Comms Dealer

Ireland network operator enet has made its first entry into the UK market following a partnership with SSE Enterprise Telecoms.

Under the terms of the deal enet will use SSE Enterprise Telecoms' full range of dark fibre, Carrier Ethernet and optical networking services across 13,700km of national network.

enet also gains access to over 265 Points of Presence (PoPs), with further expansion planned over the next 12 months, as well as over 76 UK on-net commercial data centres and over 2,000 PoPs from other key players in the market.

Conal Henry, enet CEO, said: "It's important to us that our carrier customers have access to resilient, high-capacity, scalable Ethernet services both in Ireland and now in the UK. We look forward to working with SSE Enterprise Telecoms to help our customers extend their reach into the market."

This UK network deal is the latest in a series of investments undertaken by enet and its parent, Granahan McCourt Capital.

These include investing more than €100 million in access fibre deployments, metro fibre acquisition and construction, core fibre roll outs, as well as gigabit wireless network integration.

BT is creating 1,700 new apprenticeship and graduate jobs in roles ranging from cyber security and traditional engineering to production at BT Sport.

BT is one of the UK's largest employers with 81,000 UK-based people. The new roles, which include those with EE and Plusnet, are spread across a number of locations including London, Glasgow, Belfast, Sheffield, Nottingham, Cardiff, Leeds and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Openreach, BT's local access network business, will launch its own recruitment drive in due course.

Apprenticeships and Skills Minister, Robert Halfon, said: "By committing to injecting 1,700 new graduate and apprentice jobs into the UK, BT is offering a real chance to be trained by some of the best in their field.

"This is especially great news ahead of what will be the 10th annual National Apprenticeship Week where we will showcase the life-changing potential of apprenticeships for people up and down the country."

Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT, added: "Young people today need three basic skills - reading, writing, and tech know-how.

"BT is investing in the next generation, helping to train primary school teachers to teach computer science and recruiting large numbers of apprentices and graduates. This is the right thing for us to do if the UK is to remain a digital leader."

US security company Palo Alto Networks has wrapped up its $105m all cash acquisition of cyber security specialist LightCyber, which has developed automated analytics technology using machine learning to identify attacks based on behavioural anomalies inside the network.

"The LightCyber team's vision to bring automation and machine learning to bear in addressing the difficult task of identifying otherwise undetected and often very sophisticated attacks inside the network is well-aligned with our platform approach," stated Mark McLaughlin, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks.

According to a report by the Ponemon Institute, when attackers successfully find their way into a network there is an industry average dwell time of approximately five months to discover their activity. During that time, an advanced attacker can initiate command and control, lateral movement, and data exfiltration. This kind of dwell time and advancement in the attack lifecycle can lead to extensive damage and loss of confidential data.

Common approaches to this problem include third-party, log-based collection and analysis tools that are often error-prone, limited in visibility, lack important context, are labor-intensive, require a data scientist to investigate false positives and tune for accurate outcomes, and lack enforcement capabilities.

To address these challenges, reduce attacker dwell time, minimise damage done and prevent breaches, the LightCyber technology employs accurate and automated machine learning techniques to analyse user and entity activity and then identifies and protects against anomalous activities that are indicative of an active attack.

This behavioural attack detection capability complements the existing protections delivered by the Palo Alto Networks platform to help security team members focus on only the most meaningful alerts and improve the time to breach response and prevention.

Almost half of channel leaders expect the channel to grow between now and 2020 according to research commissioned by inventory-as-a-service firm Agilitas.

The research commissioned by Agilitas and carried out by OnePoll surveyed 100 senior level executives at leading IT resellers, managed service providers and independent IT channel firms.

The research looked at the financial challenges the industry is set to face between now and 2020. Despite continued market disruption and uncertainty, a significant 47% still expect the channel to grow, 27% expect it to be a similar size with 26% less confident in the channel growing between now and 2020.

The research also examined what channel contracts will look like, revealing that the majority agree that IT based revenue streams will be even more OPEX based by 2020. IT services are expected to see the biggest contract shift from CAPEX to OPEX (30%), followed by hardware sales (19%).

In addition, the channel leaders surveyed also revealed that they expect software and hardware support services to provide some of the strongest revenue streams in 2020.

"The results of our research suggest that the channel will see significant movement to OPEX based support services in the next few years" stated Agilitas CEO, Shaun Lynn. "A rise in support services and contracts moving to an OPEX model provides significant new revenue streams for resellers, managed service providers and independent IT providers alike."

CSC and Virtual Clarity have joined forces to help organisations speed up their migration to cloud environments such as Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

The deal sees CSC make an undisclosed investment in Virtual Clarity which has become a strategic affiliate of CSC.

"This partnership will ensure that organisations can transform their business faster and safer than before, and at scale," said Steve Peskin, CEO, Virtual Clarity.

Steve Hilton, Executive VP & GM, Global Infrastructure Services, CSC, added: "Virtual Clarity's advisory services, combined with CSC's ability to deliver at scale, supports the journey toward IT transformation."

NFON UK has elevated Glemnet to Platinum Partner status following a year of 'stellar growth' and its recent specialisation in reselling NFON's Nhospitality product portfolio, a bespoke cloud telephony system for hospitality and managed services organisations.

