Comms Dealer

Hats off to wholesale network operator Virtual1 which has debuted in The Sunday Times 'Tech Track 100' league table reaching 33rd position.

Companies appearing on the list are typically owned and run by entrepreneurs; have up to 200 staff, 3-year sales growth around 40%-280% and sales ranging from £5m-£50m. Virtual1's sales growth was over 93%pa in that period

Managing Director Tom O'Hagan commented: "This recognition shows how far we have come, as a team, over the past three years. We have a vision that encompasses continuous innovation and growth, to both extend and develop our service within the industry.

"This listing is testament to all the hard work the team have put in over that period, but the story does not end here - there's far more to come from Virtual1."

Confidence within the IT contracting community is up year-on year, according to recent research by professional umbrella employment provider, giant group.

Results of its latest contractor survey of IT specialists point to increased confidence in the temporary market. Compared to figures over the last two years, the length between assignments is reducing, with the majority (82%) citing less than 31 days.

In comparison, those recording 90 days and above has halved since 2011. Added to this, over half of respondents are expecting job opportunities in IT to grow over the coming year and a further 64% predicting their earnings will increase.

The survey also suggests that the top sectors for IT contracting opportunities over the next 12 months will be Support Services (26%), Financial Services (19%), Public Sector (14%) and Engineering and Construction

Matthew Brown, Managing Director of giant, commented: "During times of budget and staff cuts, the demand for contractors has a tendency to spike. However, as positivity returns to the economy it is encouraging to note that the IT contracting community is reporting an increase in opportunities.

"It's clear that organisations are continuing to recognise the value these experts can bring to businesses and are expecting to not only utilise this resource over the next year, but also potentially allocate more budget to these specialists."

Outsourcery has successfully certified against the CIF Code of Practice for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).
 
The CIF Code of Practice is a credible, certifiable tool that allows CSPs to demonstrate that they meet specified requirements of transparency, accountability and capability. It aims to standardise enterprises offering cloud services to provide clarity, transparency and assurance to end users seeking to migrate to the cloud.
  
Piers Linney, co-CEO of Outsourcery and member of the CIF Code of Governance Board, said: "As one of CIF's founding members, and having been involved with the initial consultation process for the Code of Practice itself, it's something that we have been fully committed to from day one.

"A crucial element of the CIF Code of Practice is trust. With no bona fide cloud standards currently available in the market, end users have few benchmarks against which they can measure CSPs. The Code provides such a benchmark, ensuring that users of cloud services have access to all of the information they would need to be able to make informed choices about their provider."
 
Under the CIF CoP, CSPs are permitted to use existing certifications towards CIF self-certified status, including the CIF certified status of partners.

APM Group has been working with CIF to encourage larger vendors who provide the vital infrastructure to smaller CSPs to go through the CIF certification process, which will not only provide an added level of credibility at the very start of the cloud supply chain but will mean larger providers can enable their certified status to be used by network partners who use the infrastructure to deploy services to customers.
 
"CSPs do not need to provide all aspects of service delivery and can effectively 'share' certifications with partners," Linney continued. "Having now achieved the certification for ourselves, we will be actively encouraging CSPs in our partner network to follow suit. Ensuring transparency at every touch point on the cloud supply chain is key to creating a fully sustainable and trustworthy cloud ecosystem. The more that CSPs participate with CIF, and get certified, the better it will be for the industry as a whole."
 
Richard Pharro, CEO of APM Group, added: "Organisations seeking to use cloud services need a straightforward way to qualify potential suppliers that will accurately define the services offered and standards of operations and security. Outsourcery, being such a well-recognised and respected player in the industry, represents a real coup for the Code of Practice, and serves a great example of the industry at large. We look forward to working closely with them to encourage their partner network to certify and to drive best practice in cloud delivery."

