Comms Dealer

Distributor Arrow Electronics now offers trial and promotion options within its ArrowSphere cloud aggregation platform.

Citrix is the first of Arrow's cloud suppliers to participate in an automated campaign management feature, offering a promotion for its GoToMeeting and GoToAssist services to the end of the year. Solution providers can earn an additional 15% discount for customers purchasing five or more 12-month subscriptions of Citrix' virtual meeting service.

The trial feature offers the flexibility of trying a particular cloud service before committing to buy a subscription. Through the try-before-you-buy option, channel customers can now define the duration, manage the number of licences and determine the service options after the end of the trial period.

With a 'coupon code' feature, solution providers can make available special offers from their ArrowSphere store. Working within parameters set by cloud computing suppliers, solution providers can determine the discounts they would like to offer and to which customers.

Additionally, customers can request an individually tailored quote for a specific hybrid-cloud project or on-premise integration requirement.

"The addition of trial options in ArrowSphere will give Citrix customers the opportunity to explore and enjoy the video-, audio- and screen-sharing capability of GoToMeeting before they buy," said Richard Wolfe-Daimpre, senior director of strategic channels for the SaaS (software-as-a-service) division at Citrix.

Pinnacle Technology founder and Chief Executive Alan Bonner is to step down.

The announcement came in a trading statement as the company reported a fall in revenues for the year to the end of September.

Revenues of approximately £10.1m were down on last year's £12.7m.

Following the announcement of Interim Results to 30th March 2013, the board conducted a root and branch review of the group and took actions to reduce ongoing costs. As a result the group is now trading close to EBITDA breakeven on a monthly basis, however Bonner decided that after 15 years the time is right to seek a successor.

"I am hopeful that we can soon appoint a new Chief Executive who will help us achieve our objectives, and I look forward to ensuring a smooth transition in the best interests of our customers, staff and all other stakeholders," he said.

This financial result relates in large part to a poor performance from the previous acquisition of RMS IT Security, and the lack of any major UK high-profile events in the period (compared to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the London Olympic Games contracts, which were delivered in the year ended 30 September 2012).

In consequence, both EBITDA and Pre-tax loss when finalised, will show a significant deterioration on the figures for the previous year (2012 adjusted EBITDA £284,554; 2012 Loss before tax (£1,115,558).

Mobility distributor Brightstar has bolstered its European business with the acquisition of 20:20 Mobile, a provider of distribution and integrated supply chain solutions to the European mobile industry. 20:20 Mobile currently serves over 3,500 customers with annual turnover of nearly £1bn.  

Marcelo Claure, Brightstar's president and CEO, said: "With the strategic acquisition of 20:20 Mobile Brightstar has a strong position in the European market, one of the most exciting and progressive markets in the world.

"Bringing the team of 20:20 Mobile into the Brightstar family will allow us to deliver some of the top innovations and services developed for mobility to the operators, retailers and manufacturers that are leading the wireless industry in Europe."

Brightstar serves more than 200 operators and 50,000 retailers and has a local presence in more than 50 countries.

The acquired company, which will be renamed Brightstar 20:20, will be led by a management team including German Lopez, currently MD of 20:20 Mobile in Spain and Portugal, who will lead the organisation as President, Europe.

During his tenure with 20:20 Lopez grew subsidiaries in Spain and Portugal from £15m when he joined in 2007 to record revenues of over £270m for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2013.

Jim Michel will serve as the MD of Brightstar 20:20 UK. Prior to joining Brightstar 20:20, Michel served as the Managing Director of Tech Data Mobile in the UK between October 2011 and July 2013 and previously held senior management positions with both Motorola and LG Electronics.

The acquisition is expected to close early in the first quarter of 2014 pending certain closing conditions.

Exclusive Networks has picked up Benelux-based value added distributor of security and networking solutions Terach.

The acquisition will create a 'critical mass in the region' says the firm, and is 'another milestone' in Exclusive Networks Groups' strategic growth strategy to become a pan EMEA Value Add Distributor with €1bn revenue by the end of 2017.

Terach has partnerships with Palo Alto Networks, Aruba Networks, EMC Isilon, SourceFire, Silver Peak, Wallix, Nutanix, WatchGuard, Quantum, A10 Networks, Trustwave, Rapid7 and FireMon.

"Terach is a successful and well respected business both within the Benelux region and among the global vendor community," said Olivier Breittmayer, CEO of Exclusive Networks Group.

"This acquisition is an important milestone for us as we continue to execute on our vision to be the market accelerator for disruptive and innovative IT security and networking technology companies in the EMEA marketplace."

UK-based IT security independent specialist Accumuli has posted a 23% growth in revenues during the first half of the year to £7.7m (€9.3m).

The positive financial results in H1 were supported by continuous acquisition strategy and an increasing demand for the company's solutions and services portfolio, it says. Additionally, 62% of its gross profit was generated from recurring revenues, represented by managed services or support contracts that have a typical term of twelve months or more, and a low rate of attrition and are billed in advance, according to Accumuli's chairman Nick Kingsbury.

