Comms Dealer

Glasgow-based Exchange Communication has won further work in Europe from global toy giant Hasbro after the successful completion of an earlier contract.

Hasbro, the third largest toy manufacturer in the world, previously engaged Exchange to upgrade the communications systems at sites in Germany, Spain and France.

Exchange Communications connected 700 users at these sites by extending Hasbro's existing Avaya Aura Communication Manager Solution, and having this fully operational by December last year. It has also carried out similar work for Hasbro in Moscow.

Now the company has been rewarded with the job of extending the network into further Hasbro sites in Italy (Milan), Greece (Athens) and Turkey (Istanbul).

Exchange Communications MD Tom Sime said: "There was a challenging deadline of connecting the German, Italian and French sites by the end of last year without disrupting the day-to-day operation of a busy global company, but we knew we could deliver on time."

UKCloud has launched Disaster Recovery to the Cloud, a self-service replication and recovery solution underpinned by software provider Zerto.

The service mitigates a range of failure scenarios that can affect a local data centre - including power cuts and natural disasters - as well as providing protection against application failures, including unsuccessful software updates, and malicious cyber attacks.

"It is crucial for our public sector customers to ensure that in the event of a disaster their essential public services would face little or no disruption," said Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud.

"Having a disaster recovery plan in place is mandated by the Civil Contingencies Act, but traditional disaster recovery solutions are expensive and inefficient.

"Disaster Recovery to the Cloud has been specifically designed with our public sector customers in mind to protect sensitive data and services that are depended on by UK citizens, patients and public sector workers."

Distributor Exertis has sealed a distribution agreement with CipherCloud, a specialist in cloud security and visibility.

Its security platform integrates with awide range of business cloud applications to scan content, monitor user behaviour, analyse risk, and protect sensitive data, delivering a solution to combat data loss and compliance violations through the cloud and mobile devices.

Jason Hill, Exertis, Sales Director for Security, said: "Organisations increasingly want a hybrid deployment of cloud-based and on-premises security from a unified platform that provides activity monitoring, automated anomaly detection, and data loss protection through strong encryption or tokenisation.

"CipherCloud solutions enable customers to adopt the cloud and provide protection from data loss on mobile devices. As more cloud adoption occurs through implementation of SaaS and mobiles proliferate the workplace, more opportunities open up for resellers to help companies maintain compliance and secure data for their customers, even more pertinent with GDPR looming."

Telecoms financing company Lease Telecom has launched a mobile application to over 300 partners, enabling resellers of mobile, fixed and IT equipment to quickly generate quotes and submit credit applications from the tap of a smartphone or tablet.

Simon Fabb, co-Founder of Lease Telecom, said: "Now there's nothing to stop Lease Telecom Partners from capitalising on opportunities when out in the field.

"The app complements our desktop offering and gives instant access to multi-term leasing rates and allows the user to submit deals for formal approval.

"From the point of submitting the application, the deal is treated under our usual SLAs."

The app will also be available to distributor sales teams with branding options available later in the year.

Zen Internet has again been awarded Which? Recommended Provider status for Broadband, with the consumer organisation praising the company's commitment to customer service and technical support.

Zen again achieved top marks in the survey of 3,100 broadband customers. The company's customer satisfaction score of 86% - an increase from the previous year - was five points ahead of its nearest rival and well ahead of the so-called 'big four' - BT, Virgin Media, Sky and TalkTalk.

Andrew Fryatt, Zen's MD for residential and small business, said: "Awards like this are not something we take for granted. Our aim is to be different to other providers by continuing to keep our customers at the heart of everything we do."

Distributor ProVu Communications has doubled its warehouse capacity following works to better use the available space at its Huddersfield-based offices, making the most of unused cellar space.

The development also included the installation of a lift and a new stairwell.

Sales Director Ian Godfrey said: "The expansion of the warehouse opens up more potential for ProVu. Our sales are increasing year-on-year, and with a greater capacity to hold stock we can continue to meet the growing demands of our customers.

"Not only is stock more accessible for our warehouse staff, we can also hold a greater amount of products ready for next day delivery."

ProVu offers over 900 items available to order and supplied hardware to almost 1,000 companies last year.

In response to growing demand for product bundles Voiceflex has conducted feasibility tests on its own channel offering and launched bundled SIP trunks (SIPTB) and standard SIP Trunks (SSIPT) which don't have a call bundle package.    

"Where some carriers have opted for a bundle-only option, we decided this was too restrictive," stated Sales & Marketing Paul Director Taylor.