Griffin has joined forces with Red Island Consulting to develop a Public Services Network (PSN) Partner Programme designed to enable 750 Griffin partners to go through the PSN framework accreditation process more cost effectively. The programme was officially launched on 18th September at The Science Museum in London where a panel of experts will discuss the PSN framework, the accreditation process, how to win business and the next steps for success.

"The Public Sector represents a huge growth opportunity for our partners," stated Griffin MD, Philip Grannum. "Historically, it has been the preserve of the big players like BT and Cable &Wireless but this legacy is now changing.

"Getting on the PSN framework is a daunting task as well as an expensive one. We are working with Red Island Consulting to change this, simplifying the steps required that will enable our partners to effectively compete and win in the Public Sector."

IT spend within the public sector is set to be in the region of £7bn billion in 2013-14, with £1.7bn being spent on telecoms alone, pointed out Grannum.

The PSN has been introduced to create a 'network of networks' throughout the public sector, replacing the fragmented nature of public sector networks with one standardised set of protocols.

PSN covers purchasing at all levels from central government bodies to your local library, schools, GPs and blue light services.

Traditionally, bidding for public sector contracts has been seen as a lengthy, bureaucratic process. Most SMEs have not even attempted to enter into this arena, many assuming cynically that they would never be able to win business against larger rivals.

But the government is now focused on creating a more competitive and less bureaucratic public sector marketplace and is looking to SMEs to provide more innovative, flexible and better value ICT solutions, driven through open competition between more suppliers in the market.

"Our aspiration is that, by value, 25 per cent of government ICT procurement should be with SMEs by 2015," said Francis Maude at The Cabinet Office's Procurement Briefing 2013.

"This will improve competition for government contracts, allowing us to open up to a larger number of suppliers and encourage innovation. The whole way government procures and delivers technology is being radically overhauled to ensure we get the best value for money. This target is now being stretched further with an ambition of 50% of all new IT spend through SMEs by 2014.

Current estimates suggest that 80% of the public sector will be PSN-compliant by the end of 201, and according to Grannum this is good news for partners.

"We are confident that this highly innovative programme will help our Partners to protect and grow their public sector customer base, closing the door to suppliers that are not PSN-accredited," he said.

"SMEs are already benefiting from G-Cloud where 64% of Government is through SMEs generally for cloud based services. The PSN Partner Programme will enable SMEs to take this to the next level, enabling them to sell end to end cloud services as well providing innovative communication services such as SIP and contact centre solutions."

Advanced Business Solutions has been praised for the rapid turnaround of an urgent IT migration project for Moray Council after its existing managed services provider went into administration. 

The council, which had been using an external managed service, decided to bring its finance management system back in-house to reduce running costs following severe public sector cutbacks.

However, the migration project risked being derailed when the service provider went into administration earlier this year. Advanced worked closely with the Council and managed to recover the service and bring it in-house within just three weeks.

Diane Beattie, Payments Manager at Moray Council, said: "Advanced consultants reacted quickly. They retrieved all our data and built a live system within a week, which we went live with two weeks later.

"Advanced's finance management system, e5, has also supported the council's procurement improvement plan which achieved £1.9 million in annual procurement savings thanks to tight integration between systems, centralised visibility and greater control of spending.

Advanced Business Solutions is a division of Advanced Computer Software Group, a supplier of software and IT services to the health, care and business services sectors.

Spar UK has selected Avaya's real-time collaboration technologies, delivered via cloud and provided by our partner Videonations, to increase the company's efficiency across seven business units.

The seven business units previously used basic teleconferencing systems - which was inefficient and ineffective for collaboration - and required executives to travel to have face-to-face meetings instead.

Roy Ford, IT Controller, Spar UK, said: "The combination of Avaya's video solution, which allows SPAR to have multiple connections in high definition to each of our seven business units, using the cloud-based, hosted platform from Videonations, made the decision process easy."

