Comms Dealer

Nimans is stocking a multimedia connectivity hub from Mediacom that enables users to connect tablets, PCs, smartphones, laptops, games consoles and other media platforms.

Available in a variety of connectivity options, colours and finishes, the Bluetooth enabled devices boast 3D and also wireless HDMI support, and is a fully CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) compatible multimedia connectivity station.

"Mediacom connectivity panels are transforming in-room technology and enhancing the user experience in a wide range of companies and organisations including hotels around the world," said Andy Winfield, Purchasing Director at Nimans. "This is product is exclusive to Nimans, easy to install and features an earthed mains connection."

Douglas Gilstrap, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Strategy, will resign from his role with Ericsson, effective August 1, 2014, and leave Ericsson's Executive Leadership Team.

Gilstrap has been developing Ericsson's global business strategy over the past five years and was important in its mergers & acquisitions activities. 

The process to find a new Head of Strategy for the Ericsson Group will start immediately. He has also played a key role in dissolving the ST-Ericsson joint venture and integrating the thin modems business into Ericsson. Since 2013 he also serves as Chairman of Business Unit Modems.

Hans Vestberg, CEO and President of Ericsson, said: "Douglas has been instrumental in shaping Ericsson's strategy with his broad industry knowledge, business development and transactional skills during the five years that he has been with the company. He has played a leading role in all M&A and key commercial activities during these years, strengthening Ericsson's position across all business segments."

Outsourcing activity in EMEA has made its best start to the year since 2010, with both contract value and counts up by double digits, says a researcher. But business process outsourcing is in decline.

The ISG Outsourcing Index for Q1 saw the annual EMEA contract value at €2.4 bn - up 10% quarter-on-quarter and 29% year-on-year; 165 contracts were awarded in total - up 21% year-on-year.

Growth was largely supported by five mega relationships - contracts valued at more than 80 million euro - signed in the region this quarter, including contracts in the UK, France and the Nordics, a marked increase from two such deals in each of the first and fourth quarters of 2013.

With more than half of all global outsourcing activity concentrated in EMEA, both by ACV and contract counts, the region continues to dominate outsourcing activity in the global market.

The majority of contracts awarded in EMEA were new scope, accounting for 76% of all contract value in the region, an increase of 48% year-on-year and the highest quarterly value in four years. Conversely, restructuring values declined by one third both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year.

The IT Outsourcing market continued to dominate the EMEA market. The 2bn euro of ITO ACV awarded in the first quarter was up 18% quarter-on-quarter, and accounted for a full 85% of the overall EMEA market. The 127 ITO contracts signed during this period was the region's highest number ever recorded in a single quarter.

By contrast, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market declined for the third successive quarter, with modest values recorded in ACV of 370m euro and contract counts (38).

John Keppel, partner and president, ISG North Europe, said: "The EMEA market has had a strong start in 2014. Activity levels in the region remain high and the return of mega-relationship awards in the quarter boosted the market values.

"Although these larger contracts have a strong role to play in the market, the smaller deal size brackets will continue to grow more sharply as enterprises opt for greater flexibility and more specialised services from a greater number of providers.

"Multi-sourcing, increasing competition among providers and lower technology costs will continue to be the factors that drive the market for the foreseeable future."

The UK continued its strong showing, with ACV of just over 1bn euro awarded, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 33% and up 66% year-on-year. The 59 contracts recorded was the highest number of contract awards in a quarter over the last three years.

Germany saw a slight dip in contract values for the quarter, with around 330m euro in ACV recorded, down slightly quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. However, contract counts increased by 21% qtr/qtr and rose 52% compared with the weaker-than-usual first quarter of 2013.

France, driven by mega-relationship awards, experienced an impressive jump in market values for the quarter. The 630m euro in ACV awarded placed France as the second biggest market in EMEA this quarter. France saw a growth of almost 300% qtr/qtr as it marked its best first quarter ever by both contract value and number of awards.

IT infrastructure provider Softcat amassed revenues of £395.8m in its 2013 financial year, up 30% up on 2012. Gross profit grew 25% year-on-year in line with growth in operating expenditure of 27%, resulting in £28.2m normalised operating profit. This represents an increase of 22% on the previous year and a 7.1% return on sales.

In the last three financial years Softcat has increased turnover by 172% from £145.8m to £395.8m and operating profit has increased 174% in the same period, representing 40% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) for both metrics.

