Comms Dealer

One programme, one focus - one to watch: That's the upshot on Avaya's new mid-market partner scheme, called iConnect, designed to funnel partners through a week-long speed learning course that arms resellers with 16 Avaya accreditations and the know-how to confidently march into the mid-market - in return for a 'small investment' from partners.

The packaged programme shifts up a gear from the piecemeal approach to achieving competency and will be rolled out across selected European markets throughout the end of 2013 and into 2014. It bundles targeted sales, marketing and technical training and support, and accelerates the process of getting partners trained, certified and selling to customers in this segment, according to Avaya.

In more detail, sales training will be conducted by regional Avaya and distribution sales experts, and also in the mix is support for vertical positioning in healthcare, education, manufacturing and professional services. Also offered is on-site and hands-on training with working demo kits ready for deployment at the end of the session.

Exclusive marketing and training tools along with website content syndication and access to premium content and end user events organised by Avaya are also included in the scheme.

Michelle Jones, EMEA Channel Development and Marketing Director, Avaya, said: "As dynamic organisations, mid-market companies have been emerging as a ripe opportunity for some time now. While markets have been flattening more generally, the mid-market continues to defy the downturn.

"It's widely known that medium-sized businesses offer high growth opportunity with faster time to cash, but this market continues to be underserved. We've created Avaya iConnect to give partners quick and easy access to all the training they need in one place so that they can really take advantage of this lucrative market opportunity."

Existing partners such as Aurora Networks, Capstone, G3, iQual and Pennine Telecom have already signed up to the programme.

Niall Anderson, Sales and Marketing Director, G3 Communications, added: "The mid-market is a special sector and it has many distinct characteristics associated with growth by innovation. For the channel, it not only presents a large opportunity with good return on effort and shorter sales cycles, but it's also more resilient to economic recession. For me, iConnect has the clear focus and solid execution plan required to help partners penetrate this market. It has given us an effective decision-making framework, which is then underpinned by investment in new resources and programmes."

Cloud-based VoIP telephone system specialist nconnect has launched a UK channel campaign and aims to sign up 40 new partners before the end of this year.

The German provider of cloud telephony services to the enterprise market is expanding into the UK and targeting IT resellers and MSPs without voice expertise, claiming it can help them win a slice of the £100m left on the table by IT-only resellers unable to sell voice.

Under its German brand NFON, nconnect has gained over 5,000 enterprise scale customers including Thomson Reuters and insurance giant Allianz, and is looking for similar penetration into the UK market with support from resellers.

"Voice vendors have conspired to alienate IT and data-orientated partners from taking full advantage of enterprise voice opportunities, setting the bar too high on in-house technical skills and having prohibitively expensive vendor accreditations," said Rami Houbby, UK MD of nconnect.

"That's over now that nconnect is offering a simple and reliable cloud based service to transact with confidence. We believe over £100m gets left on the table by voiceless resellers year-in, year-out, but now they can finally capitalise on the full potential of their customer relationships and make big inroads into those revenues with limited investment and no risk."

nconnect's partner programme offers Platinum, Gold and Silver partners fast access to its cloud telephony platform, together with lead generation support, pre-sales consultancy, life-time commissions, evaluation kits and training with the European nconnect university.

"Partners don't need to hold any handset stock while self-install, infrastructure-less deployments mean limited time on site," added Houbby.

Mike Washburn has joined Red Box Recorders as Chairman, and working alongside CEO Lee Jones and the Board he will leverage his 35 years of business experience in the accountancy, consultancy, investment and technology sectors.
 
The appointment follows the management buy-out of the company earlier this year that was backed ISIS Equity Partners.

With considerable experience as an independent Chairman, particularly in the areas of MBO and acquisition, Washburn will support the ongoing growth of Red Box Recorders by helping to ensure the direction and strategy of the business is being effectively developed and implemented.
 
Washburn is also currently Chairman of HTIP, an ISIS Acquisition Vehicle, and Data Seeker, a big data technology company.

Previously, he spent five years as Managing Director of Scriptswitch, a provider of clinical decision making software in the healthcare sector, growing the company into a £50 million business.

Prior to this he held Managing Director roles at Givara, Chameleon Approach, Chameleon Group, MFPS and Business Solutions Group.
 
Jones commented: "Mike is a highly professional and energetic entrepreneur who has a strong track record of building value in companies.

"He possesses a wealth of experience that will provide considerable value to the business by strengthening the senior management team and supporting our ambitious growth plans."

Mobile apps are playing an increasingly important role for customer service organisations according to research by Sabio which found that mobile customer service apps are already helping to reduce calls to contact centres, while at the same time delivering increased levels of customer satisfaction.