Simon Culmer, Managing Director, Avaya UK, added: "Avaya technologies are optimal for use both in a hosted as well as an owned environment. They're designed to be flexible, scalable and open - and our Scopia solution ensures that business leaders and employees can interact face-to-face whenever and wherever they wish - without the hassle of traditional telepresence systems."

Superfast fibre broadband delivering speeds of 24Mbps and above will be rolled out to more than 42,000 homes and businesses in the East Riding of Yorkshire within the next three years as a result of a multi-million partnership between East Riding of Yorkshire Council and BT.

The project, Broadband East Riding, plans to extend high speed fibre broadband to households and businesses across the county.[1] As well as making high-speed fibre more widely available, the partnership will ensure everyone will be able to enjoy broadband speeds of more than 2Mbps.

Broadband East Riding builds on the existing on-going commercial fibre deployment across the region and aims to provide a high-speed broadband network to an additional 42,734 premises in the area by December 2015.

John Skidmore, interim director of corporate strategy and commissioning at East Riding of Yorkshire Council, said: "Having access to the internet is an important aspect of modern life with many of us using it on a daily basis whether that is personally, such as keeping in contact with family and friends through social networks, or commercially and with more and more businesses requiring a secure, reliable and faster connection in order to compete and trade.

"The council is committed to improving broadband infrastructure in the East Riding to ensure that we do all we can to support businesses, residents and visitors to the area to have access to broadband provision, especially given our largely rural locality, and hope to deliver this over the coming years through the contract with BT."

Nimans is running a series of training webinars designed to help resellers get on board with leasing.

The first session, called Selling on Rentals, attracted 30-plus resellers and will be followed by two more webinars under the headings Targeting the Decision Maker and Return on Investment.

"Leasing is fast becoming a major factor in any successful sales strategy," said Head of Dealer Sales, Tom Maxwell.

"Adding a lease option with a reputable finance partner can significantly enhance revenue potential and overcome a customer's budget restrictions.

"We highlighted the benefits of breaking down a one-off cost that could scare off customers, so that dealers can sell solutions in a more attractive and cost effective way."

"Leasing continues to be a very valuable resource for resellers and we want to spread the word as far and wide as possible. Since launching this financial service over two years ago we've seen demand increase year-on-year by more than 200%."

Channel Telecom partners were on course for a great day's golfing at Hertfordshire's Hanbury Manor Hotel & Country Club.

Top honours went to Hipcom's Rob Murdoch who collected the best overall golfer prize having teed off with a birdie and then racking up 42 stableford points.

Channel Telecom MD Clifford Norton said: "It was great to share the day with so many of our channel partners, suppliers and friends in the industry."

Pictured: Norton (left) presenting Murdoch with the winner's trophy.

Huawei's European R&D operations, currently operating across 13 sites with a total head count of 800-plus, are to receive a minimum of 10% reinvestment every year, according to VP of the European Research Centre Renato Lombardi.

"In 2012 we reinvested over 13% of our global revenue in R&D, one of the largest single commitments to R&D in the ICT industry by a private company," he claimed.

"Our investment in R&D in Europe also continues to grow. It doubled between 2010 and 2013 and we expect it will double again over the next five years."

Huawei's European development spans ICT hardware and software, microprocessing, optical data transmission and wireless networks.

"As Huawei expanded its sales operations internationally at the turn of the new millennium, it chose, like many other enterprises, to implement a distributed innovation strategy," added Lombardi.

"This led to the creation of R&D facilities in multiple geographies, each with a specific innovation focus. The majority of Huawei's R&D sites were located in established innovation clusters or centres of excellence. These decisions were driven by a number of requirements."

One of most important requirements was to locate R&D operations close to customers within the existing ecosystem and linkages with universities and research institutions.

This led to the location of R&D sites here in northern Europe where clusters had been established in mobile network and base station technology development as well as mobile device design," added Lombardi.
"For the same reasons, optoelectronic research operations were located in Italy, in Germany and in the UK."