Comms Dealer

SBL is to offer Swisscom hosted telephony solutions following a link-up with the European telco.

In an early market success SBL is delivering a cloud-based telephony solution into one of the leading global Hotel Group's UK headquarters, with plans to expand this solution to over 100 of the company's UK hotels over the next few years.

The alliance with the Swisscom Hospitality Services division is the first to be made by SBL following a change management programme and significant new investment.

"Mobile phones and smart devices have disrupted the old model for hotel phone systems," said Adam Hardman, Sales Director at SBL.

"Telephony systems are quickly becoming a drain on hotel resources, rather than a means for adding value to a hospitality service. New hosted and cloud-based models, especially ones where costs are directly related to occupancy, can tip the balance back in the hotel's favour by reducing expenditure.

"You can't remove phones from hotel rooms completely because not only are they an important safety feature, but they are still a primary means for guests to contact guest services. What you can do is make the operational cost relative to your usage, and build a solution to support new applications that can offer cost-saving opportunities or new revenue streams."

Chris Brassington, CEO of SBL, added: "Across different markets and geographies the shift from capex to opex models is offering competitive advantages to many businesses.

"It's not just hotels where pay-per-use models work - schools and universities can see dramatic savings during the holidays and retailers can scale their usage up or down in response to fluctuations in the market or seasonal demand."

Distributor ASM Technologies has passed over £15 million worth of IT spend from the IT channel directly to SMEs since the launch of its SME Access Service just over one year ago, representing over 51% of ASM's sales in the year.

The SME Access Service, which ASM launched in October 2013, was designed to help safeguard margins in the IT channel in light of increasing government requirements to award significant proportions of public sector IT contracts to SMEs.

The service provided SIs and VARs with access to one of the UK's most extensive portfolios of technology suppliers on ASM's distribution network, allowing them to meet the government requirements while retaining margin.

At the same time as helping the channel to continue to participate in large public sector tenders, the SME Access Service introduced sizeable new revenue opportunities for niche SME suppliers.

Often lacking the resources, contacts and proven track records of delivering large-scale projects that the large SIs and VARs benefit from, many niche SMEs are locked out of participating in large public sector contracts.

By joining ASM's agile distribution network of 1,200+ SME vendors and other suppliers, many niche SMEs have been able to participate in many of the major public sector IT projects in 2014 tendered by the large public sector SIs and VARs.

Iain Tomkinson, sales director at ASM Technologies, said: "We discovered last year that many resellers were finding it difficult to meet the government's new requirements without seeing significant drops in their profitability.

"The sheer cost of on-boarding so many SMEs onto their supply chain just to remain compliant was proving too much to bear, so they were looking for a solution.

"By taking advantage of our existing supplier relationships and agile channel infrastructure, the SME Access Service has proven to be the solution the channel needs.

"With over 1,200 SMEs available through just one supplier relationship, many resellers have been able to continue to bid successfully for government contracts, and with over £15 million of sales to SMEs, we have been able to help many innovative companies to grow during this time as well."

Research released by Ovum argues that an increase in the influx of customer communication, from phone calls to text messages, emails and tweets, have necessitated a shift towards integrated communications and customer management.

Organisations will have to embrace this if they want to drive employee productivity and improve customer experience, said the firm.

The white paper, entitled 'Gaining Competitive Advantage with Intelligent Communications', examines how organisations can exploit intelligent communications to drive productivity, improve customer experience, ensure compliance and deliver cost savings.

Steve Haworth, CEO of TeleWare, which commissioned the research, commented: "Organisations must consider using intelligent communications to maintain and strengthen their competitive positioning.

"Not only that, it can enable them to realise the strategic benefits that would otherwise require significantly greater investment or large scale communications infrastructure transformation."

The report discussed the benefits of moving to an integrated solution in a modern workplace, including improved employee engagement, businesses agility, process efficiency and improved customer satisfaction.

"It also discusses the leading IT trends for 2014-15, which are focused on data capture, risk management, security, compliance and the continued popularity of bring your own device (BYOD).

"IT departments are under increasing pressure to combine existing resources and infrastructure with emerging technologies, in a seamless, cost-effective and time-effective manner," added Haworth.

"With the increasing popularity of BYOD and smartphones emerging as a key medium for customer service communications, enterprises need to provide appropriate tools to deliver a compelling and well-integrated customer experience via mobile devices to remain competitive."

