitions have always been to differentiate from our competitors by providing the fastest quote-to-order process and 1Portal is key to achieving that."

As part of the investment, Peter Francis, CEO of Upshot, will act as an advisor to Virtual1.

He said: "The team at Virtual1 were as passionate about the capability and potential of the Trinity assets as I am. Over the years they have contributed to the feature rich capability of Trinity and this is a great move for Virtual1 in securing the IP and assets.

"We've worked closely with Virtual1 to ensure a smooth transition of both assets and resource with our development team being introduced to Virtual1 during the early stages of negotiations."

1Portal serves over 1,500 portal users and the number of placed quotes exceeds 100,000.

Calyx has added back-up and DR capabilities to its Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution.

Steve Clark, CEO, said: "We've seen exceptional growth in demand for our standard IaaS offering because it delivers a solid, stable infrastructure that offers long -term return on investment.

"But data security and protection are also important. That is why we have invested in these new and enhanced services. We now have infrastructure replicated in data centres in both the north and south of the UK and a solution that brings with it a guaranteed availability supported by SLAs."

The solutions form part of Calyx' Hybrid Cloud portfolio which enables customers to bring a variety of infrastructures - physical, virtual, public and private cloud - into a single secure and scalable environment.

The portfolio is backed by Calyx' 24/7/365 service desk which offers in-house 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support and is based at the company's headquarters in Manchester.

Clark added: "Gartner predicts that IaaS will achieve a CAGR of 41.3% through to 2016, so it's clear that this is a growth area."

The success of a Government initiative to create a paperless NHS by 2018 will depend on whether it can win the hearts and minds of staff, according to Andrew Smith, Head of Professional Services at Annodata.

"Going paperless would challenge even the leanest of SMEs, let alone a hospital employing hundreds of staff," he said.

"The shift in working practices required is as much organisational as cultural, so getting staff on board will need to be a priority.

"There may be reservations surrounding a paperless environment so it's important to clearly set out the environmental imperatives and the efficiency benefits it will bring to staff.

"Having seen first-hand the efficiencies that can be achieved through centralised print and document management, we know that there are vast swathes of the NHS that are ripe for modernisation."

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has indicated that £1.5bn of additional funding will be allocated to the NHS in 2015/16 and it will be contingent on hospitals to be 'efficient and sustainable' and to deliver 'a commitment to a paperless NHS by 2018'.

Smith added: "This initiative has our full support and with the correct partners and advisors, we believe it's achievable. But there's no denying that the challenge ahead is a formidable one."

IT solutions provider Imerja, in partnership with Insight (UK), has been selected by Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust to provide IT infrastructure for the new build hospital and IT support in a five-year contract win worth upwards of £2.5 million.

Imerja will install secure IT infrastructure across the campus which will cover the hospital's LAN, wireless LAN, telephony and unified communications solutions.

The company will also provide a fully managed service across the infrastructure for a 5 year term liaising with the hospital's internal IT teams to provide performance monitoring, fault diagnosis and rectification as well as problem and change management for the Trust's new hospital and peripheral sites.

Alder Hey provides care for over 200,000 children every year. The project, 'Alder Hey in the park', will be a specialist children's hospital built inside the Trust's park grounds and aims to create a relaxing environment for patients while they receive care.

Cathy Fox, Associate Director of Informatics at Alder Hey, said: "These core services will underpin day-to-day activities across the Trust and will include a focus on improving the experience for our patients and their families. This will include dedicated wi-fi which will be available free of charge across the Trust."

This latest win builds on an existing relationship with Alder Hey. The firm currently provides a range of hosted services from its data centre in Lancashire as well as the Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) used in Alder Hey's neurosciences department.

Ian Jackson, MD and co-founder of Imerja, added: "We know the healthcare sector and are acutely aware of the pressures, the budget constraints and how critical the patient experience is, and this has been reflected within our solution. The work done at Alder Hey Children's Hospital can be life changing so it's crucial that we ensure everything works smoothly."

