Comms Dealer

Westcon has appointed Ralph Donohue as General Manager for the UK, Ireland & Greece.

He was formerly Managing Director of Paradigm Distribution, a value added distributor in data capture and POS solutions where he transitioned the business into Ingram Micro GmbH, and then became Managing Director of Ingram Micro UK & Ireland (DC/POS).

More recently Donohue has worked with a cloud-based telephony provider defining its go to market strategy and revenue model. He has also worked in the CCTV market with a niche vendor of mobile technologies.

Donohue said: "I have joined at an exciting time and am looking forward to accelerating margins and harnessing market opportunities for partners and vendors."

Children in 20,000 schools across the UK are being invited by Sir Richard Branson to share how technology is supporting their learning and helping to shape futures.

Generation Tech, a state-of-the-nation review of the role that technology plays in education, is being launched today by Virgin Media Business.

The company is calling for submissions from pupils and teachers across the country to answer the Big Digital Question - how schools today are embracing the 21st century classroom and how it can continue to enhance learning tomorrow.

The final study aims to show the deep and long lasting impact technology is already having on the education of our young people, and what the future holds.

Generation Tech will also include the hunt for members for a Digital Youth Council through nominations made by schools. The Council will be a forum for young people to engage directly with leading influencers in education. The students chosen as members will lead The Big Debate in the autumn - the first meeting of the Council - where they will have an opportunity to highlight the issues of greatest importance to them.

Branson said: "As children, we didn't have to tackle the digitalised world but we also didn't have the opportunities that it brings to today's younger generation. We need to embrace technology at every step and make it a force for good as we educate the next generation."

Education Minister Elizabeth Truss said: "Technology is everywhere and it's vital that children understand how to make it work for them. This is why we are introducing rigorous new curricula in maths and computing which will teach children skills like coding and programming along with the maths which underpins computer science. Students need to be confident in both to understand the basis of the modern world and be able to contribute to the future.

"I look forward to seeing the results of the Big Question - who better to ask about what works in the classroom than children themselves."

Mario Di Mascio, executive sales director, Virgin Media Business, added: "Schools across the country are doing a brilliant job in adapting to the digitalisation of our world in classrooms and new teaching methods. Pupils and teachers know better than anyone what is working and where the use of digital technologies can be improved, so it's time that someone stopped to listen and learn from them.

"In the UK, we have a bigger digital economy than any other developed nation and our children will be vital in helping us stay in pole position. We have a duty as a country to help schools achieve great things through technology to make sure we sustain this powerful advantage."

UNIT4 Business Software has appointed James Bouch as its new Head of Public Sector Sales. He will be responsible for a public sector sales team across the UK.

Bouch has over 24 years of experience in technology industry and joins from BT Global Services where he supervised establishing the company's shared services outsourcing business.

Darren Hunt, Sales and Marketing Director (UK & Ireland) of UNIT4 Business Software, said: "The last four years have seen a breakthrough for UNIT4. In particular we have seen larger deals as Agresso has been increasingly adopted by bigger public sector organisations and business process outsourcing partners.

"James' appointment supports this change in UNIT4's journey. His experience will provide even greater value to prospective, new and existing customers."

Westcon Group has stated its intent to acquire Intact Integrated Services, a provider of project, support, and managed services to the ICT and Cisco channel industry. Based in the UK with offices in EMEA, Asia Pacific and the Americas, Intact works with some of the world's largest telcos, OEMs, System Integrators and VARs. 

The firm is a specialist in the Cisco channel and provides white label services and support centered on networking, data centre/cloud and collaboration technologies.

Intact will become a key piece of Weston Group's Global Services Solution Practice, led by Executive Vice President Pedro Galatas. 

"Each of our Practices is designed to help partners benefit from the technology expertise and real-world business solutions we bring to the table," said Dolph Westerbos, Chief Executive Officer, Westcon Group. 

"Intact will become strong foundation in our Services Practice, helping partners generate new revenue streams via value added services."

Formerly a direct subsidiary of Westcon's parent company Datatec, Intact is exclusively partner-focused and offers targeted lifecycle services and project management support primarily to the Cisco channel. 

Alan Rosser, Chief Executive Offer, Intact Integrated Services, added: "Westcon's level of commitment fits perfectly into our 'Create, Deliver, Support' business pillars."

Ericsson's share price fell 5% as it revealed Q1 EBIT rose to 2.6bn Swedish kronor (€280m) from SEK2.1bn (€230m) a year earlier, lower than expected.

Net profit almost doubled to 2.12bn kronor from 1.21bn kronor. Operating income jumped 25% to 2.63bn kronor. Sales dropped to 47.5bn kronor from 52.03bn kronor and undershot forecasts of 50.8bn kronor, hurt by two major North American projects peaking in H1 2013 and by reduced activity in Japan.

