Comms Dealer

The mobile industry will fight 'tooth and nail' against government proposals that would force them to share their networks, says industry commentator, Adrian Barnard, Managing Director of Prime Networks.

He told BBC News that while the plans announced by Culture Secretary Sajid Javid to extend mobile coverage to rural areas were laudable, the idea of national roaming would not work.

"It's a great objective but I think the proposal, as it stands, will be fought tooth and nail by the the industry. If I've spent a lot of money building up my network, billions of pounds in the last year or two for 4G licences and networks, I'm not going to share it with my competitors.

"The Minister should be aware that there's a massive opportunity here, I mean a real economic and possibly political opportunity if they get this right.

"There are national players available who can deliver these services to rural communities - BT Group, which owns Openreach, the UK's national network of telephone and Internet connectivity, bought a 4G licence.

"I think the Minister should talk to industry experts and people in the business who are used to working out solutions that deliver group benefits."

Avaya has revamped its Connect Channel Partner programme and put a spotlight on skills levels within Avaya collaboration technologies. The vendor has revised the requirements for achieving Silver, Gold and Platinum level status and the introduction of new Solution Experts designations - Enterprise UC and Contact Centre, Mid-market UC and Contact Centre, Networking and Video.

To achieve the Solution Expert designation in any one of these areas, partners need to acquire credentials in sales and design, achieve certain revenue thresholds as proof of their experience, and demonstrate customer satisfaction. The Silver, Gold and Platinum level status will be determined based on the number of Solution Expert designations achieved by each partner company.

The programme supports both capex and opex sales models, allowing channel partners to support premise, cloud and hybrid cloud models. They can also take a 'full stack' approach to the Avaya solution portfolio, or they can focus on a particular area such as networking or contact centre and still differentiate their expertise and gain the financial benefits for their solution area.

The programme changes go into effect on October 1st, 2014 with Avaya's fiscal 2015, allowing partners a transition year.

Andy Litherland, vice president, European Channels, Avaya, said: "Business challenges require the expertise of a trusted partner who understands how technology can be applied to achieve the desired business outcome. It's rare that a customer will require a single isolated product.

"The changes to Avaya Connect address what we as a vendor need to do to encourage our channel partners to develop the expertise to help ensure customer needs are met to the highest level of their satisfaction and reward them for doing so."

Jamie Wood, president, Avatel, added: "We believe that when you migrate to a program that is based on skills and value and not just revenue, you create a competitive differentiator based on partner competency.

"The volume-to-value transformation rewards partners that are aligning with Avaya's growth strategies and strategic products in the areas of networking, video and security."?

Daisy Wholesale has completed the line up of its new product directors, who, according to Daisy Wholesale MD Terry O'Brien, will bring a fresh focus and expertise to the channel offering.

"Earlier this year I talked about my aspiration for a more product-centric approach and to do that we needed knowledge and experience across our portfolio," said O'Brien. "Now that we have all our product directors in place, I believe that we can truly start to showcase our potential as a provider of integrated products, applications and propositions."

Lee Broxson, Product Director for Data
A new face to the Daisy Group, Broxson leaves his role as Head of Sales at Griffin to concentrate all his efforts on building a high quality data offering for the reseller market. With 18 years experience working for ISPs, Broxson has built up a wealth of experience and knowledge in all aspects of the channel, from supplier through to end-user.

Daisy Wholesale's dream team

Graham Harris, Product Director for Cloud
Moving from his former role as Head of Sales at Splicecom, the focus of Harris' new role will be to identify new cloud-based products and services for Wholesale's portfolio. Covering Daisy Wholesale's hosted voice platform (HVX), virtual hosted desktops (HDS) and various other cloud-based applications, Harris will be delivering the next generation of downstream revenue opportunities to the channel.