Also, the company made some major acquisitions in the period under review and bought Signify, the managed service 2FA provider, and more recently Big Data monitoring and analytics specialist EQUALIS. The latter was acquired for £1.9m (€2.3m).

The EQALIS product portfolio complements Accumuli's security incident and event management (SIEM) solutions and will strengthen the company's big data monitoring and analytics capabilities, it says.
EQALIS' offices are in Bracknell, Berkshire and all employees, including company founders Ian Tinney, Kevin Tunsley, and commercial director Andrew Walley, will be incorporated into the Accumuli organisational structure.

"We continue to demonstrate the ability to execute our strategy in a way that provides headline growth numbers that are not simply reliant upon acquisition led growth and that more importantly generate cash. Growth in the period has come from a number of sources: the acquisition of Signify; product sales growth in our Network Control and Automation business line (formerly known as DDI); increasing demand for our consultancy services and growth in support; and managed services across our product portfolio," comments Kingsbury.

In H1 Accumuli saw some management changes as Rick Wilkinson and John Inns took up responsibility for sales and product management, respectively, while Andrew Cook was appointed as new head of operations across the business.

Fabric-based networks are increasingly being seen as the future networks to support virtualized data centres and private cloud environments, according to a Brocade study.
The research was conducted among 350 global resellers and systems integrators and 60% said their customers gave fabric networks the thumbs up.

However, almost a third of the channel stated that their customers only invested in networks to support the deployment of a specific new application or service, and more than one in 10 admitted that investment was made only when the network was already failing.

Jason Nolet, VP Data Centre Solutions, Brocade, said: "There is a growing recognition that fabrics are the future of data centre networking. However, many enterprises are still relying on legacy environments that are no longer fit for purpose, especially as they look to leverage the benefits of software-defined networking. This presents the channel with a terrific opportunity.

"Channel partners that can help customers take the journey to fabrics will succeed in the new networking landscape."

A brace of business award wins has put C4L indelibly on the comms industry map. The company provides cloud, colocation, connectivity and comms solutions and its Chairman and founder, Matt Hawkins, scooped the Entrepreneur of the Year accolade at the Dorset Business Awards, just days after C4L was named Best Breakthrough Company at the Solent 250 awards.

Hawkins said: "This recognition makes all the years of hard work even more worthwhile as well as being a real morale booster for the future. C4L's achievement is testimony to the expertise and hard work of the whole team."

Comms-care has been recognised in this year's marketing industry awards for its PITS (Poor IT Support) prospect campaign, launched to the IT channel earlier this year.
 
The PITS campaign, designed and developed with our digital marketing agency, Purestone, received three finalist places in two of the marketing industry's biggest awards, the B2B Marketing Excellence awards and the Digital Impact Awards.
 
Comms-care successfully took home the silver award at the Digital Impact Awards in the Best Digital Communications as part of an Integrated Campaign and also received the runner-up position in the Most Commercially Successful Campaign category at the B2B Marketing Excellence awards.
 
Richard Eglon, Marketing Director at Comms-care, said: "All campaigns are developed to provide Comms-care with valuable insight into the needs of our customers and prospects, which in turn enables us to deliver relevant services that make an immediate impact to our partners' service proposition.

"To receive two runners-up places at these national marketing awards, alongside some big named brands is great testament to the professionalism, capability and dedication of the Comms-care Marketing team."
 

Channel Telecom has launched a year-end incentive for the new popular Sony PlayStation 4 games console.

Already a sell-out the PS4 is on backorder until mid-January, but Channel Telecom has secured stock to award its winning channel partners.
 
The incentive runs through December with existing partners targeted with selling a modest amount of additional monthly recurring new business to win one of the coveted PS4 games consoles. The incentive is limited to one Sony PlayStation 4 games console per channel partner and other terms and conditions apply.
 
"There's a huge amount of buzz and demand for the PS4," says Clifford Norton, Managing Director of Channel Telecom.

"We have been able to get our hands on some of these superb consoles for the benefit of our channel community. All they have to do is step up to the plate and put in a little extra effort before the year-end to secure this ultimate Christmas goodie and we're delighted to be playing Santa Claus!"
 

EE has been selected by the Government Procurement Service as one of ten approved providers of fixed line telephony services under its Telephony Services Framework.

The Framework, formally referred to as RM1035, forms part of the Government's ICT strategy to migrate public sector organisations to next generation services under the Public Services Network. It enables government departments and local authorities to find cost savings and efficiencies by procuring services from a list of approved providers.

Barry Bolton, Head of Public Sector Marketing at EE, said: "Being awarded a place on the Telephony Services Framework builds on our selection for the Public Services Network last year and demonstrates EE's capability in delivering public sector services. It is an exciting opportunity for us to develop innovative products and services that provide best value to public sector organisations."

EE's selection follows a three-month tendering process, in which Framework Agreements were offered to providers in two lots.