Comms Dealer

Video solutions company Imago Group has reported a near 18% rise in Polycom sales between the end of January 2013 and the beginning of February 2014, across its UK and French operations.

Ian Vickerage, MD at Imago Group, said: "What we offer as a distributor is sales expertise, marketing knowledge, training and technical support. This gives our channel additional expertise and this is leading to higher sales."

This news comes as both Imago UK and Imago France celebrate being named Partner of the Year in their respective countries at TEAM Polycom 2014, the company's annual partner conference, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, last week.

Imago achieved its 'double' award in the category dedicated to Polycom's Country Award Honorees EMEA.

Vickerage added: "While we are always delighted to be recognised by Polycom following a long-term and successful relationship, it is particularly gratifying to pick up awards in both the UK and France, where we continue to achieve sales growth year after year.

"We have expanded our channel of specialist resellers which has led to opportunities with new customers and additional sales to at existing customer bases."

Imago has distributed Polycom products for 14 years.

Westcon Group has bolstered its Microsoft Lync proposition following a distribution agreement (initially in the UK) with Enghouse Interactive, the specialist in contact centre and call recording solutions.

The agreement provides Westcon resellers in the UK with access to the recently launched Enghouse Interactive Communications Center (EICC) solution, consisting of contact centre, call recording and operator console solutions compatible with Lync.

"Enghouse's contact centre and call recording portfolio reduces the risk associated with Lync deployments. Its solutions are vendor agnostic and seamlessly migrate with existing PBXs so end users can protect their existing assets and don't have to 'rip and replace'," stated David Grant, Senior Vice President Westcon Convergence, EMEA.

"Another advantage is that end users can add-on products when they choose to do so with its flexible modular system."

Iain McKenzie, Group Managing Director, EMEA at Enghouse Interactive, added: "Demand for Lync solutions is escalating across our customer base. We are working with Westcon to further drive development of the Lync market."

Security specialist Bloxx has appointed Mark Gibson as its new sales director.

He joins from Capita where he was in charge of SAS's public security sales and marketing across the entire SAS Public Group in the UK, the Americas and other markets. In his new role at Bloxx he will be responsible for new channel partnerships and he is expected to enhance existing relationships with resellers in the UK, the company says.

Bloxx currently works with more than 50 channel partners in the UK including NTS, European Electronique, Caretower, Cygnia and Academia. Gibson is charged with growing the channel base by more than 50 percent by the end of 2014.

"With his proven track record in developing businesses and taking companies into new markets by direct and indirect routes, Mark is the ideal candidate to help us achieve our growth plans," said Charles Sweeney, CEO of Bloxx.

Rainbow Telecom is to adopt a dual go-to-market strategy following its acquisition of Essex-based AV specialist Charm Office Solutions.

Rainbow MD Dave Corgat (pictured) said: "The acquisition is an early tactical move that supports a new strategy to run alongside all our existing hosted services."

Charm specialises in video and online conferencing solutions as well as meeting room design and AV installation and maintenance.

Rainbow's sales have swung sharply towards hosted with 80% of all products sold being cloud-based. "We believe that video conferencing will be best sold as an application," added Corgat.
 
Charm MD Rod O'Brien added: "This exciting new phase in hosted services requires a greater reach than Charm can achieve, but working alongside Rainbow enables us to add a portfolio of hosted services and to leverage its expertise in this market."

Westcon Convergence has opened the doors to its LEAP Centre located at the distributor's European HQ in Crawley.

The multi-vendor solutions briefing centre is designed to showcase best in breed UC, collaboration and infrastructure solutions, and takes its name from the watchwords Learn, Experience, Architect and Plan.

The centre brings together Westcon's vendor portfolio and enables the firm to demonstrate how the technologies come together to create integrated solutions.

Other services include demonstrations, proof of concept, formal and informal training, which combined offer a learning experience for both sales and technical staff.

Ioan MacRae, General Manager, UK and Ireland, Westcon Convergence, said: "The LEAP Centre will accelerate and simplify the sales process, and increase partners' creditability by eliminating the difficulties of setting up different demonstrations with a multitude of vendors.

"This non-chargeable service from Westcon adds significant value to the channel community."

Greg Lane, Head of Pre-Sales, Worldstone, is an enthusiastic early proponent of the centre. "We have already had a training session," he stated. "Through the facility we have access to all of Westcon's products and hands-on practical training."