This has been achieved organically and against the backdrop of an industry showing low single digit growth figures for the period.

Softcat's growth has largely been achieved by maintaining and growing its existing accounts, by developing its offering and by winning large numbers of new accounts. In the last financial year the company traded with a record 1,750 new accounts.

Softcat continues to enjoy strong growth in its traditional SMB business and commercial mid-market heartland, and this is now being augmented by very strong growth in the public sector market and increasingly larger enterprise customers in the commercial sector.

In the last financial year the company achieved double digit growth in all of its core areas of business. Particularly strong growth was achieved in the data centre infrastructure and managed services areas.

This was partially due to the transition in the market to cloud-based and notably private cloud-based solutions. Softcat offers the component parts and services for customers to build their own clouds and equally the company offers managed services to provide cloud-based infrastructure for customers. The company also benefited from the shift in the market to more centralised computer solutions and increasingly diverse mobility solutions, with the resulting high demand for world-class connectivity, networking and security solutions.

The company recruited over 200 new employees, the majority of which joined on its graduate intake programme. It recruited new staff in all areas of the business and for each of its Marlow, Manchester and London locations. The company was named as the 4th Best Workplace in the UK and the 10th Best Workplace in Europe by the Best Workplaces organisation for its size category. Staff numbers increased from 432 on 31 July 2012 to 558 on 31 July 2013.

Martin Hellawell, Executive Chairman, said: "Our formula remains very much the same - employ lots of great people with the right attitude, strive to be a great place to work for our employees and provide world-class customer service. That's our focus as well as constantly and relentlessly trying to improve every part of the business and taking full advantage of every opportunity the changing market gives us.

"The financials are just a result of sticking to that formula. Bringing in Colin Brown as our Managing Director at the beginning of the financial year has significantly strengthened the Softcat leadership team and I have been incredibly impressed by the commitment, adaptability and enthusiasm demonstrated by all the Softcat employees throughout the financial year. There is tremendous momentum running throughout the company and while we still have so much to improve on, the outlook looks extremely positive."

Colin Brown, MD, added: "2013 was a year of great progress for Softcat. We won a record number of new customers, recruited more new talent into the business than ever before, and delivered our best ever customer satisfaction results.

"As the new man on the block I have been taken aback by the dynamism of the company, the friendliness of the employees and the overall spirit that is pervasive in Softcat. The relationships we enjoy with one another as team members as well as with customers and partners are second to none and I am sure that is fuelling our growth.

"But we have just started our journey in many aspects of the business and we have a very clear road map ahead with absolutely no shortage of opportunity or work to do. I'm personally relishing the challenge ahead of us and thank all the Softcat employees, customers and partners for their fantastic support in my first year at Softcat."

ANT Telecom has implemented a Hytera digital radio solution for Eurotunnel, providing full site communication.

The solution will be utilised at the Folkestone site by traffic marshals within four different divisions - tourist, HGV1, HGV2 and motorway, allowing communication between the teams and the control centre.
 
Eurotunnel also required a new emergency channel functionality that would provide priority emergency communication spanning all four divisions.

ANT Telecom also advised Eurotunnel on the additional functionality our solution could offer, including dispatching, lone worker with location detection, messaging and automatic alarm messaging in order to provide a robust and future-proof communication solution.
 
John Keefe, Eurotunnel, said: "We selected ANT Telecom because of the specification of the devices provided, specifically the high IP level, IP67 and multi-lines display.

"Furthermore, the solution appealed to us because of the emergency call functionality and the possibility to upgrade the system if needed in future, particularly the GPS localisation, trunk mode and man-down alarm functionality."
 
Klaus Allion, MD, ANT Telecom, added: "Digital radio has, in recent years, reenergised the radio market and has given users the chance to replace traditional analogue radio systems with a more effective multi-purpose digital offering.
 
"However, we need to work in a collaborative fashion in order to identify the key issues to provide an effective, future-proof solution that truly meets the needs of our customers and their various stakeholders."

An unbeatable demonstration of significant added value to the EMC market generation campaign helped to secure Avnet Technology Solutions EMC Distributor of the Year in the UK.

The presentation was made during the EMC UK 2014 business partner kick-off meeting held at BAFTA headquarters, the home of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in London. ??Avnet received the accolade in recognition of its proactive partner engagement with EMC onboarding, its marketing campaigns and lead generation activities, and the recently launched Altitude programme.

