Comms Dealer

Mitel has appointed industry supremo Todd Abbott (pictured) as EVP Global Sales, bringing over 30 years technology and business communications experience to the role.

Abbott joins Mitel following a career spanning senior sales positions at Cisco, Symbol Technologies, Seagate Technologies, Avaya and Sonus Networks.

He assumes executive responsibility for Mitel's global cloud and enterprise sales organisations and channel programmes.

Mitel's current EVP and Chief Sales Officer Graham Bevington moves to the newly created role of Executive Vice President of Business Development, working directly with the CEO Rich McBee to drive the company's M&A strategy and funnels, and to focus on nurturing strategic partnerships with key large enterprise and business customers.

McBee said: "Todd's sector knowledge and international sales experience will be an integral part of how we grow Mitel in 2017 and beyond."

Abbott added: "Cloud enabled communications and collaboration is intrinsic to digital transformation in the enterprise."

Azlan Tech Data has added a series of SMB-focused training modules for HPE Aruba wireless technologies on the Tech Data Channel Academy.

The four training modules provide insights into the SMB market and current networking trends, customer opportunities and challenges, and enable sales professionals to position Aruba Mobile First infrastructure solutions, ecosystems and location-based services with SMB customers.

The modules also cover Aruba's wireless and management solutions, as well as its range of IoT-ready products.

Stephen Cant, Director, Enterprise, Infrastructure and Communications EMEA for Azlan, says: "The addition of the HPE Aruba training modules to the Tech Data Channel Academy is an important step in assisting HPE resellers to achieve their accreditation goals.

"Good Wi-Fi access is becoming more important to SMBs and many are now transitioning to 802.11ac technology."

Gigaclear's expanded office space at Abingdon Business Park has been opened by Nicola Blackwood, local MP for Oxford West and Abingdon.

The rural broadband provider has secured a series of contracts to expand its network as part of the BDUK programme which has led to an increase in staff.

To accommodate this rapid growth, the company has acquired a further 5,907 sq ft office space for its headquarters on Windrush Court.

Mike Surrey, Chief Financial Officer at Gigaclear, said: "We have been able to expand our HQ space without having to move which is invaluable to the organisation. We are now one of many companies to call Abingdon Business Park home."

The evolution of VMware's focus on hybrid and cross-cloud software and services has prompted the company to transition vCloud Air US and European data centres, customer operations and customer teams to cloud service providers OVH for an undisclosed sum.

The transaction is expected close in calendar 2Q 2017.

After the close of the acquisition OVH will operate the service as vCloud Air Powered by OVH and continue to leverage VMware's hybrid cloud technology. 

"We have enjoyed a long and successful partnership with OVH and view this acquisition as an extension of our partnership and a positive for our customers and partners," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware.

"Customers will have access to OVH's global footprint and high-touch customer support and still retain the VMware SDDC technology innovation that they are accustomed to."

OVH is a long standing VMware vCloud Air Network partner with more than 200,000 VMs from thousands of customers running VMware vSphere Private Cloud. It has more than one million customers and 260,000 servers deployed and was recognised as Service Provider of the Year by VMware 2011-2014 and in 2016.

A multi-channel data analytics solution introduced by IOVOX enables marketers to drive more inbound calls and make more informed marketing decisions.

"The new Multichannel Marketing solution applies a unique phone number to each referring domain that generates call traffic, whether it's paid, organic, social, email or even offline," said Carl Di Cicco, Chief Commercial Officer.

"Combined with analytics from IOVOX, marketers have insight into the performance of each channel and can tune spending accordingly. In early customer implementations the IOVOX solution has led to significant cost savings.

"Despite the perception that interaction is all moving online, business phone calls continue to grow and marketers are waking up to the need to track what marketing spend is driving the all-important call.

"The IOVOX platform allows multi-channel marketers to track which media channels and driving calls with 100 percent accuracy."

Identity services security company Centrify has appointed John Andrews as EMEA Channel Director responsible for building a core set of distribution partners and VARs across the region, including the UK.