Saurabh Sharma, Senior Analyst at Ovum, added: "The real value from intelligent communications lies in its ability to bridge the gaps between traditional services, mobile communications, and emerging collaboration applications. This in turn can then support business growth through analysing the captured data.

"Intelligent communications allows enterprises to extract maximum value from their investments in communications infrastructure and collaboration platforms."

4net Technologies have been awarded Avaya Platinum Partner status - the vendor's highest level of partner accreditation in its new Connect programme.

4net Technologies has also retained Partner in Customer Excellence status, based on a higher number of Customer Satisfaction responses and at a significantly higher score of at least 88%.

Richard Pennington, 4net's Managing Director, said: "Over the past 18 months we have won a number of awards in recognition of our dedication to service and project delivery.

"Our customer satisfaction scores, a 99.96% customer retention rate and a reputation that has been built through providing implementation and support services to other Avaya partners added weight to Avaya's decision.

"But above all the award is a testament to all the work and effort that everyone in the company has put into building our service reputation and technical ability, which has enable us to be considered as one of the leading players in our industry."

Futuristic tools and technologies like augmented reality, virtual holography and the Internet of Everything will shape the office of the future, and the interplay of social and cloud systems with these technologies will drive greater collaboration at enterprises, according to Frost & Sullivan.

"The changing communication patterns of users and the need to collaborate anytime and anywhere has led to the evolution of next generation technologies," said Frost & Sullivan Information & Communication Technologies Senior Research Analyst Vaishno Devi Srinivasan.

"Mega trends such as urbanisation, smart cities, the growing dominance of Gen Y, and increasing network convergence demand the infusion of next-gen technologies into the UC framework."

Since the required back-end infrastructure that will enable this transition to a smart workplace is expected to be complex, the traditional UC ecosystem must embrace next generation technology vendors. Market participants will have to partner with or acquire firms that are specialists in emerging technologies to accelerate the delivery of integrated services.

"The adoption of augmented reality, Internet of Things, and social networks has caught on in the retail, manufacturing, defence, education, healthcare and automotive sectors, offering a multitude of opportunities for integration with UC," observed Srinivasan. "The vendor ecosystem must replicate this success story across enterprises, developing strong application specific use cases to build a robust value proposition for a digital workplace."

As people, processes and things get connected, stringent protocols need to be put in place for object recognition, tracking and rendering mechanisms, noted Srinivasan. Parameters to both guard and manage devices must be fully context aware for a relevant connected environment, said the analyst.

The market for UC solutions and services is undergoing a transformation with large enterprises and SMEs turning to new ways of purchasing, deploying and managing business communications technology, according to Ovum, and cloud-based communications services are among the root causes of this transformation, believes the analyst firm which has identified four trends in the UC market that it says will have the biggest impact on businesses in 2015.

The market for UC solutions is, and will remain, diverse, despite consolidation: There is consolidation around a few top vendors that enterprises will nearly always consider when expanding or replacing their existing business communications solutions. At the same time, the market is large and diverse, and there will be plenty of opportunities for second- and third-tier players not only to exist but to thrive.

Hosted UC services are becoming mainstream, particularly among large enterprises: Enterprises are no longer simply curious about cloud-based UC services, but are ready to invest in them. In large enterprises, hosted UC services often sit alongside premise-based solutions, either for a set transitional period or for the long term. This will create more market opportunity for hosted communications services, but will potentially complicate deployment and management.

Video conferencing is becoming ubiquitous: A wide range of video-capable UC clients, web-conferencing platforms, and consumer applications are now used in the workplace. End users are more familiar with videoconferencing software than ever before, and are demanding access to it. However, the sheer number of systems, applications, and services that facilitate corporate videoconferencing is making interoperability a significant challenge.

Hosted video conferencing is undergoing a transformation as providers introduce new services and revamp existing ones: Operators are revamping the hosted services that they have long sold to enterprises, while also introducing a new set of video services through partnerships, acquisitions, and internal development. Meanwhile, new providers are trying to establish themselves through differentiated services and videoconferencing offerings that are more tightly integrated with other types of communications solutions in use within the enterprise.

Brian Riggs, principal analyst of enterprise services at Ovum, said: "Enterprises considering UC solutions in 2015 will encounter a market undergoing considerable change. Video will become ubiquitous as consumerisation, WebRTC, and other factors make videoconferencing available from any application and any device. Meanwhile UC services will become better enabled to support complex hybrid cloud deployment models."

This winter is forecast to be one of the coldest in decades yet one in eight UK businesses do not have a disaster recovery plan in place in the event of adverse weather, according to research by Daisy Group.