Genius Networks has partnered with Union Street to host its reseller portal.

The portal already integrates with Union Street's aBILLity billing platform to provide resellers with visibility of their bills, the facility to download CDRs and run detailed reports.

James Arnold Roberts, Genius Networks director said: "Our portal is integral to the Genius goal of simplifying the pre-sales and post-sales process for the reseller. Union Street's platform has fulfilled the billing requirements and it makes sense to align our provisioning portal solution with its platform."

Union Street MD Tony Cook added: "Genius has developed an interesting reseller service with its portal. As a supplier of billing software and associated services, Union Street possesses great insight into Genius's market proposition which makes us uniquely placed to deliver this service and to provide consultancy and further development of the portal should it be required in the future."

The portal can be provided as a white label service.

Sennheiser's Contact Centre & Office Headsets (CC&O) Division has gone live with a new website designed to provide more intuitive navigation, a consistent look and feel and easy access to all content across Sennheiser's range.

Five key navigation areas have been created to take customers directly to their destination: Products, UC, How to Choose, Dealers and Partners, and Try our Headset.

Marketing experts at Sennheiser will monitor how users interact with the site which also invites feedback from all customers.

Channel-only SIP and hosted carrier tIPicall has introduced phase one of its new WorldSIP product.

Initially the offering will cover 13 countries in Europe and the USA. Second and third staged rollouts throughout 2015 will cover the Far East, Australia, Africa and South America.

End customers will have the ability to break calls out locally in each country utilising local calling routes such as emergency services and non-geographic numbers while still using tIPicall's cost-effective international routing.

Local numbers with porting capabilities are also available at a reduced cost. Resellers will have the ability to offer a single bill solution with one global rate card, reducing complexity whileoffering a one-stop-shop approach for multi-national end users.

Guy Miller Managing Director at tIPicall, said: "Resellers no longer have to try and deal with large cumbersome carriers which can take many months, even years, to design and implement solutions.

"Our offering can be deployed in weeks and allows partners to attack markets that were previously unreachable."

Senior management at telecoms product recycling specialist DTC International have completed a management buyout following the company's founder and chairman Tony Jones's decision to retire.

James Norden has taken over as CEO after many years of service with the company in a variety of roles.

The new board of directors aim to expand DTC's global reach, its portfolio of services and the management team, while continuing to deliver a value proposition built around telecom lifecycle management.

Norden said: "We will reduce operating costs, maximise investment recovery, ensure brand protection and support environmental sustainability initiatives for a significant global customer base."

He also noted that DTC's core services are focused on recovering, re-engineering, re-selling and recycling a broad range of telecommunications equipment, ranging from customer premises equipment, fixed line/wireless operator networks and private dedicated networks to data centres and copper cable infrastructure.

Talk Straight is certain to blip larger on reseller radar screens following the roll out of a £200 incentive scheme for new and existing channel partners on the sale of leased lines, EoFTTC or EFM.

Established in 2007 Talk Straight belongs to a select group of Fortinet Managed Security Service Providers enabling it to offer additional benefits such as a cloud-based multi-threat protection service.

Talk Straight's incoming Partner Manager Rod Lawrence (pictured) has 15 years channel experience under his belt and he is keen to emphasise the company's service delivery and provisioning levels as stand-out attributes. "We are determined to set ourselves apart from other companies," he said.

Service Delivery Manager Sara Arrowsmith also prioritises the implementation of services to deadlines and key to success is Talk Straight's collaborative relationships with its suppliers.

"It's not always straight forward to juggle the companies we rely on to meet delivery deadlines," she stated. "But our close relationships with supplier partners and our proactive service delivery team ensure that service delivery is fully optimised."

This formula for achieving success has been recognised by ISPA which crowned Talk Straight with its Best Business Use of Cloud 2014 accolade.

The £200 incentive scheme runs until the end of January and deals must be based on a minimum 36 month contract. Incentives are payable on installation of lines and there is no limit to how many rewards Talk Straight will offer per company or person.