The poll looked at how the increased use of mobile apps on smartphones and tablets is impacting the traditional contact centre model and 54% of those questioned confirmed that the introduction of dedicated mobile applications is having a positive impact on their customer service activities - and already leading to improvements in customer satisfaction levels.

Of those polled, however, 48% are still to address the apps opportunity - although 22% or the organisations surveyed expected to be working on their own apps within the next year. According to respondents, the top five reasons cited for introducing a mobile app were: Increased brand awareness and marketing opportunities; reducing call volumes into the contact centre; as a tool to handle levels of customer demand; internal pressures to deliver more customer contact choice; and the automation of key service processes such as account self-management.

The development and running of these mobile apps programmes are still predominantly handled by an organisation's IT function, with marketing representing the second largest grouping, and only a few customer service operations entrusting apps responsibility to their contact centre teams.

"Our goal from this research project was to find out just how today's leading customer service organisations are addressing the apps phenomenon," commented Stuart Dorman, Head of Sabio's Consultancy Practice.

"Given the growth in smartphone and tablet usage, and with smartphone penetration in the UK now running at over 60%, it's hardly surprising that more and more of us are choosing to engage with organisations via mobile apps. Sabio was keen to establish whether customer service providers were making the most of apps from both a brand and a functionality perspective.

"It's clear that today's smart devices and mobile apps are opening up new organisations for both customers and organisations alike.

"The latest mobile and app-optimised channels effectively give users the opportunity to bypass traditional IVR channels and get on with completing interactions themselves.

"At Sabio we estimate that these initiatives could potentially lead to a reduction of overall contact centre traffic volumes by some 10-15%. This level of demand shift was echoed in our Mobile Apps survey, with 19% of respondents saying that the deployment of apps had reduced calls, and 12% seeing a reduction in email volumes."

Unified World Communications has achieved Vodafone Solution Specialist accreditation, meaning the firm is fully capable of selling and supporting the unified communications product portfolio from Vodafone, including One Net Business, One Net Express, Office 365, mobile device management and fixed line voice/data services.

"Our core objective is to help companies to simplify, centralise and save on their business communications," said Martin West, Head of IT Services. "The Solution Specialist accreditation supports our core objectives and enables us to be a new kind of communications partner in the business market."

This accreditation comes shortly after Unified World Communications was recognised as the Chamber of Commerce East Lancashire's endorsed provider for Unified Communications.
 

Elitetele.com CEO Matt Newing has lambasted policy makers responsible for technology in the health sector following an IT failure at the UK's largest health board which rendered it unable to treat patients for almost 48 hours.

"The public health sector is playing a game of life or death by failing to review infrastructure and update disaster recovery plans in line with technological advancements," said Newing.

"The protection of data is important for the survival of any organisation. However, in healthcare it is crucial and can literally mean the difference between life and death."

According to Newing lives were put at risk as an IT glitch caused systems at the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Board to go down, without a robust disaster recovery procedure in place it has taken two days to restore the hospital's infrastructure.

"We now want to use the event to stress the importance of having the right back-up and disaster recovery procedures in place," added Newing.

"In this instance there were no fatalities but it could have easily been much worse. The slow recovery time clearly indicates a lack of planning on the board's part and in this day and age, with advancements in virtualisation and DR, there is simply no excuse."

Newing has taken a lead and is offering healthcare organisations a free review of their disaster recovery procedures.

"Healthcare IT depends on its data centre infrastructure and applications to work securely and reliably all of the time," he added.

"Amazingly, some hospitals have their primary and back-up data centre on-site in the same location. To say this is a risk is an understatement.

"We know how the health field works and can build solutions around the type of existing systems healthcare organisations may already have, using a combination of offshore DR, third party data centres and intuitive virtual back up solutions."

Owing to its introduction of 16G Fibre Channel, Cisco was able to buck a down quarter that plagued many of the other leading vendors in the SAN space. Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2nd quarter 2013 SAN and High Performance Interconnect Equipment report, which tracks storage area network (SAN) switches and adapters and high-performance interconnect (HPI) equipment, including (FCoE)/Ethernet switches and converged network adapters.

"Cisco's 16G Fibre Channel ports are finally hitting the market, and we believe its customers' pent-up demand for Fibre Channel inter-switch connection will help push 16G revenue past 8G by the end of 2013," predicts Michael Howard, Infonetics Research's co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks. "Meanwhile, Brocade, which enjoyed a similar jump start when it came to market with 16G Fibre Channel in 2011, is settling in for the longer-term 16G replacement of 8G as the speed of choice."

Cliff Grossner, directing analyst for data centre and cloud at Infonetics, adds: "We're forecasting 16G Fibre Channel switch revenue to grow at a 46% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2013 to 2017."

