Comms Dealer

Ingram Micro's (UK) Data Capture/POS (DC/POS) division is now supplying HP RPOS solutions to the UK&I reseller channel.

The HP RPOS range provides solutions for a variety of POS requirements in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors with modular or complete all-in-one systems, cash drawers, receipt printers, customer displays, and bar code scanners.

rnesto Schmutter, Senior Director, Ingram Micro DC/POS, EMEA, said: "HP RPOS solutions are a perfect fit for Ingram Micro and our customers. In addition to having access to knowledgeable local sales and support specialists, resellers will also benefit from quick delivery to most parts of the UK&I. Special pricing has been designed to help resellers compete effectively for business."

Beds-based ONI ha been awarded the special star indicator for Customer Satisfaction Excellence by network giant Cisco.

Customer Satisfaction Excellence is the highest distinction a partner can achieve within the Cisco Channel Partner Programme. 

Channel Customer Satisfaction Excellence assessment is based upon the customer satisfaction results captured in the Cisco Partner Access Online tool. Each measurement period, Cisco will acknowledge Certified Partners that have the highest customer satisfaction distinction within each geographic region.
 
"During the 21 years of working with Cisco, ONI PLC has strived to deliver the most sophisticated level of technical understanding and service to our customers. We are proud to once again receive the highest level of distinction for customer satisfaction excellence. This proves that as a business we have been successful in our quest," said Kevin Kivlochan, Sales & Marketing Director, ONI.

Rating agency Standard & Poor has cut its outlook for Tech Data over concerns that it won't deliver its restated financial results by its agreed-upon deadline of late October.

Fellow ratings firm Moody's Investors Service lowered its outlook on Tech Data's rating in March for similar reasons.

Moody's rates Tech Data at Baa3, equivalent to S&P's rating.

S&P affirmed Tech Data's corporate credit rating at triple-B-minus, the first rung of investment grade. The outlook was revised to negative, from stable.

Tech Data said in March it would restate some of its financial results from the previous three years to correct errors related to how its UK unit handled vendor accounting.

The company estimated at the time the restatement would reduce previously reported operating income by up to $40m and net income by up to $33m.

"Although we expect Tech Data will most likely resolve and be in compliance with its financial reporting requirements by Oct 31, it's possible the company won't achieve compliance, thus the negative outlook," said S&P analyst Philip Schrank.

The outlook will return to stable once all the filings are current, and weaknesses within its financial reporting system are addressed.

Tech Data shares were up 2.5% to $51.71 in recent trading. The stock is up 14% since the start of the year.

Incom Business Systems Sales Director Grant Counsell aims to run 98 kilometres across the country in aid of Cancer Research. Having been hand-picked by Vodafone JustTextGiving to take on its Fittest Fundraiser challenge, he is being put to the test by running seven of Nova's Great Run Series events.

Grant was inspired to take part in the challenge after three members of his close family were diagnosed with cancer in the last few years. is father with prostate cancer, his nephew with brain cancer and more recently his sister-in-law passed away after battling breast and liver cancer.

Counsell said: "There isn't a magic wand to take the pain or illness away from my family and over the last couple of years we've all been through some very tough times. However, I really hope that by taking part in these runs and raising money through JustTextGiving, that much-needed funding for Cancer Research UK will help to pave the way for potential cures so that people affected by cancer don't have to experience the loss that we have."

Counsell's endeavor kicked off in Manchester in May, and he is currently three races into the challenge. With over 65km to cover in the next three months, he will continue to pound the pavements as he trains to conquer races in Sheffield, Birmingham, Portsmouth and also Newcastle's renowned Great North Run.

As he tours the UK, Grant aims to raise as much money as he can through his personalised JustTextGiving code FAST61.

Pictured above (l-r): Grant Counsell, Dan Bowsher from Vodafone and Sophie Mullins, another Vodafone Fittest Fundraiser.

Storage and information management company Iron Mountain has expanded its UK and European business.

Financial and operating results for Q2 show total reported revenues were $755m compared with $752m in 2012. Total revenue growth was 1.3%, reflecting storage rental revenue gains of 3.0%, partially offset by a modest decline in total service revenues.