Despite the growth of mobile business technology like cloud computing, adverse weather conditions prevent an estimated three million workers from completing their normal work responsibilities, says the firm.

The study found that a third (31%) of UK businesses were affected by transport problems, power cuts or broadband and phone line failures caused by inclement weather over the last two years. Of those, 40 per cent did not have a business continuity plan in place, leaving their staff unable to work from home or from another location.

Tim Meredith, Director of UC and Mobility at Daisy, said: "Too many businesses think that they are impervious to floods or adverse weather conditions, but as our research found it affects nearly a third of companies operating in the UK.

"Staff safety is understandably a business' number one concern, as workers cannot be expected to put themselves at risk in hazardous travelling or working conditions, so having a back-up plan makes good business sense.

"Although not every organisation is tech-savvy, most IT departments' servers today are virtualised, meaning disaster recovery plans are quite easy and cost-effective to create. The cloud, for example, can be used to enable staff to work from almost any location with an internet connection."

To assist businesses with continuity planning, Daisy is hosting a Twitter Q&A on the subject on 4th December.

Businesses can post questions using the hashtag #bizcontinuity and have them answered by a panel of tech experts, including Daisy's Director of Cloud and Hosting, and Director of Unified Communications & Mobility.

Logicalis Group is to buy Inforsacom, a German IT services and solutions provider of database, storage and back-up solutions and services with operations in the major economic centres of Germany, and works with partners including Oracle, EMC, IBM, HP, HDS and Symantec.

Logicalis' existing operation in Germany will be significantly boosted by the acquisition which will expand its presence in the German IT market and provide it with the business to scale the operations in that geography.

Mark Rogers, President and COO of Logicalis Group, said: "Storage and database are two segments that are showing rapid growth in Germany, and we view this acquisition as the best move towards broadening our IT solutions and services portfolio and position us as a significant player in the German IT market."

Gigaset pro has unwrapped its first IP-based video telephone with a touchscreen display designed for business users and sold exclusively through the channel.

Designed for professional and vertical market applications, Maxwell 10 integrates telephony and video conferencing solutions for either hosted or traditional IP-based PBX and collaborative tools.

The new product is available exclusively through UK channel partners served by four distributors including Nimans, Nuvola, Provu and Corptel.

"Our research suggests that for want of a better alternative, sectors such as hospitality and front desk services are using PCs and tablets that are not designed for heavy duty telephony usage and lack traditional call management features," said Jonathan Beatson, Head of Sales and Marketing for Gigaset pro.

"Running on Android 4.2.2, Maxwell 10 offers the core call management features found across the Gigaset range with the additional benefits of accessing the wider range of Android applications via Google Playstore.

"With this new product we are opening up more opportunities for our channel partners to sell into new markets and build exciting services that are designed for business usage without the compromises imposed by consumer grade tablets."

The Maxwell 10 is also suitable for meeting rooms. It comes with a front-facing HD camera (720p), an integrated microphone, three speakers - one bass and two tweeters - and HD audio to reduce delays and echoes.

The Maxwell 10 is also equipped with technologies such as Bluetooth, HDMI, USB, WiFi and Ethernet to allow connection of external devices such as an extra conference loudspeaker, headset or access control equipment.

Manchester-based developer of telephony applications for business, Xarios Technologies, has extended its OEM partnership agreement with Mitel Networks to supply the Xarios Phone Manager with all future shipments of the Mitel MiVoice Office 250.

The new product will be called Mitel Phone manager.

Xarios Phone Manager improves the user's interaction with their telephone to the point where they don't need to touch the telephone to make or receive calls: The result is improved productivity by delivering the right information to the desktop in a manner that requires minimum training.

Xarios has been supplying the Phone Manager application with UK shipments of Mitel MiVoice Office 250 (formerly Mitel 5000 and Mitel MiVoice Office) since 2007 and this new arrangement extends the reach of this supply agreement to all shipments of MiVoice Office 250 worldwide.

The existing arrangement has proved to be a successful partnership for the two vendors with more than 4,000 sites deploying Xarios Phone Manager in the UK to date.

Chris Harris, Managing Director, Xarios, commented: "The supply of the Mitel Phone Manager is the first step in an ongoing programme to add further components of the Xarios application portfolio as fully integrated components of the Mitel Mivoice Office 250 product range.

Xarios products are designed to help organisations drive up efficiency and performance and delivery."