Comms Dealer

Olive Communications has won over 3,000 net-new Vodafone connections since the start of the year. These include wins with UK care provider MiHomecare, innovative healthcare firm Allergan, and business performance consultancy Examplas.

Major industry talent continues to be attracted to Olive, with Spencer Bradshaw, who previously headed up Vodafone's 'Better Ways of Working' program, joining as Olive's Head of Technology and Workplace Transformation. Hafeez Hameed also joins from O2/Telefonica UK where he was a Managing Partner, to become Strategic Acquisitions Director. Both Bradshaw and Hameed will report into Nick Beardsley, Olive's Director of Converged Solutions.

Olive has also moved headquarters, staying in the High Wycombe area, but now occupying a 7,000 square feet office, double the size of its previous location. Because of its continued growth, Olive is also looking to make significant additions to its account management, sales and customer service teams.

Martin Flick, CEO, Olive Communications, said: "Olive goes from strength to strength. We've had a stellar 2013 and have started 2014 in a similar vein.

"We're continuing to see demand from customers wanting flexible and commercially attractive managed mobility services, but also a real uptick in firms looking to us to help them go on the unified communications journey.

"We've got the right people, processes and products in place to deliver this - and its why we're expecting to grow again significantly this year."

SIP telephony specialist Yealink UK is to launch a dedicated sales and support function for ITSPs having recruited former Counterpath EMEA executive Peter Holland to lead its VoIP provider business.

The new Yealink ITSP Partner Programme will be officially unveiled at London's Connected Business Expo next month (Olympia, March 4th-5th 2014). It will offer enhanced support and preferential pricing packages to ITSPs operating in the UK's hosted voice space, including on-site and remote interoperability resources plus free product and technical training and, provision of own-branded manuals and literature.

Because Yealink handsets have a return rate of just 0.01 per cent, the company is also introducing an advanced product replacement service. This will mean that replacement equipment will be made available to the ITSP free of charge allowing the ITSP to immediately send replacement items.

Holland brings over 30 years telecoms experience to Yealink having joined the industry as an apprentice with BT in the early 80s. He has held UK and European channel, distribution and direct sales roles at Newbridge Networks, Alcatel, Huawei and Counterpath Corporation, where his responsibilities included leading business development in the service and hosted voice provider markets throughout EMEA.

Holland said: "It's an exciting time to be joining Yealink . Having worked hard to develop and support a reseller network across the UK and Ireland the time is now right to offer dedicated resources to ITSP and hosted voice service providers.

"Yealink fully appreciates that this is a sector which requires specific support expertise, dedicated resources and real margin generating opportunities. We know we need to provide a compelling proposition to ensure our kit is embraced within, and adds value to, ITSPs approved product portfolios. That is exactly what the Yealink ITSP Partner Programme has been designed to deliver."

The package offered under ITSP Partner Programme will include-plug and-play pre-programming of devices so that they automatically connect to a Yealink server which will identify MAC addresses and automatically redirect to the relevant ITSP's provisioning server.

NewVoiceMedia has been shortlisted in the final of the 2014 UK Cloud Awards in the 'Most Innovative Enterprise Cloud Solution' category, which recognises technology that enables scale change in the nation's largest businesses.

Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, said: "We are delighted to be announced as a finalist. We pride ourselves on the hard work, dedication and innovation involved in developing our cloud contact centre solutions, as they are revolutionising the customer experience. We look forward to hearing what the judges have to say."

The winners will be announced at a ceremony at London's City Hall on 26 February 2014.

Distributor Tech Data has named Jean-Paul (JP) Durand to the new position of vice president, chief ethics and compliance officer. Durand will report to David Vetter, the company's senior vice president, general counsel, as well as the Audit Committee of the company's board of directors.

It follows the lengthy investigation and removal of staff over discrepancies in accounts which cost the company millions of dollars. In this new global role, Durand will lead Tech Data's worldwide ethics and compliance program, including the company's policies and procedures designed to prevent and detect fraudulent conduct, encourage ethical behaviour and a commitment to compliance with the law, and ensure adherence to Tech Data's Code of Conduct.

"Tech Data is committed to sound corporate governance and ethical business practices, and this appointment reflects our continued commitment to legally and ethically conducting business around the world," said Vetter.

Durand has served as Tech Data's vice president, assistant general counsel since May 2011 and has been with Tech Data since 2000. He is also a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional under the Compliance Certification Board standards.

The company also announced that Wayne Hanewicz has been promoted to vice president, assistant general counsel and be responsible for the US legal organisation and report to Vetter.

The company has also appointed a deputy ethics and compliance officer in both its Americas and European regions, reporting directly to Durand. These two new positions will be responsible for managing Tech Data's ethics and compliance program in their respective regions. A new position of trade practice counsel, Europe, will report to Norbert Sourek, the company's general counsel, Europe.

Linksys has expanded its business networking line-up with the first of its business grade wireless access points, designed for businesses to deploy a fast, secure and reliable wireless network or to upgrade an existing wireless infrastructure.

The new access points can be deployed as an access point or range extender. "Many businesses are facing a rapid increase of connected notebooks, smartphones and tablets and an increase in use of multimedia on their networks," said Steven Lin, director of product management for Linksys Business.