William Meaney, Iron Mountain president and chief executive officer, said: "During the quarter, we achieved solid constant dollar storage rental growth of 3.0%, reflecting strong increases of 6.6% in our international business and consistent 1.8% growth in North America.

"In addition, we continued to make good progress toward our goal, established two years ago, to increase margins in our international business to 25% by the end of 2013, achieving 24.6% for the first half of the year.

"This progress reflects strong contribution from our United Kingdom and western European businesses and improved efficiency from our business in emerging markets."

The company's real estate network is now over 6.4m square metres across more than 1,000 facilities in 35 countries, using its solutions for records management, data backup and recovery.

Stewart Smythe is well known for picking up floundering telco Energis and achieving a break-even deal two years later when it was sold. He went on to reposition C&W Worldwide over an 18 month period and was at the vanguard of a successful demerger and flotation of the company in 2011. With these impressive credentials snuggly under his belt, Smythe is now busy building another solid reputation as the CEO and driving force behind fast growing managed services provider Adapt.

Adapt was founded in 2001 as an independent provider of IT and network services with a big vision. Originally branded Mnet, the organisation started life as the IT services division of a larger business and quickly grew before rebranding as Adapt in early 2007. In the same year it acquired network services provider Centric Telecom, a move that doubled the firm's revenues and instigated new levels of operating efficiency. "In 2008, as part of our transition to full managed services provision, we also acquired Centre Core, the managed services division of News International, giving the business a step change in its technical and operational capability," explained Smythe.

Still in buying mode, Adapt acquired Cardiff-based eLINIA last year and two months ago snapped up Sleek, a Leeds-based cloud-hosting company. Adapt now employs 180 people and has revenues of £45 million. In 2010 its success was recognised for a fourth consecutive year in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 league table which lists the fastest growing privately owned TMT businesses in the UK. "We plan to treble our profits in the next three years," added Smythe.

"Half of this will come from our existing account base and half from new business. As we continue to grow we want to be known as the company our customers are proud to tell people about because we help them achieve more, designing the right solutions, customised and aligned precisely with real-world commercial outcomes and objectives, delivered by the right people. Ultimately, we want to deliver change and innovation to our customers' businesses that has a visible impact on their bottom line."

The majority of Adapt's mid-term growth will be organic, but Smythe doesn't rule out the possibility of future acquisitions provided they offer expertise and capabilities that match the company's existing vision for service excellence and operational purity, noted Smythe. "Over the last 12 months we have been through a massive period of change. However, we keep focusing on the relationships we have with our customers, keeping them close, going beyond the line of duty to help them accomplish their own business goals," he added.

 Adapt helps customers like the National Trust, OCS Group, LOVEFiLM and PKR to navigate their way through the evolution of their computing environment, helping them to achieve their business objectives through affordable, scalable virtual and cloud based solutions. "Customers of all sizes are now getting comfortable with the cloud and are starting to really understand it," commented Smythe. "With this knowledge comes higher expectations, which in turn makes customers more demanding. They will also find it easier to work out who is good and who is not and the reasons why. This will lead to a lot of company churn and consolidation in the coming few years. I am excited about the opportunities in the market and what this will mean for Adapt."

In 2008 Adapt began its transition to a fully managed services provider. Its success in the market was noticed by PE company Lyceum Capital Partners and in 2011 it secured £30 million backing, closely followed by the appointment of a new senior management team including Smythe. "At the moment there are four or five providers that turnover about £50 million and then there is a gap to the big providers that turn over £300 million," he added. "We are positioning the company to step into that gap and offer our specialist expertise to the larger mid-sized companies across the UK."

A key part of achieving this goal is the company ethos Smythe has encouraged. "We have created a culture of ownership and encourage every team member to use their initiative to help deliver the best service to our customers," he stated. "This means that every customer gets individual attention from their own personal account manager and technical support team."

Adapt has a number of technology partners including NetApp, EMC and Cisco. Its channel partners include companies like BT and some of the smaller channel resellers around the UK. This is a focus area for the next year, particularly in the public sector space through the G-Cloud framework. Adapt operates a Service Development Framework which involves a wide range of internal business areas, strategic partners and customers working together to help drive its future strategy.