Softcat has appointed James Baker as Alliance Director. The former EMEA product management head at Insight joins Softcat in two months and will be responsible for partner strategy, relationships with several key vendors, business support and marketing.

Baker's previous experience also includes Veritas and Symantec.

"James' appointment is a huge boost for us. His reputation precedes him, he's a well-known talent in the industry and already knows several of the other Softcat directors," said Colin Brown, Softcat's Managing Director.

"As a member of Microsoft's global Partner Executive Board, he's bringing with him a network of senior contacts and years of experience managing business relationships."

The European arm of US-based cloud specialist 8x8 (formerly Voicenet Solutions now known as 8x8 Solutions following the acquisition of Voicenet) has upgraded George Best Belfast City Airport's ageing phone system with business VoIP and cloud-based unified communications services.

"The existing infrastructure could no longer handle the needs of the 1,500 employees and eight buildings spread across the airport's 100,000 square foot facility," explained Terry Moore, CEO of Outsource Solutions.

"A decision was made to replace the airport's old PBX system with 8x8's cloud-based communications solutions. The challenge we faced was upgrading the technology during the airport's normal day to day operations, which saw over 2.5 million passengers using the facility in 2013, making it one of the busiest periods in the airport's 30 year history."

Belfast City Airport's new cloud-based communications system is configured to not only handle the airport's present needs but to also scale to handle future requirements, seasonality and VIP communications with full wallboard and call statistics reporting. In addition, the airport can now accurately measure, rate and analyze telephone-based service aspects, along with providing real-time reporting and analytics.

"Belfast City Airport's deployment of cloud communications services could very well be the first for an airport, but I'm certain it won't be the last," said 8x8 Solutions CEO Kevin Scott-Cowell.

"Airports all over the world are facing the need for reliable, secure and scalable services that are well beyond the capabilities of traditional on-premise PBX systems.

"The ability of cloud communications services to provide the resiliency and reliability necessary to keep the communications systems of a mission critical public utility like an airport online and available confirms that IP communications not only meet but exceed traditional telephony capabilities."

Gamma has completed Microsoft's Unified Communication Open Interoperability Program (UCOIP), which now accredits Gamma SIP trunks as being certified for connection to Microsoft Lync 2013.

This follows Gamma's earlier Lync 2010 accreditation which saw Gamma become one of the UK's first SIP providers to gain such certification.

Gamma believes that enterprise voice is now an integral part of the MS Lync proposition.

Gamma's SIP Product Manager, Stephen Ashley-Brian, said:
"We know from the conversations we have with our Partners, just how important this accreditation is. When Microsoft makes such a big play into the enterprise arena as they have done with Lync, then our partners take notice and demand this level of interop to meet that demand."

Alcatel-Lucent has lifted the lid on new cloud-based enterprise communications solutions for both small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and an expansion of services for mid-to-large enterprises.

Alcatel-Lucent's new OpenTouch Office Cloud (OTOC) solution is a unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) offer.

With more than 17 million users globally of OmniPCX Office, OTOC will enable existing SMB customers to shift their CPU to the cloud for instant access to unified communications services.  
 
Avita in Ireland and Synelyans in France have been named as launch channel partners for the first deliveries of OTOC in their respective countries.

Additional partners will shortly be announced for the Asia-Pacific and central northern European markets.

Eric Penisson, General Manager of the Enterprise Communications Business Division at Alcatel-Lucent, said: "The ability to help business adopt cloud-based services is the focus of our OpenTouch Cloud suite. 

"Both OpenTouch Office and OpenTouch Enterprise Cloud give employees the collaborative experience they want, and have been well received by our channel partners."

Nimans has created a new two-day technical training course for resellers to master the company's exclusive iQ PBX comms platform.

The 'classroom style' event takes place at Nimans' Manchester headquarters on March 19th and 20th and is designed for skilled PBX installation engineers with or without SIP expertise. A second course takes place on May 28th and 29th.

Content includes network settings, security, system customisation, capacities and major features. Storage management, configuration and troubleshooting are also on the agenda.

iQ PBX Business Manager, Judith Addison, said: "The training consists of explanations, demonstrations, discussions and practical exercises ensuring each delegate is confident and proficient in the technical side of our growing family of iQ PBX systems. The event culminates in a test for attendees to achieve official certification."