Alex Mawson, Product Director for Voice
A familiar face around the Daisy camp, Mawson is something of a Daisy veteran as one of the original employees when the telecoms business was born. vBefore moving over to the Wholesale side of the telecoms group, Mawson spent the majority of his time as Technical Director in the Retail arm. In his new role as Voice Product Director, he will be using his well-earned experience of IT and voice technology to continuously enhance Wholesale's telephony offering, to ensure they are consistently at the forefront of change.

Andrew Wilford, Commercial Director & Product Director for Mobile
Another Daisy Wholesale convert, is Andrew Wilford, former Head of Commercial and Mobile at Daisy Communications.vAs Commercial Director & Product Director for Mobile, Wilford has a big task ahead of him as he focuses his efforts on the continued development of compelling mobile propositions. Coupled with this will be a change in the way that Daisy Wholesale brings those offers to market, simplifying the purchasing process for resellers and delivering exceptional results.vWilford has already made his mark with the introduction of the business' most distinctive mobile offering to date, 'The One & Only', which has not only transformed Wholesale's mobile business but also the perception of selling mobile among the reseller community.

Richard Beeston, Product Director for Partner Services
An important focus for Daisy Wholesale this year is its provision of IT and professional services to the reseller market. To champion this, Vodafone's New Product Introduction Team Manager, Richard Beeston, has joined as the business' newest recruit. In his new role, Beeston will utilise his 15 years of telco experience to create an industry-leading professional services proposition - the cherry on the cake for Wholesale's thriving portfolio of products and services.

C4L Group Holdings the parent company of IT infrastructure specialists C4L, has acquired CloudSpec.

The acquisition gives CloudSpec inside access to C4L's coreTX network, meaning a costly part of the business can now be removed and efficiency will significantly improve with positive revenue forecast generated.

In turn, C4L now has a new service offering - scalable cloud backup, archive and storage.

Archie Maddocks, Service Delivery Director of CloudSpec has now been appointed as Operations Director of C4L.

Simon Mewett, CEO of C4L Group Holdings, said: "There was a twofold reason for the acquisition of CloudSpec. Firstly, CloudSpec has enormous potential through leveraging C4L's coreTX network; and secondly, our first Director-level appointment of Archie Maddocks as Operations Director of C4L not only strengthens our team as he brings with him a wealth of experience in Operations, but he also has strong commercial acumen which compliments the senior management team at C4L.

"It is a strategic goal to expand our products and services through acquisitions which offer both our customers and our channel partners the leading edge in the industry.

"So, to bring CloudSpec under C4L Group Holdings and welcome Archie to the team gives me great pleasure as I look forward to a fast-growing profitable year with many more happy customers."

Maddocksadded: "I have worked with C4L closely over the last four years with a previous company and over the last six months we have been in formal discussions about bringing CloudSpec under C4L Group Holdings.

"This way I can put my skills to best use directing the Operations within C4L and CloudSpec. By combining CloudSpec technology with the coreTX network we can deliver a highly effective cloud based storage and backup service."

Inclarity has extended its hosted telephony solution to include UC capabilities .

Inclarity Hosted Unified Communications delivers call control from the desktop, personal address books, recent calls & call history, real-time presence, contact popping and integration into all of the leading desktop, CRM and Accounting applications such as Outlook, Lotus, Lync, Google Contacts, Salesforce.com and SAGE.

Enzo Viscito, Managing Director, Inclarity, said: "With Inclarity Hosted UC organisations can gain a real productivity improvement from their staff while significantly transforming the service they deliver to their customers."

Video conferencing revenue experienced a strong seasonal decline in the first quarter of 2014, but it remains positive on a year-over-year basis, noted Infonetics Research in its new report.

"The dedicated systems market continues to struggle as companies look for more cost-effective video solutions," said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research.

"This dynamic is driving the PBX-based video market which is delivering all market growth."

The worldwide enterprise video conferencing and telepresence market was dealt a strong seasonal blow in 1Q4, down 22% sequentially. Demand for videoconferencing capabilities remains strong, but buyers' preferences for less costly personal systems is slowing revenue growth.