The gross margin increased to 36.5% from 32% and topped expectations of 34%. North America sales -23% and North East Asia -19%, although there was growth in China, the Middle East and Latin America. Western Europe was flat.

Huawei expects its enterprise business revenue to reach $10bn in five years it told analysts at its Shenzhen HQ, rising from around $2.45bn in 2013.

It will become more of a cloud company, seeing its carrier business, where revenue growth is slowing, drop to about half its total revenues in 2018 from about 70% in 2013.

Huawei's global service business, part of its carrier operations, is predicted to grow 17% in 2014, from $8.34 bn last year.

The firm also sees its own investment in information technology rising 14% in 2014, with a focus on 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and 5G high-speed mobile networks, and cloud computing, Fan Chen, vice president of accounting, said at the Shenzhen conference.

VMware was busy in Q1, training up its salesforce and engaging its channels with a wider range of product, it has told analysts. And deals are taking longer to close because of the broader ranges.

Excluding Pivotal and divestitures, Q1 total revenue growth was 18% year-over-year, above the midpoint of its guidance range. License revenues of $561m were also up 18% year-over-year. Total reported revenues grew 14% year-over-year in Q1 with license revenues up 15%.

It is pleased with the diversification of the business, it says, with non-standalone vSphere license bookings, again greater than 45% of total licence bookings as compared with greater than 30% in Q1 2013.

Carl Eschenbach, President and Chief Operating Officer: "So we continue grow our business around more of a holistic solution and we continue to see our channel become more skilled at selling solutions like vSOM, which is vSphere with operations management, really embracing this whole notion of no more naked vSphere. So we're pleased with the transactional business and our partners are really getting up-to-speed with selling more of the broader portfolio of products and offerings we have."

VMware invested more heavily than usual in Q1 to ensure the sales force was skilled in selling the newer products, he says. This resulted in fewer actual selling days during the first quarter than originally anticipated

Patrick Gelsinger- Chief Executive Officer: "Having just come off of our Partner Exchange Conference, we haven't given our partners, our channel, a lot of new products that were high-velocity transactable products and vSOM is really the only one. Now, with VSAN plus VDP as well as bringing AirWatch into our channel, we see that we're bring an off a lot more product that they can be selling. The enthusiasm of the transactional channel for these broader products is extremely high."

The Enterprise Licensing Agreements are getting wider in scope, obviously. "ELAs continue to grow as customers look to incorporate all of our products and even some of our new products seeding into it. So as that occurs, we're just in much deeper conversations with our customers. And some of the ELAs close on time as we've always said in a given quarter, some close are early and some actually go out a quarter or two later."

Ingram Micro shares have tumbled after it revealed rising costs in Q1.

It still says it expects sales to grow in low-to-mid single digits in the quarter ending June and the year ending December. It is busy restructuring the European business and closing offices, and reported better growth in Europe, offset elsewhere.

"The company accelerated its strategic investments and ramped up spending ... first quarter earnings per share growth was impacted by the combination of these investments and higher interest and other expenses," it says. Revenue rose 1% to $10.38 billion.

The company's costs rose 10% to $542.2m in the first quarter ended March 31. Net income halved to $24.8m from $49.8m a year earlier.

Maintel has been contracted to deliver 4G and business mobile telephony services to Inspired Dwellings, the national smart home technology consultancy.

Maintel is set to enable Inspired Dwellings with 4G to enhance and increase the speed of communication between the high-end home improvement business and its customers.

Maintel is also faced with the challenge of re-aligning some 40 mobile connections and contracts on a range of different consumer tariffs with varying renewal dates, as well as delivering a considerably higher level of service than Inspired Dwellings has previously experienced.

Ben Tootill from Maintel said: "Our job will be to simplify the management of the Inspired Dwellings mobile estate, re-align its connections and considerably reduce time and costs to the business.

"We will also be implementing 4G to give the business greatly enhanced mobile broadband speed and download capability and ultimately help improve the service Inspired Dwellings delivers to its own customers."

MVNO provider Coms has moved into the expanding ethnic marketplace with its new partnership with Live Telecoms' brand PhoneAfrika.

Coms is providing PhoneAfrika with a SIM only product that offers cheaper call rates to Africans travelling to and living in the UK in order for them to call back home.

David Sutton, Head of Coms Mobile, said: "PhoneAfrika turned to us as they recognised that we are able to offer them reliability, marketing expertise, technical support and that we have access to a large network coverage area."

The initial 2-year agreement will see Coms supplying PhoneAfrika with 50,000 SIMs - 10,000 have already been delivered and are ready for use.

Additionally, Live Telecoms will be accessing another Coms company - Coms Media - by utilising  its capability in marketing PhoneAfrika mobile's new solution.

Victor Kisseih, CEO of PhoneAfrika, said: "This partnership means we can now take our product to market with confidence."