"The Linksys Business Wireless-N Access Points use the widely adopted 802.11n wireless technology to provide a wireless network and support features such as Power over Ethernet for flexible placement, plus Rogue AP Detection and 802.11X supplicant for enhanced security.

"Wi-Fi is far more crucial to businesses these days. Wireless internet allows employees to work anywhere, have fast and free access to the web on mobile devices and enables new experiences such as voice over IP and video conferencing.

"At the same time hotels, retail stores and restaurants use Wi-Fi for hospitality purposes and in production, and logistics facilities it is used to connect handheld devices for real-time inventory control."

Channel Telecom has staged a roundtable dinner for a dozen key partners and guests at the Gaucho Grill restaurant in the City of London.

The event allowed the Channel Telecom team to get partner feedback on the latest additions to the product portfolio now being added to Channel Telecom's range of voice and data solutions.

Hosted by Clifford Norton, Managing Director, and other members of the Channel Telecom account management team the evening included presentations from two guest speakers discussing how evolutions in technology have created continuous opportunities for the channel and the importance of connectivity in the world of cloud computing.

Matt Donaldson, Sales Director, stated: "It was great to enjoy an excellent meal in relaxed surroundings with some of our channel partners. We have made some significant additions to our service offering and the Gaucho dinner provided us with the ideal opportunity to get feedback from some of our larger partners. This is just the latest in our ongoing series of partner consultations."

ShoreTel has signed up Calyx as a Champion Partner, authorised to sell ShoreTel's on-premises Unified Communications portfolio incorporating business phone systems, contact centre and mobile UC applications.

Calyx has focused on developing its portfolio in recent months and this is the latest step as it builds its reputation as a provider of end-to-end ICT solutions to businesses across the UK.

Steve Clark, CEO at Calyx, said: "As remote working and homeworking become more prevalent, so the business case for effective Unified Communications solutions grows.

"The ShoreTel portfolio provides the cornerstone of our UC portfolio, enabling us to provide a true end-to-end solution to our customers."

A new survey by Cerillion Technologies, polling the views of more than 200 senior IT professionals across a broad range of industry verticals, has revealed that more than half of all businesses today (53%) are still using either an in-house-developed system or manual processes to bill their customers.

At the same time, the results highlight a shift in the way products and services are sold, away from traditional one-off product sales towards a more flexible pricing model based on subscriptions and usage.

One-off pricing models are currently used by 84% of organisations but the research shows that this proportion is set to fall to 51% in the future. In contrast, new pricing initiatives built around an on-going service relationship are growing steadily, including subscriptions, pay-per-use and freemium pricing models.

"Today, we are experiencing a shift in the way consumers purchase goods and services as part of the subscription revolution. This is a fundamental change in the kinds of pricing models businesses are using in order to monetise service offerings and drive recurring revenue," says Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies.

"This process is set to accelerate as revenue models mature and the need for innovative pricing and product packaging to differentiate and create value in customer relationships becomes more acute.

"Unfortunately, in-house systems are typically not agile or sophisticated enough to handle this transition and manual processes cannot scale.

"That's why these new business models are perfectly complemented by the rise of enterprise cloud billing solutions. This is an approach which can deliver flexibility and agility for businesses in mixing and matching service and usage-based pricing models, while enabling them to quickly set up and start billing for a new service without the need for any infrastructure or upfront licence fees."

In line with this, the survey results paint a picture of a cloud billing market about to undergo rapid growth. It is currently relatively small in the UK, with just 4% of survey respondents using a cloud billing system or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach today. However, a further 11% say they are using a managed service - and with cloud penetration generally on the rise - Cerillion foresees dynamic growth in the cloud billing market as businesses strive to meet the demands of the new subscription-based economy.

According to Hall, agility, flexibility and matching products to the market's demands are key. This is the same both for small businesses or start-ups looking to get a foothold in the market by introducing new services quickly and cost-effectively, and for more established organisations wanting to spread their wings and expand into new markets or geographies. "Working in the cloud provides that - and any smart business should be looking to bill in this way," added Hall.

ShoreTel has launched an integrated solution, named ShoreTel for Salesforce, offering integration between Salesforce and the ShoreTel on-premises IP-PBX system and ShoreTel Workgroups.

"Phone data is aligned with business data in the CRM system," said David Petts, senior vice president of worldwide sales at ShoreTel .

"By integrating the ShoreTel communications platform with Salesforce customers gain new insights, more effective collaboration, higher productivity and better business results.

"Automatic logging of all sales activity with call details and audio recordings tied into Salesforce customer accounts, together with prompts for agents to schedule follow-up actions, can lead to closing deals faster and higher overall sales team productivity.

"The merging of communications and business data allows companies to build custom reports within Salesforce that give them unprecedented insight into their operations." 

Lantronix, maker of smart IoT (Internet of Things) connectivity has signed with distributor Arrow to cover EMEA. The company had used Arrrow previously in the North America and Asia Pacific regions.

Guido Resch, vice president semiconductor marketing, Arrow EMEA, said: "We look forward to kicking off our expanded relationship at this month's Embedded World conference in Nuremberg."

Martin Poppelaars, vice president of sales for Lantronix EMEA, added: "We have a long and successful history partnering with Arrow in the North American and Asia Pacific regions, and we believe this agreement will enable us to better utilise Arrow's global distribution network to grow our business in EMEA."