Comms Dealer

Sherborne-based business comms provider Micron Communications has entered a car into this year's Silver Fern Rally in New Zealand (between 8th and 15th November).

The Team Micron car will be driven by MD Jake Scannell with his partner Nina Thompson and children Georgia and Bessy cheering him on.

Scannell will join a competitive field which includes entrants from New Zealand, Australia, Kenya, Ireland and Scotland, as well as eight other drivers from the UK.

This year's Team Micron Car will be a Suzuki Swift and Scannell will be aiming for a podium finish in the Challenge I category class.

"I've been driving rally cars for over 10 years now, competing in classic rallys across the UK," said Scannell.

"The experience of driving against some of the best drivers in the world is fantastic, and what will make it extra special this year will be having my daughters over here to cheer me on."

Micron is also planning a charity 50 mile walk in aid of Julia's House Children's Hospice next summer.

Global network services company Level 3 Communications has named Andrew Crouch as its EMEA President.

He has moved back to his native UK to oversee the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region following the closing of Level 3's acquisition of tw telecom at the end of last month.

He has overall responsibility for the region including strategy, marketing, sales, operations, the network and customer experience.

His remit also includes the GAM (Global Accounts Management) division across all Level 3 regions, which markets to and services global enterprise and wholesale customers.

"Marketing-led, sales-driven and powered by experience are the cornerstones of how we want to drive business in the EMEA region," said Crouch.

Distributor Zycko has signed ObserveIT, a specialist in user activity monitoring, offering tailored analytics, alerting and forensics to address the growing threat of user-based risk.

With a strategy in taking next generation technologies to market and a flexible licensing platform for delivering software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions across Europe, Zycko says it is well equipped to facilitate the distribution of ObserveIT.

Zycko's Group Technical Director, Rob Clark, said: "An increasing number of companies are realising the cost and agility benefits of the cloud, but have concerns over security of data, risk and compliance.

"ObserveIT complements the existing network and storage security offerings within Zycko's vendor portfolio, providing a standalone, cross-platform offering for our partner community."

IT and comms support company Excalibur Communications' investment in service and staff training has paid dividends with a 4.8/5.0 average score rating for its customer service in the first nine months of 2014.

Based on 17,000 customer surveys from support cases that were raised, Excalibur was scored on the skill, speed and effectiveness it delivered to bring about a solution to a customer's question.

"A customer-based 4.8/5.0 rating is a fitting and thoroughly deserved accolade to our in-bound call team," commented Excalibur's Chief Commercial Officer, Andy Tow.

"We work within strict SLAs and have made significant investments in systems and training this year, which has undoubtedly helped attain this very high average score.

"Wherever possible we seek a first-time resolution for our customers, but of course there are always matters that require further investigation.

"To record such a high customer satisfaction rating percentage is proof we believe that we've got it right as a service provider. Nonetheless, we continue to invest. This includes the recent addition of four new support staff and two new apprentices, in order to keep enhancing our customer service."

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London-based technology solutions provider Pensar has joined Daisy Wholesale's partner programme, giving the reseller access to the wholesaler's Internet connectivity, mobile and hosted VoIP services.

Mark Williams, CEO at Pensar, said: "Now we have the capability to offer our customers an even wider range of services to suit their business needs."

Terry O'Brien, Managing Director at Daisy Wholesale, added: "Our strategy is to help resellers take the opportunity that the converging market offers.

"We look to do that with our integrated portfolio of services and our passion for keeping things as simple as possible."

Former EE employee Nick Beesley has joined Exertis' mobile division as Business Manager for Mobile Devices, reporting to Head of Devices Ewan Davies.

Beesley's remit is to range the company's Samsung and Acer mobile phones and tablets, liaising with the Exertis sales team and the vendors to ensure a smooth and relevant flow of product for the channel.

Beesley most recently worked at EE within the retail trading team as the pay monthly trading manager, where he stayed for three years.

Prior to that Beesley was at Dixons Retail where over a six year period he was involved in category management roles within the Dixons travel business.

Beesley said: "With my background and passion within consumer and telco electronics, this commercial role seemed perfect for me.

"With autonomy and ownership over my remit I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the job over coming months."

Mitel has announced its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30th, 2014.

Total revenue increased 102% to $272.4 million from third quarter 2013, primarily as a result of the Aastra acquisition.

Non-GAAP net income for the third quarter of 2014 was $19.0 million, or $0.18 per diluted share, compared to $8.1 million, or $0.14 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2013.

The number of non-GAAP weighted-average common shares outstanding was 104.7 million and 56.6 million, respectively.

Adjusted EBITDA was $34.6 million compared to $19.2 million in the year ago period, due primarily to a combination of EBITDA growth from the legacy Mitel business and EBITDA resulting from the acquisition of Aastra.