The global SAN equipment market, including Fibre Channel switches and iSCSI and Fibre Channel host bus adapters, totaled $631m in 2Q13, an increase of 4% from 1Q13, but a decline of 8% from the year-ago quarter (2Q12). In the adapter segment, combined Fibre Channel and iSCSI revenue fell 5% in 2Q13 from the previous quarter

In 2Q13, the worldwide high-performance interconnect equipment (HPI) market, including converged FCoE/Ethernet switches and converged network adapters, grew 26% sequentially, and is up 43% year-over-year. Growth in the HPI market continues to reflect operators' ongoing investments in data centre infrastructure and interest in LAN/SAN convergence. Sales of converged FCoE/Ethernet switches are up 26% in 2Q13 from 1Q13.

Huawei has named a UK-based technology consultancy Aegis IT as its European Excellence Partner of the Year, 2013.

Aegis IT, which assists customers across all sectors with procurement, provision and support of business IT requirements, has beaten off competition from Huawei distributors across Europe, it says.

"This award acknowledges the hard work by our entire team to build an outstanding relationship, and is a great achievement for our business. The number of joint projects we have handled with Huawei has increased significantly over the last 12 months, and this is a sign of the strengthening relationship," commented Aegis IT Managing Director, David McPherson.

The electronic funds transfer-point of sale (EFT-POS) terminals market is expected to grow rapidly as vendors capitalize on opportunities in emerging markets, says reaearch. The emergence of mobile POS (mPOS) payment-based solutions has provided added opportunities for vendors.

These developments will spur market revenue growth from $2.53 billion in 2012 to $3.51 billion in 2017 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6 percent, according to the recent EFT-POS Terminals-Implications for Digital Identification Payment Providers analysis from Frost & Sullivan.

"mPOS payment-based solutions have become a viable option for small enterprises and direct sellers owing to its cost-efficiency, security and easy-to-use features," says Frost & Sullivan Global Program Director, ICT in Financial Services, Jean-Noel Georges. "This niche market is also the perfect entry point for new challengers to deploy their innovative payment systems based on a cost-effective business model."

Market entrants will still face significant barriers especially in Western Europe and the United States, where the market is saturated. Moreover, challenging economic conditions have led to prolonged recession in some of the major markets for the POS industry - the United States, the Eurozone, and parts of Asia and Latin America, reducing the addressable market base for terminal vendors as even existing customers are wary of capital expenditure.

Another factor holding back robust growth is the lack of industry-wide security and payment processing standards. Despite the existence of the Europay, MasterCard and Visa as well as Payment Card Industry standards, several countries in Europe and Asia have set their own policies. While these new security requirements play a key role in combating fraud, they have an adverse impact on a vendor's time to market.

Nevertheless, these national level mandates issued by governments to aggressively pursue the upgrade of payment infrastructure have also widened the prospects for terminal manufacturers.

"To capitalize on this potential, global EFT-POS providers must enhance and personalize customer experience," noted Georges. "Apart from extending services such as money transfer, bill payment, age verification, mobile top-up and couponing, offering loyalty programs and gift card applications will open up additional avenues for revenue generation."

An East Lancashire telecoms company has joined forces with a local radio station to help give some deserving youngsters the chance to produce their own radio show.

Six young adults from Derian House Children's Hospice are recording and editing their own show for an online broadcast, thanks to a collaboration between the charity, Abbey Telecom and Rock FM's Rock Academy.

The budding DJs and studio producers include Tyla, Leah, Bradley, Will, Adam and Alix, all aged between 17-23 years. They have set up a small studio at the hospice in Chorley from which to record the one hour pre-recorded show which is scheduled to go out across the airwaves later this month.

Will and Bradley were keen to explain their involvement: "We both really enjoyed this session - it was good to do something different that we had not done before," said Will. "I chose to pick a playlist of my top 10 rock songs as this is something I am interested in."

Bradley added: "I chose to talk about my time at Derian and what it means to me. This was an ideal opportunity to tell people about Derian House and what it does."

Abbey Telecom is involved in helping the children produce a 30 second example commercial for broadcast. Managing director Tony Raynor also agreed to take part in a chat show type studio interview organised by the children. Rock FM has provided resources and equipment to assist with the recording, editing and production of the show.

Rock Academy Manager Caroline Emmerton said: "We've shown the young people how to produce radio shows and have set them a challenge to come up with a one hour programme which will include discussions, in depth interviews and adverts.

"They get to use a range of high tech recording equipment and devise and edit the content of the show. We are also helping them to shape the format and script the show themselves."

Helen Pearcy, Deputy Head of Care at Derian House Children's Hospice explained: "This is both an educational experience and a fantastic opportunity for the young people to create their own show, giving them a platform to talk about their passions, interests and hobbies. It's allowing them to experience something completely new, supported by radio professionals and with the results of their work broadcast online."