NFON UK MD Rami Houbby said: "Glemnet's partner status upgrade recognises and rewards a hugely successful first year. The hospitality sector requires a specialist approach and Glemnet has invested considerable effort and resource into becoming an expert in this sector."

Platinum Partner status gives Glemnet access to more support, including assistance with marketing, event co-sponsorship and lead generation.

Adam Freeman, National Sales Manager, Glemnet, added: "We see huge demand from our hotel and hospitality customers for NFON's Nhospitality product. This sector requires a specialist approach and bespoke technology, and our expertise and the Nhospitality product range will ensure mutual success."

CityFibre has appointed technology and services industry veteran Christopher Stone as Non-Executive Chairman.

He brings a strong track record of building successful global businesses in the sector, most notably responsible for leading the transformation of Northgate Information Solutions (then known as McDonnell Douglas Information Systems) between 1999 to 2011 to become the world's second largest specialist HR technology and services business and the leading provider of software and services to the UK public sector.

He is currently a Non-Executive Director (formerly Chief Executive Officer) of Radius Worldwide, an expansion services company offering accounting, HR, legal, tax and compliance support to companies' international operations.

He led the business during its successful acquisition by private equity firm, HG Capital, in August 2013.

Previous positions include senior roles at Accenture, Electronic Data Systems, Digital Equipment Company, Fitness First and CSR, where he served as Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the Remuneration Committee.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, commented: "Chris brings to the Board extensive experience as a Non-Executive Director across a wide range of companies and sectors, and we look forward to his perspective and guidance as CityFibre continues its rapid growth and development in the dynamic and evolving UK communications infrastructure market."

The Government's just published Digital Strategy underlines the need for the UK to move towards a full fibre future, but CityFibre argues that firm targets and an alignment of Government policy and sector regulation behind the goal of greater infrastructure competition is needed if the vision is to be delivered.

The Digital Strategy outlines the Government's plan to become a leading digital nation, building on the UK's existing digital strengths and maximising the potential of emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things, to drive up productivity, remain internationally competitive and realise opportunity across the country.

The Government recognises that 'first and foremost, being a digital leader depends on being connected', and that 'the future of high-speed and high-quality connectivity lies in deeper, more extensive fibre networks'.

To deliver this goal, the Strategy reconfirms the £1bn programme of funding 'to explore and encourage next generation digital infrastructure, including full fibre and 5G' that was announced in the 2016 Autumn Statement.

Mark Collins, CityFibre's Director of Strategy and Policy, commented: "The Government has once again outlined a clear direction of travel for the UK - extensive full fibre networks capable of delivering the transformational gigabit connectivity needed to be a leading digital nation.

"As the company behind the UK's growing ranks of Gigabit Cities, CityFibre is fully supportive of this vision. With the UK lagging behind its international competitors on full fibre deployment, we now urgently need to create the right incentives for investment in new infrastructure, rather than continuing to focus on the UK's legacy copper network.

"This means firm targets for deployment, ensuring that the goal of full fibre is embedded across all areas of central and local government policy, including in the upcoming Industrial Strategy, and ensuring that policy and regulation are pulling in the same direction - for example on consumer advertising of fibre broadband products and telecoms regulation."

Apogee has snapped up document technology and managed print services provider Danwood. The combined company creates one of the largest European players in its field of operations with Group annual revenues propelled to over £250m. The deal boosts Apogee's client base with the addition of over 10,000 retained customers and approximately 8,000 transactional customers.

The existing Apogee Board of Directors, led by Joint CEOs Jason Collins and Robin Stanton-Gleaves, will continue to manage the Group following the acquisition.

Collins commented: "This significant acquisition for Apogee provides us with the scale and reach to be a leading player in the European market for managed print services.

"Danwood has strengths that complement Apogee's offering and strategy, including a large client base of major corporate businesses, government and public sector organisations, and a strong service network that will increase the Group's coverage and capacity to support its clients across the UK and continental Europe."

This is Apogee's fourth and largest acquisition since it secured a significant investment from Equistone Partners Europe, a pan-European, mid-market investor, in September 2016.

Additional strategic acquisitions completed by the Group in the past six months include the purchase of Direct Business Systems, an independent provider of multi-functional copiers, printers, scanners and support services based in Glasgow (October 2016); Hibernian Business Equipment Limited, one of Ireland's main print management and managed print services providers (November 2016), and CityDocs, a document outsource provider (December 2016).

Apogee has said it will continue to make further strategic acquisitions to drive its growth in the UK and continental Europe.

ScanSource Communications has partnered with Polish headset vendor Axtel to launch the company's headset range in the UK, Benelux, Nordic and Baltic regions.

The new partnership will be rolled out country by country, supporting Axtel's increasing presence in the European market.

"This long-awaited collaboration with ScanSource Communications is a great opportunity to increase our presence in the European market. We are confident that our combined experience in the ICT sector will bring added value for resellers across Europe," said Miko?aj Kubiak, EMEA & APAC director for Axtel Headsets.

The new line supports ScanSource's expansion in Europe following the announcement last month that the company was opening a new office in Warsaw, Poland.