Richard McBee, President and Chief Executive Officer, said: "Solid execution in Q3 enabled us to deliver another strong quarter across the board, beating consensus forecasts for revenues and earnings.

"Our cloud segment continues to rapidly grow with year-over-year recurring seat growth of 111%, and for the first time ever, cloud revenue represented more than 10% of Mitel's total quarterly revenues.

"I am pleased with the continued superb execution of our integration program. We are clearly seeing the benefits of our new economies of scale, and our synergies realiaed to date are running ahead of plan."

In the third quarter Mitel continued to see robust cloud growth, installing 107,000 new cloud seats during the quarter, including over 49,000 recurring cloud seats. Mitel's recurring cloud seats increased to 245,000, up 111% and its total installed cloud base increased to over 860,000 seats, up 73% year-over-year.

Steve Spooner, Chief Financial Officer, added: "Our commitment to focus on integration and early realisation of synergies is driving attractive performance improvements.

"We generated solid year-over-year improvement in gross margins, EBITDA and non-GAAP EPS, as well as strong operating cash flow, ending the quarter with a $120 million cash balance.

"Given our 200 basis point year-over-year improvement in gross margin and the progress on our operating expense rationalisation to date, we are confident in our ability to exceed our $20 million synergy target for the current year, and meet our synergy targets for 2015."

Mitel has increased its proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of ShoreTel common stock to $8.50 per share in cash and stock, representing a total equity value of approximately $574 million. Mitel proposes to deliver to ShoreTel shareholders $8.10 per share in cash and $.40 per share in Mitel common shares, or approximately 2.72 million shares.

This increased proposal represents a 31% premium to ShoreTel's unaffected stock price on October 17th, 2014, and a 38% premium to ShoreTel's enterprise value.

The increased proposal was extended to ShoreTel's Board of Directors in a letter from Mitel's President and CEO, Richard McBee.

"We continue to believe that the combination of our two companies offers a compelling opportunity to add sustained value to both organisations, and to solidify our combined leadership position in a highly competitive and rapidly consolidating market," said McBee.

"In addition to the obvious benefit of an immediate and significant premium for ShoreTel shareholders, a combination of our two companies would create far superior value than could reasonably be obtained by ShoreTel as a standalone entity."

London-based IT services and solutions provider Kelway has undertaken the buy-out of all shares held by Core Capital.

The management team, led by founder and CEO Phil Doye, has at the same time announced a significant investment by CDW Corporation which will help extend both firms' ability to deliver IT services and solutions internationally.

With current revenue in excess of $10bn, CDW Corporation has acquired a 35% stake in the Kelway business. In the deal, backed by Barclays and HSBC, Doye and Kelway MD Dan Laws remain the majority shareholders in the business.

Under the new structure, Kelway and CDW plan to integrate more tightly to extend the global supply chain services they provide to customers in Europe and North America.

This will help drive Kelway towards its business objective of achieving over £1bn in annual revenue within the next three years. Together the two organisations will enable customers to realise the benefit of consistent procurement and deployment services across multiple international locations.

Kelway has grown rapidly in both the UK and internationally over recent years, achieving revenues in excess of £500m in 2013/14, reflecting year-on-year growth of 49%.

The company was founded in 1990 by Doye who has since guided Kelway through significant organic growth and a series of successful acquisitions.

Kelway has achieved an aggressive increase in market share for its Data centre Infrastructure business and designed and built its own cloud computing platform called ServiceWorks.

"The investment from CDW will enable us to accelerate towards our £1bn revenue goal." said Doye. "Having worked with CDW for over 18 months on joint client opportunities, this investment feels like a natural next step in our partnership."

Tom Richards, Chairman and CEO of CDW, added, "For more than a year Kelway has been a strategic partner, helping support our customers' growing international business needs.

"The investment solidifies our partnership with Kelway and strengthens our ability to provide a more comprehensive solution to our customers and ensure we deliver a consistent brand experience, regardless of where the solution is delivered."

Kelway has recently been awarded Cisco Global Commercial Partner of the Year and HP Enterprise Partner of the Year. In 2014, Kelway signed a five year Infrastructure Services contract with Atos with an estimated value of £150m.

Kelway was advised in the transaction by William Blair, Reed Smith and PWC.

Daisy Group has approved the interoperability of Yealink's range of handsets for use on its CloudSelect Voice and Hosted Voice Exchange services.
 
Daisy's Director of Architecture and Strategy, Tim Meredith, said: "The partner programme represents an opportunity for us to strengthen our already close relationship with Yealink, as well as enhance our hosted telephony and UC services."
 
Yealink's ITSP Business Development Manager Peter Holland added: "Thorough interoperability testing has confirmed that harnessing Daisy's hosted telephony services with our flagship handsets creates a cutting-edge proposition for end users."
 
Yealink handsets will be supplied to Daisy pre-programmed so that they will automatically connect to the company's provisioning server.