Comms Dealer

Channel Telecom is on a recruitment drive for five more salespeople to join its account management and sales team.

Channel Telecom has more than doubled turnover every year since its establishment in 2009 with revenues for 2013 achieving an impressive £6m.

Matt Donaldson, Sales Director, aims to double the company's turnover again. He commented: "We're currently looking for people with great account management skills, but above all we want self-starters that are hungry to earn more money. There's so much opportunity to grow with this company and make your role unique. It's a fantastic atmosphere with a strong work ethic. We work hard and play hard."

Early this year Channel Telecom moved to new offices in Essex to accommodate additional staff for anticipated further expansion.

The company offers the channel either reseller or dealer sales models and provides a portfolio of converged voice and data solutions.

Clifford Norton, MD, said: "We were constrained in our recruitment plans because we literally couldn't physically accommodate more people. Since Matt's appointment, I've shared his enthusiasm and will support his aims to increase our sales team to continue providing the best service to the channel."

Westcon Group is aiming to unlock the video conferencing market for SMBs following an EMEA distribution agreement with Edgewater Networks, a specialist in video border security.

According to Westcon the price-point of Edgewater's accreditation and certification charges reduce the cost of entry and increase speed to market. Combined with less infrastructure requirements the solution is also said to be fast to deploy.

"The relationship presents a real opportunity for our resellers to drive video conferencing into the SMB market to facilitate growth cost-effectively for both the reseller and the end user," commented David Grant, Vice President Westcon Group, EMEA.

Red Box Recorders has signed a reseller agreement with Linx-Networks, a provider of custom built technology and telecom solutions for a range of global customers with a strong presence within the City of London financial community.

Under the terms of the deal the Red Box Quantify Suite will become its preferred recording solution.

Gareth Malone, Director at Linx-Networks, said: "For our financial sector clients the Red Box solution meets the key requirement for a robust recording solution which can help them remain compliant with the stringent requirements of financial regulations."

Lee Jones, CEO at Red Box Recorders, said: "Linx-Networks is an excellent addition to our reseller network as it has the strong in-house knowledge and expertise to support our ongoing expansion in the financial markets.

"Our Quantify Recording Suite removes the compliance headache for financial institutions and Linx-Networks are well placed to take our products to market."

Herts-based 2 Circles Communications has retained its O2 JUC Wholesale Partner of the Year award for the third year in succession.

Steve McConnell, Sales Director, enthused: "Winning this award for the third year running is testament not only to the first class experience that we deliver to our customers, but also to the increasing number of channel partners who now place their O2 business with us."

Of particular note in 2 Circles' services offering is the Online Billing Information portal (OLI) which allows customers to manage their communications efficiently with features such as automatic Fraud Alert emails.

"This service has been instrumental in winning a number of key mobile deals and in attaining our 99.76% customer retention rate," added McConnell.

Bernie McPhillips, Head of Wholesale Partners at O2, commented: "2 Circles is a strategic Wholesale Partner for O2 with an impressive portfolio of clients, demonstrating best in class service to their customers. It was these attributes that led to it being ranked O2's Number One JUC Wholesale Partner in 2013."

Pictured: 2 Circles MD Steve Cook accepts the award from Ben Dowd, O2 Sales Director, and Jason Phillips, O2's Head of Partner Sales.

An expansion bid by cloud specialist Cirrus Response has been boosted by the appointment of two non-executive directors, Nigel Walsh and Royston Hoggarth, who have wasted no time in making their mark on the organisation.

Cirrus CEO Jason Roos stated: "Nigel and Royston's collective experience is already paying dividends for us."

Hoggarth, previously CEO of BT Global Services and Cable&Wireless, has worked in financial services, telecoms, software and services. He sits on the board of a number of UK plcs in executive and non-executive capacities.

Walsh is VP and head of UK insurance at Capgemini and was previously General Manager UKSI and Southern Region at Corizon. He has particular expertise in financial services business management and serves as a trustee for the charity Hertsmerre Leisure.

Yorkshire-based hosted telecoms provider Skyrack Telecom has partnered with Manx Telecom to launch a new mobile PBX service.

The SIM-based product, called Mobile-X, is exclusively available from Skyrack Telecom. Managing Director Gavin Sweet said: "Most companies are increasingly reliant on their mobile communication.

"They want their employees to be fully functional when out of the office, and that means enhanced mobile services. 

"We believed, that if we developed a product which offered a true and seamless PBX service over mobile - and do so on one SIM - we would have a market leading product on our hands. 
 
"We set about looking for a telecoms company who shared the same vision, and one that was willing to enter into a true technological and business partnership with us - and we found that in Manx Telecom."
 
In addition to offering traditional mobile connectivity for calls, texts, data, and voicemail, Mobile-X can also be configured to provide any service or functionality, which a conventional wired PBX can offer. 
 