Sales of PBX-based systems are up 32% in 1Q14 from the year-ago first quarter videophones were once again the fastest growing segment of the hardware endpoint market, with unit shipments increasing 48% in 1Q14 from the same period a year ago.

Growth in Asia Pacific has been slowing, but it is still poised to become the strongest performing region in 2014.

Nimans has stepped up the battle against cold calling with an enhanced version of an exclusive device that now blocks all calls without consent.

Two previous devices are based on blocking pre-programmed numbers but this latest device works in reverse, only allowing calls through that have been previously agreed.

The device can be remotely programmed and has been developed by CPR Global (The Call Prevention Registry) which is the UK's leading anti-nuisance call service provider.

In a further boost the cold calling industry now has a further unlikely 'enemy' in Griff from the hit TV show The Call Centre who has joined CPR in the fight against nuisance calls. Griff is spearheading an 'enough is enough' campaign and has even started his own call blocker business.

Nimans' Purchasing Director, Andy Winfield said: "The CPR Call Blocker is an easy to set-up all-in-one everyday product which helps retain privacy in the home or office, providing Caller ID is active.

"This latest innovation, the Call Blocker Protect+ blocks all calls that are not trusted numbers added to an 'allowed list'. The Protect+ also enables numbers to be added or removed remotely from the designated number list.

"Call blocking technology is becoming big business and offers resellers a great way to add to their existing revenue streams. 85% of people receive nuisance calls. It's an area of the market too big for resellers to ignore."

Exertis Micro-P's three big brand roadshow events saw the distributor bring together expertise from the mobile division's major product labels direct to the channel.

The three events held in Manchester on 14th May, Reading on 15th May, and Glasgow on 22nd May, were fully booked by resellers eager to hear the latest news and insider information direct from both Exertis Micro-P and its stable of big brands.

Speakers on each day came from Samsung, Nokia, LG, Sony, ZTE and Kazam, covering details of their product portfolios available from Exertis Micro-P, as well as top tips for the channel.

Each vendor hosted an informative discussion on the day delivering insights into their market, roadmaps, objection handling, and key sales messaging to ensure sales teams around the country are fully up to date.

Ewan Davies, head of devices at Exertis Micro-P, commented on the events: "We have had a brilliant turnout for all three of these events, and it's easy to see why. It's fantastic to get all our customers from the breadth of the country together to learn and network.

"Also, it is a testament to the solidity of the Exertis Micro-P mobile proposition that we can get all our major vendors together to work with our customers at these events, proving how diverse we are in our product portfolio and how strong our ties to our vendors."

Exertis Micro-P will be running multiple brand roadshows on a quarterly basis going forward.

Markus Schmitt-Fumian has been appointed as CEO of snom technology AG, developer and manufacturer of IP solutions.

This appointment by the snom supervisory board is the latest in a series of internal restructuring moves undertaken during recent months.

Schmitt-Fumian's task, together with Dr. Michael Knieling and Usman Tahir, will be to progressively refocus the company on innovation and future strategy.

Schmitt-Fumian said: "14 years ago, snom introduced OPEN-SIP and has succeeded in recent years in expanding internationally to cover many of the world's most important markets. Based on my international experience, it is my goal to continue this positive growth trend."

Schmitt-Fumian, 46, has previously held the position of Senior VP Business Development & Innovation and other posts at Gigaset AG and at Siemens AG.

Congrats to GCI's CEO Wayne Martin who collected the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award for the Midlands region.
 
This award is considered as one of the most recognised business award programmes in the world, celebrating the UK's most innovative business leaders, held in more than 145 cities and in more than 60 countries worldwide.
 
The candidates are measured on their entrepreneurial spirit and personal integrity, their innovation and strategic direction and their financial performance and national impact.
 
As well as Martin's award win GCI was recognised within its business sector.
 
Martin will compete at the UK finals where the eventual overall UK winner then joins the other global country winners in Monte Carlo to vie for the title of World Entrepreneur Of The Year.