One of his first jobs will be to evaluate 250-plus partners and focus on establishing a top 10 tier of VARs in each region.

Andrews joins from BeyondTrust where he worked for 18 years helping to build a channel presence in the Middle East and APAC markets.

He also spent three years as Marketing Director for Computerlinks Distribution, managing a portfolio of more than 25 security focused vendors.

MF Communications has sharpened its focus on the network services side of the business with the launch of MF Telecom Services.

The Tunbridge Wells-based company provides services such as business telephone systems, broadband, mobile contracts, inbound solutions, business phone lines and calls, VoIP, telephone system maintenance and cloud hosting to organisations throughout Kent and the rest of the UK.

"We have had huge organic growth and found that to ensure we continued to prioritise our UK telecom services customers we needed to launch a new company and separate this from the global telephone system supply side of the business," said Fraser Young, MD, MF Communications.

"We may not be as big as the telecom giants, but we can be every bit as competitive."

Ireland-based IT services company Version 1 has closed a round of funding to drive phase two of its international growth.

The €90m investment, which will enable Version 1's further expansion into the UK and Europe, will see London based investment firm Volpi Capital take a significant stake in the company, marking its first investment in an Irish company and its largest investment to date.

This is Version 1's second funding round which will see its first round investor, Development Capital, exit in this round and 40 senior managers in Version 1 become shareholders.

Development Capital exits Version 1 with a 250% return on its investment after a period of just three years.

The company will deliver in excess of €100m revenues this year and target more acquisitions and look to the European market as part of a three year expansion push.

Version 1 was founded in 1996 by Justin Keatinge and John Mullen who remain as Board members with former COO Tom O'Connor taking up the role of CEO.

O'Connor said: "As we look forward to the next five years we anticipate further strong organic growth in Ireland and the UK, together with more acquisitive growth.

"With much speculation abounding about the impact of Brexit, we firmly believe that there continues to be massive opportunities for well-run customer focussed Irish firms to expand and grow internationally."

Version 1's first round of funding enabled it to complete three acquisitions in the UK.

Volpi CEO Crevan O'Grady said: "Volpi will work with Version 1 to help it grow internationally and to provide the level of funding this growth will require."

The global IT managed services market is forecast to expand from €120bn in 2014 to €215bn in 2020 demonstrating a CAGR of 8.61%, with the UK being the largest market in Europe.

Hammer has signed an EMEA-wide distribution deal with software defined and hyper converged storage vendor StarWind.

While being EMEA-wide, the agreement will see Hammer acting as the exclusive StarWind distributor in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy and the Benelux and Nordics regions.

Hammer said it will support StarWind in the SMB, remote office/branch office and low- to mid-tier enterprise markets.

StarWind is a one-stop shop for full-stack virtualisation infrastructure, providing all the solutions required for a software-defined data centre for primary and backup purposes.

Optimised for Microsoft Hyper-V systems, StarWind appliances are also VMware compatible, enabling customers to migrate from traditional architecture to hyper-converged technology.

Hyper-converged integrated technology offers operational simplicity and scalability and the potential to cut costs.

Gerard Marlow, GM for OEM and Whitebox Storage at Hammer, said: "This relationship will allow us to provide additional, complementary products to our existing customers, but will also give us the ability to engage with new resellers in the SMB and branch office hyper-converged space that our portfolio has not enabled us to reach in the past."

Exertis has completed the integration of Medium UK and is rebranding its AV division as Exertis Medium.

Medium, a specialist audio-visual distributor of projectors, flat panel displays, interactive systems and digital signage was acquired by Exertis last November.

Ian Sempers, said: "Retaining the Medium name recognises the reputation the company has gained in the market for providing AV solutions and is a clear message to vendors and customers that we will continue to offer the same services and support enhanced by the additional products, resources and reach of Exertis.

"Our concept of 'AV for all sizes' demonstrates our ability to provide our customers with anything from a simple cable to a large format display, or a single product to a complex AV solution. All of this from an enviable line-up of small innovative vendors to large commercial brands."