Altitude is aimed at promoting EMC storage and back-up devices for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) and includes an online portal for new and existing Avnet business partners. ??Terry Beale, channel director at EMC, said: "Avnet continues to demonstrate value to EMC and our partners. The Avnet team made a significant impact on the launch of our new VNX technology and range of backup solutions.

"With Altitude, Avnet has created an easy-to-use portal for partners to configure and price EMC storage and backup solutions and help gain market share."??Lee Bushnell, EMC business manager, Avnet Technology Solutions, UK, added: "Avnet's EMC team works with business partners to drive demand creation initiatives and provide technical and commercial enablement throughout the sales cycle.

"The award recognises Avnet's commitment to accelerating the success of our partners and our longstanding partnership with EMC." ?

Jane Wheeler has joined Sennheiser as Reseller Sales Manager with a remit to work closely with resellers to improve their knowledge of Sennheiser products and promotions, including reseller training, events and focus days as well as supporting resellers with end users.

"Having sold Sennheiser for several years, I'm pleased and proud to take on the responsibilities of Reseller Sales Manager," said Wheeler.

"Sennheiser Communications is dedicated towards providing the highest quality Unified Communications headsets, and promoting such a growing market across our resellers is an exciting opportunity that I'm very much looking forward to."

Jane Craven, Sales Director, said: "Jane's track record in this sector makes us confident in her abilities to manage an area that is a strong focus for us in 2014."

Customer confusion is now rated as the biggest issue facing the video conferencing industry, claims new research.

The study found that 58% of channel partners believe customers are baffled by the many options available to them such as videoconferencing, web conferencing with integrated video, and unified communications.

In a bid to clarify the issues Wainhouse Research and Imago Group are to host the Business Breakthrough Events in London on May 29th and Paris on June 3rd.

"Deploying a new video communication service throughout an organisation involves significant investment in time and money, thereby making the decision of which service to go for incredibly important," said Wayne Mason, event director and head of group products and marketing at Imago Group.

"While it is positive that channel partners have recognised that businesses are confused about the wide range on offer, they must now take responsibility and act immediately to solve the problem."

Just four months after joining Peach Telecom as Development Director, Andy Miles has become Sales Director having already delivered over six figures worth of profit to the business.

Peach has also bolstered its marketing arm with the appointment of Lauren McManus as Marketing Executive. She previously worked in Paris for Alcatel-Lucent.

The appointments coincide with a rebranding exercise to incorporate the company's new managed IT offering. The company also has plans to push into larger markets and has appointed Tom Houston as Head of Mid-Market.

Peach CEO Darren Scott-Healey said: "It is an exciting time of transformation for Peach with its expansion and the development of the Peach brand."

Peach has been listed three times on the Sunday Times Tech Track league table which ranks Britain's 100 privately owned technology companies with fastest growing sales over the latest three year period.

The firm has also appeared twice on the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 list.

Pictured (l-r) Tom Houston, Lauren McManus, Andy Miles.

Former ATC Group chief Alex Tupman has led a MBO at Connect Communications in a bid to build a £100m managed IT services business. Tupman has backing from private equity firm Lloyds Development Capital (LDC). He will work alongside CTO Martin Cross and CFO David Rose and the existing management team and staff.

A previous Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year winner, Tupman takes the role of CEO at Connect.

From the company's base and network operations centre near Silicon Roundabout in London, and from operations around Europe, Connect supports high-profile global enterprises on a pan-EMEA basis such as Barclays, Coca-Cola, CSC and HP.

Tupman said: "It has taken a time to find such a high quality, well respected and differentiated business as Connect.

"The business has invested heavily in intelligent infrastructure and toolsets within its service centre that can support enterprise clients on a global basis.

"We aim to invest further in Connects' asset light but technology-rich capability, expanding our global reach, our channel and our penetration of the enterprise space, as well as expanding our service portfolio."

Arman Khan who, in conjunction with Andy Thomas and Martin Cross has led Connect's growth, will consult for the business for a short period.

He added: "Martin's perceptive technology direction has enabled Connect to build a well differentiated and profitable business.

"Adding Alex's experience and leadership gives Connect a strong management team, plus the additional financial firepower from LDC to deliver on its strategy."