"From the due diligence undertaken, offering only a bundled SIP trunks package meant customers were forced to seek alternative providers if the call spend was too low or too high.

"Having both options is proving to be the right decision with our channel partners as we have seen increased sales since our soft launch on 1st February this year."

TalkTalk Business has been awarded Platinum status by Mitel, making it one of four such partners in the UK.

Simon Skellon, VP, at Mitel, said: "Our Platinum level Partners attain this status thanks to their technology expertise, combined with excellent customer service and success in offering our products. TalkTalk Business has consistently met all of our Platinum Partner criteria."

ShoreTel CEO Don Joos is urging resellers to adopt 'unorthodox thinking' to push their businesses forward in the fast changing digital world.

At his keynote at the US vendor's UK & Ireland Partner Forum held at the Shard in London this month, Roos told reseller delegates that being unorthodox does not necessarily create chaos.

"The pace of change is staggering and to move forwards and do things differently we must detour," he said. "Great businesses constantly evolve to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You must have unorthodox thinking to create a new reality. When we are brainstorming ideas and a crazy idea comes to the table - that's when I get excited."

Talking in the context of Shortel's channel roll out of its Connect Cloud UC platform, Roos underlined his company's commitment to delivering channel partners 'people to machine' communications solutions which mid-market customers are now demanding.

"We are in a connected world now and the connections are evolving. Five billion interactions could be occurring at any minute. For Shoretel, it is now less about communications and more about interactions.

"Mid-market customers want to consume solutions and embed applications into the work flow of their organisation. Comms is still people talking to each other, but we are now seeing more interaction at a people to machine level. For example, when I walk into a room for a conference call I want to be recognised with presence via my smartphone, I want a conference bridge passcode delivered to me and my conference presentation fired up and ready to go."

Roos concluded by advising reseller delegates to start think about developing secure bespoke APIs for customers, maybe with external partners, to fully benefit from Connect Cloud opportunities.

Special Report by Indraneel Arampatta, Analyst at Megabuyte: Johannesburg and AIM-listed distribution and infrastructure services player Datatec has updated the market on the cautionary warning released in January, announcing that it is in a sale process for its value-added distribution arm Westcon-Comstor, valuing the business unit at 'more than $800m', which would equate to 9.1x 2016 EBITDA.

Datatec has also issued a severe profit warning for the year ended February 2017, with both headline and underlying EPS expected to more than halve in the year to less than $0.10 and $0.16 respectively, a significant miss from expectations for a slight improvement. The miss comes from another poor performance by Westcon, especially in EMEA where there was disruption to a major SAP implementation, but Logicalis is trading in line.

Firstly, the sale. Datatec is a holding company for three autonomous divisions: Westcon-Comstor, a value-added distributor of IT and networking products and a key Cisco partner; Logicalis, which provides IT solutions and managed services globally; and Analysys Mason, Datatec's small consulting division which provides market research and services to companies in the TMT sector.

The subject of the cautionary warning in January has now been revealed as the Westcon-Comstor business unit, which Datatec is looking to sell (to an as yet unknown buyer) at a valuation of more than $800m or 9.1x 2016 EBITDA. Even prior to today's Westcon-driven warning, the business has been struggling as of late, with revenues for the latest reported year (to February 2016) remaining flat at $4.9bn, alongside a significant drop in EBITDA from $125m to $88m.

This was further compounded in the first half of fiscal 2017, during which revenues fell 8.0% to $2.3bn (-8.4% in constant currencies) and EBITDA fell 19% to $42.9m.

It seems that further disruption at Westcon has hammered group performance in 2017 overall. Alongside the sale notice, Datatec also issued a profit warning for the full year, noting that headline and underlying EPS will be more than 50% down year-on-year, or less than $0.10 and $0.16 respectively.

The warning blamed worse-than-expected results by Westcon, which faced disruption as it reached the final stages of a SAP ERP implementation, which brokers noted was similar to previous issues seen in the North American unit. In contrast, Logicalis is said to be performing in line with management expectations.

Megabuyte view
Whilst we had anticipated that the cautionary announcement related to the sale of a unit, today's more interesting news is the continued problems at Westcon and its clear impact on overall group performance for fiscal 2017. It remains to be seen whether the Westcon deal will go through, particularly given today's profit warning that may make the bidder(s) think twice, and/or revise down their offer. However, subject to final valuation, a sale of Westcon has strategic merit, enabling Datatec to focus on Logicalis and its services offering, which we see as a key driver of growth in the infrastructure services market globally.