"Our immediate roadmap looks exciting and includes launching the next generation of our eVDC platform, which is now two years old," explained Smythe. "It's been a great success. We've onboarded an impressive portfolio of customers to date and we're still going strong. We are broadening the service capabilities of the eVDC to increase performance, improve customer choice, reduce cost and keep pace with strategic partner developments."

Adapt is also sharply focused on optimising service management and redeveloping its management portal to provide a more feature rich experience to customers, channel partners and internal business units. "This will include expanding our use of automation and orchestration technologies and simpler 'proof of concept, try before you buy' capabilities to meet the market's needs," added Smythe.

"For businesses looking to consume commodity public cloud services while benefiting from Adapt's service management wrap and expertise, we will be launching new aggregation services, broadening our service portfolio to meet the needs of some of our smaller mid-market customers. We will also continue to expand our channel offerings including services managed through our eVDC platform. Customers are getting smarter, they know what they want and it's time the service industry realised this before it's too late."•

Huge burdens of responsibility and loss should not be a 16 year old's lot but when Steve O'Brien, Managing Director of Pure Data Solutions, lost his parents at such a young age having to find the rent instilled a survival instinct and sense of responsibility that is perhaps stronger-felt today than ever. Here's his story...

Having suffered the devastating loss of his parents at the tender age of 16 it is poignant that O'Brien's mission has been to nurture 'a sense of family' within the business he established in 2007. "My main reason for starting this venture was to embrace an opportunity to be at the forefront of building a winning team," he said. "Having experienced many years in senior management I wanted to test my own ability to take responsibility for my beliefs and create a winning culture within a collaborative coaching environment, a place where people can shine and enjoy their work. Fun is one of our main company values. Our culture is one of warmth and honest communication. We work hard on our collaborative coaching culture to ensure that each and everyone in the team is encouraged and supported to produce their best. We have a strong team approach to find solutions which benefit everyone."

O'Brien's deep sense of responsibility for his team and the high value he places on creating a family feel is augmented by his experience gained working with a number of influential people and leaders over the past 25 years in business. "The last six years have been an exceptional journey and an enjoyable experience," he said. "We have achieved big goals in a short space of time, developed an infrastructure and brought together an enthusiastic and passionate team of people which fills me with tremendous pride every day."

Under O'Brien's leadership Pure Data Solutions has enjoyed significant growth from a first year turnover of £1.2 million to an impressive £12 million, up from £8 million the previous year. "Our target for this year is £15.8 million," he stated. "Our original team of five people has now expanded to 38 across all areas of the business. Our next milestone is £20 million by 2015. This will be achieved by continued organic success while acquisitions are also on the agenda this year."

The company addresses the IT needs of SMBs, corporates and the public sector where it provides general and specialised IT hardware, software and professional services. According to O'Brien his proposition is simple, based on the notion that the professional buyer is looking for a professional, reliable and friendly supplier. "We may win or lose orders on price, but with constant investment for the long-term we will retain our customers' loyalty with honesty, quality of supply and service," added O'Brien. "We are passionate about the work we do, resulting in an efficient, prompt and honest service. Our goal is to create a culture that is open, supportive and warm while maintaining our reputation for having fun. Our mission is to share the Pure Data Solutions experience with as many customers as possible."

While O'Brien nurtures and develops a company ethos that he hopes will stand the test of time he is also mindful of the fast moving comms sector, and keeping pace with industry changes is also a priority. "Our evolving sector means we have to regularly change our priorities at the drop of a hat, necessitating a high level of flexibility in our approach," he added. "We are swift in our decision making but as the company quickly expands our management skills need to evolve at the same rate, bringing real challenges with high levels of intensity."

Also exercising O'Brien's mind is the quest to add value wherever possible in an environment where, as a middle man in the supply chain, margins are constantly being squeezed. "We only flourish if we can truly add value, leverage margins in areas such as professional services, innovate and diversify," he said. "Our attitude is, and has to be, 'get on and do it', rather than be regimented and process orientated."