Paul Craig, Chameleon Sales Manager at Manx Telecom said: "Chameleon's Smart SIM technology has helped Skyrack to meet one of the most difficult challenges of the FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) market, to offer a properly integrated commercial mobile solution that is easy to use, fully white-labelled and feature rich for business customers. It took 18 months of hard work to get where we are today."

Swyx' UC solution SwyxWare is now compatible with the globally recognised SIPconnect 1.1. standard, meaning that its IP-PBX software can be delivered immediately by service providers.

This means that tests for SIP trunking between manufacturers and providers are no longer necessary using the new version of SwyxWare 2013 R3.??"If a service provider already supports the standard, tests are no longer required and the UC solution can be immediately up and running," said Mathias Reidel, Director of business development at Swyx.

"Standardisation saves not only time, but also financial and human resource costs of deployment.

"In addition, compatibility with SIPconnect 1.1 paves the way for the growing demand for unified communications from the cloud and offers us a pioneering role as a leading manufacturer in this sector."

Mitel has the answered the call for contact centres to provide more customer engagement options with the launch of its seventh-generation contact centre solution.

MiContact Center 7.0 includes mobile chat and self-service features as well as outbound capabilities designed to boost sales and drive lead generation.

"Finding easier ways for businesses to engage customers via their preferred media and devices is a top priority for contact centres, with a growing focus on mobile and self-service features," explained odd Simons, Director of Product Solutions, Mitel.

"MiContact Center not only delivers on this, but also integrates communication across all channels to deliver a single customer experience. For example, organisations can post contact options on their website along with estimated wait times, empowering customers to decide how they contact the business."

Swanson Health is among several companies already planning to expand its customer contact options with the latest version of MiContact Center. A natural health retailer offering high quality vitamins, supplements and natural health products online and via direct mail, Swanson Health manages a high volume of calls, emails and live chat sessions daily.

"At Swanson Health, we count on MiContact Center to track and analyse all our calls, emails and chats. We are looking forward to the new features in MiContact Center, which provides even more options for our customers to contact us, including mobile chat. Furthermore, it provides new features to help our business run more effectively," said Patti Westland, director of call centre for Swanson Health.

In addition to more contact options, MiContact Center now enables quicker and more immersive service by equipping agents with richer customer information collected from across all media channels. Support for mobile supervisors using real-time management applications can further streamline customer service.

The new release also includes MiContact Center Outbound portfolio, a feature-rich offering that introduces new preview and predictive dialing capabilities, as well as campaign and agent scripting capabilities. With MiContact Center Outbound, businesses can boost sales, drive lead generation, and keep agents busy with outbound interactions and campaigning capabilities while facilitating first-contact resolution and business process compliance through agent scripting functionality.

"Contact centres are about providing great customer service for inbound calls and also enabling engaging outbound calls that can really add to the bottom line. MiContact Center Outbound is designed to greatly improve the outbound experience with features that can improve agent productivity for more prompt, informed customer service," said Simons.

MiContact Center is one of three flagship product lines for Mitel, along with MiVoice and MiCollab.

GVA Connect, the data centre specialist division of property agents GVA, has reported that UK take-up of data centre space amounted to 830,000 square feet (gross retail area) in calendar year 2013.
 
"This represented an 18 per cent jump in data centre space take-up over the previous year," said GVA Connect director Charles Carden, adding that the company expected take-up to remain at this level during 2014.
 
Confirming London's position as a leading international data centre hub, Carden revealed that over three quarters of the 2013 data centre take-up was within the so-called London Synchronous Locations (locations which deliver round-trip latency of under three milliseconds). The second most popular location was Manchester with the remainder of take-up spread across the UK.
 
"Not only does this research indicate a healthy increase in data centre activity, the average power requirement - at over 500kw - demonstrates that the majority of these new projects are of a significant size," added Carden.
 
"We continue to see an increase in serious enquiries from US operators for space in both UK and right across EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)," said Carden.

Unify has swooped on Channel stalwart Jon Pritchard to head up its global channel programme. As Unify's Executive VP of Worldwide Channels the former President of Comstor Worldwide will be responsible for all indirect channel activities, from SMB markets to large scale alliance relationships. According to Pritchard, Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications) has a 'tremendous opportunity' to grow its channel business.

"With a new brand, the OpenScape portfolio plus the new Project Ansible that will hit the market later this year, the time is now for Unify to take full advantage of the capabilities of its channel programme," enthused Pritchard. "I am excited at the opportunity to bring the indirect channel programme to the next level."

Dean Douglas, CEO of Unify, noted that growing revenue through complementary indirect channels is one of the vendor's top priorities.

"We need to further increase our focus on being channel-ready and providing value to our partners," he said. "Jon brings global channel expertise to Unify to help lead this charge and take advantage of opportunities in the market."

Pritchard brings over 25 years of channel expertise to Unify with a track record of driving solid growth globally. At Comstor, he was responsible for global operations of Westcon's Cisco dedicated business practice, including operational and strategic sales programmes, marketing and business development initiatives, business segmentation planning and organisational development.

Pritchard also held previous positions at Ingram Micro UK.