Pure Data Solutions works closely with a number of key vendors including HP, IBM, VMware, Barracuda and Microsoft. "A key strategic objective this year is to bolster our professional services team," added O'Brien. "This is the main focus of our attentions in relation to our acquisition goals. We see this as the main contributor to our profitable and sustainable growth for the longer-term. Our strategies are sound and the best years for our business lie ahead."

Sound strategies extend to staff relationships and team building, also key to the success of the business. "Every year we set the whole team a profit related target," noted O'Brien. "When we hit, everyone from the cleaner to the FD receives a bonus for their contribution. But it's not just about the financial rewards. We work hard at supporting every member of our team with their lives outside of the office. Our future aspirations will only be realised through our determination to achieve them. A realistic goal is to be a £25 million player in our market within five years. The challenge is keeping hold of our great culture."•

Channel Telecom's push into the SME cloud market has been impressive but its advances to date are just the beginning of a revolution in comms, claims Product Manager Tim Nelson.

Smaller firms wanting big company features without the sizeable upfront costs are proving to be a significant driver for hosted telephony in the sub-30 employee sector, not to mention the growing demand among bigger organisations with mobility and home working strategies and multiple sites to manage, creating another opportunity for resellers to capitalise on hosted VoIP. Start-up SMEs also benefit from highly scalable hosted solutions, especially if they have ambitious plans for expansion. "With hosted there is no need for customers to make large upfront capital investments into the phone infrastructure," said Nelson. "The system can grow with the business as it expands. And if the company changes sites there's no obstacle to keeping the same phone numbers. Expanding through acquisition is also straightforward as hosted can be delivered to everyone in the acquired company."

Stark evidence of the sea-change in attitudes towards hosted is revealed in Channel Telecom's order book. At the time of writing Nelson had just got the green light on a SME hosted solution following a sales cycle of only 50 minutes. On the face of things this seems too simple, but, noted Nelson, it's also easy for non-experts to migrate a customer with legacy equipment to the cloud. "Hosted telephony solutions are plug-and-play and can be implemented by any layperson," he commented.

Nelson's optimistic view of the hosted market leads him to believe that the era of CPE is over. "Convergence is now a reality and not a prophecy and it's all moving quickly into the cloud," he stated. "We are doing at least five times as much hosted business compared to two years ago, and we are successfully selling into larger organisations too. Voice is just another app running on the data pipe. Every time we deliver a data circuit now it's the additional services that provide the extra added value, generating profit month after month for our partners. We now sell far more SIP trunks than ISDN30 circuits and believe ISDN telephony will retain only a small market share by the end of the next decade."

According to Nelson, as the market develops it is inevitable that businesses will move to hosted. "Big players like Microsoft offer products such as Lync and Office 365 which have hosted telephony functionality built into them," he explained. "For the channel, hosted VoIP is a great way to retain customers, keeping them sticky by future proofing their investment. This means that end users will continue to use their hosted solution for years, creating a reliable monthly revenue stream for the reseller. This is surely more profitable than a one-off PBX sale, but many resellers haven't yet got into this way of thinking."

Perceptions about the commercial model are said to be a barrier to many resellers introducing a hosted component to their product portfolio, but Nelson confirmed that margins for hosted telephony are significant in terms of call charges and licences with greater scope for profit when providing extra features and SLAs. "For customers, hosted telephony as a cloud-based service is provided on a monthly licence basis, making it a fully tax deductible service charge, unlike capital expenditure which is only partially tax allowable," Nelson explained. "Hosted telephony also requires minimal capex outlay for hardware such as handsets and routers. When the customer moves premises they just reconnect at the new site without any cost for engineering support or other delay. Hosted telephony also makes it easy for customers to port numbers and to use virtual numbers."

Such is the trend towards the cloud that Nelson has witnessed more and more resellers turning to Channel Telecom's hosted VoIP proposition. But to say that some are being dragged into the cloud kicking and screaming would be to overstate the case, however a number of resellers are being pushed against their will into hosted by customer demand. "Data savvy and IT resellers are leading the way," added Nelson.

Resellers who are advancing beyond the contemplation phase of cloud adoption towards the action phase should partner with a hosted telephony provider that offers a bundled solution which includes hardware, licences, data lines and calls, advised Nelson. "Some providers insist on this approach and for a good reason," he affirmed. "It is, after all, easier to manage an end-to-end solution if you control every element of it. This can also benefit end users by providing them with a simple package and monthly bill with no additional costs."

However, noted Nelson, in many situations a customer might not be willing or contractually able to switch from their existing ISP when they introduce hosted telephony. "Some hosted telephony providers will either offer all or nothing," he added. "But companies such as Channel Telecom prefer to provide a total hosted service package without restricting partners. We will provide just the hosted telephony service if that's required.

"Naturally, there's a balancing act and if the underlying data connection is poor it's unlikely the hosted telephony service will work as intended, which will inevitably lead to a dissatisfied customer. Either way we believe that it's important for the partner to have that choice, and at Channel Telecom we can also advise, based on our experience, on which ISPs are likely to provide a service that will perform well enough to allow hosted telephony to work well."•

After a long spell selling telephone systems to the channel, cricket enthusiast Viv Singh is now delivering a true 'game changer' to channel players: Social Media Integration.

Singh loves nothing more than bemusing a batsman with a 'googly' or 'leg break' but these days his love for the gentleman's game has taken a back seat as he focuses on his latest challenge - persuading channel businesses to add social media to their unified communications portfolio.

The former Aastra Channel Head has joined global Social Media and Content Management company Integritie as Channel Sales Director and is convinced many ICT companies have not yet woken up to the opportunities social media can provide and add real value to their overall UC proposition. "In this day and age, failing to acknowledge and action social media posts is equivalent to ignoring the ringing phone on your desk," says Singh. "It's vital now to integrate social media feeds, posts, and tweets into your UC proposition or multi media contact centre enabling one unified inbox queue for voice, SMS, web chat, email and social media.

"In turn this helps customer service managers drive real efficiencies in a contact centre by prioritising their inbound and outbound communications. There are now over one billion people using social media worldwide, so smart companies are using it to promote themselves via LinkedIn and Google Plus, market their products and services via Facebook and Twitter and make it easier for their customers to reach them in a way that has never been possible before. Twitter and Facebook are in the lead as a channel used by customers to submit queries and lodge complaints."

For many organisations, social media represents the most drastic change in communications since the advent of email and Singh's biggest challenge will be to convince channel partners that social media is an opportunity not a threat, particularly as more and more young people totally attuned to social media enter the industry. According to recent studies, the opportunity for companies is to build stronger brand loyalty by meeting customer's expectations via social media channels. One reason for hesitance by many companies is the fear of damage to a company's brand or reputation as social makes it incredibly easy for individuals to share confidential, sensitive and private information, accidentally or maliciously violating client trust, privacy or other laws. Companies fear the lack of control they have when it comes to what is being said via social media in the form of criticism.

"The fact is a business will not be considered relevant in the current economy if it fails to communicate where stakeholders, clients, investors, business partners, media and industry peers are listening," stresses Singh.
"People and businesses now have a much larger arena to communicate in. Voicing opinions and brand values in real-time must be part of this conversation. In addition, compliance legislation, which has become even stricter since the 2009 recession requires financial institutions across the board to be incredibly cautious with their communication with the outside world. Promotion and advertising, supervision, monitoring and record keeping have also all come under the spotlight and the FCA now requires detailed record keeping to prove inappropriate claims have not been made to a customer or prospect. The fear is that without archiving tools, the records of social interaction can be lost, leading to eDiscovery (electronic discovery in civil litigation), legal hold and evidence spoliation to name just a few compliance problems."

Integritie's flagship product is SMC4, a social media software solution that can work within a UC environment or as a standalone product. According to Singh: "When it comes to any social media channels, SMC4 enables companies to capture messages from Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google Plus, controlling outgoing and incoming posts, tweets and feeds, communicate these to existing and potential customers and ensure what is being said complies with company ethics and regulatory bodies.

"SMC4 gives companies the opportunity to focus on what they're good at, while protecting their reputation and brand from criticism, profanity, sexist and racist comments."

A number of firms have a burgeoning social presence on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, helping them to promote news stories and corporate messages. KPMG for example uses Twitter to connect with various audiences around the world, interact with employees, clients and prospects, showcase the work of member firms and senior leaders and drive conversations on emerging business issues and opportunities. Despite these early steps, when compared with other sectors, many organisations are still trailing as Singh explains. "Other factors contributing to hesitancy include the fact that social media opens up organisations to criticism, abuse and lack of resources. But the proliferation of smartphones and tablets means that today's digitally savvy consumers see social as an inherent skill and expect to be communicated to in such a fashion.

"Education is important but ultimately the reduction in social media risk boils down to the ability to capture, control and retain the information flowing in and out of an organisation's social channels. This sounds daunting on paper, but firms should not fear these stipulations, as we are now at the stage where technologies such as SMC4 are available to manage these processes. Social cannot be ignored and organisations that get to grips with it, in a compliant fashion, will reap the benefits. It gives companies the opportunity to successfully target, market, promote and advertise to over one billion people, while meeting the expectations of customers, business partners, media and industry peers, building deeper relationship and stronger brand loyalty," concludes Singh.•

Pas Ruggiero, Managing Director of Integra ICT, is an old hand at telephony but his strategy to keep up with the times ensures that he always plays a new game.

Integra ICT was formerly known as Anglia Telecoms, a company Ruggiero took over and incorporated in 1998. Ten years later he rebranded to Integra ICT, a facelift that better reflected the firm's broader ICT portfolio and national reach. "We'd describe ourselves as a mid-sized reseller employing around 40 full time staff," he explained. "We've been trading for a long time so have an extensive client base with low attrition. Our year-on-year growth has been strong, growing 20 per cent last year despite challenging conditions in the market."

Ruggiero's mantra is that 'customer service is an attitude, not a department', and this ethos, he says, ensures client retention is high. Also attractive to end users is the company's proposition which is based on a staunch commitment to deliver four benefits to clients: Improving organisational productivity; improving customer service; delivering meaningful return on investment; and reducing cost of ownership. "Our principal objective is to communicate these propositions in the context of our portfolio to our clients," said Ruggiero.

A key strategic milestone that continues to influence the evolution of Integra ICT is the acquisition of an IT reseller just over a year ago. "We have made good progress in integrating the IT portfolio within our support infrastructure and selling these services to our clients," added Ruggiero. "We are now seeing an increase in new sales opportunities from both existing voice customers requiring our IT services and the IT client base needing assistance with their telephony requirements."

Integra ICT's telephony suppliers include Mitel and Siemens and, according to Ruggiero, they keep him busy with product development. "In particular, Siemens' new Openscape Business is a game changer for our client base and we'll be actively promoting this," he added. "Mitel's virtualisation strategy is also proving to be a door opener for us. And from a broader ICT perspective we've recently achieved Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Gold partner status. This is opening up real opportunities for us in the provision of complete integrated solutions. Finally, we expanded our offering on mobiles and have recently taken on Gamma's MVNO proposition.

"A close working relationship with our suppliers is key to our success. As well as working primarily with Mitel and Siemens on telephony we have relationships with Lancom and HP for data networks and Wi-Fi. Network services come from Nine Wholesale, Gamma and Virtual 1, and we work with Microsoft among others for IT. We're also doing some detailed work on the market for satellite broadband services. I see this as an area for potential growth."

Ruggiero has witnessed significant growth in demand for telephony and he's also seeing substantial growth in the integrated IT portfolio. "This is partly enabled by our expertise in Next Generation Access products/MPLS services from suppliers like Virtual 1," he added. "Additionally, Wi-Fi in certain vertical markets such as education, health and hospitality is an area of focus."

Ruggiero has always believed that personal development is key to retaining staff and keeping morale high. "This ensures we do the best job possible for our clients," he said. "Many of Integra's staff have access to job related and generic training and over 80 per cent of the team have taken the opportunity to build their skills with the company's support." •