Comms Dealer

Phil Offord has joined KCOM as Enterprise Sales Director, bringing over 15 years of international business experience from across Europe and the US.

He reports to Executive Vice Principal Stephen Long and will be responsible for the direction, development and management of the sales organisation.

Long said: "Our sales team is focused on helping organisations to deliver their overall customer experience rather than just new technology. Phil's vision for the development and evolution of an enterprise sales function that listens more than it talks is a perfect fit for us."

Offord added: "Companies are looking for partners that are large enough to make the difference but small enough to be agile and KCOM fits that need."

He joins KCOM from CORETX (previously Selection Services and C4L) where he served as Group Sales & Marketing Director for over two years. Prior to this role he served as Sales and Marketing Director for Logicalis UK.

Significant market gains made by Westcoast's cloud computing division have prompted the IT distributor to add voice to its portfolio via a new partnership with cloud telephony provider NFON UK. Westcoast says that cloud services are playing a far bigger role in IT reseller businesses and that the NFON UK link-up enables them to seamlessly move to voice.

NFON UK MD Rami Houbby said: "The shift to cloud telephony is a natural next step that provides IT resellers with a fast track entry into the world of voice.

"There is a huge market appetite for the streamlined delivery of cloud-based telephony, an out-of-the-box solution that IT channel partners can easily train themselves on.

"Previously, the entry barrier into voice was high, but cloud telephony is easy to deploy and maintain, plus it offers benefits in terms of building customer loyalty and enabling long-term predictable annuity revenues for minimal investment."

Mark Davies, Cloud Services Director, Westcoast UK, added: "Adoption of our cloud computing products has been increasing at such a phenomenal rate that we felt the market was ready for us to make the first step into voice through this partnership with NFON UK.

"Cloud telephony complements our product set and company ethos. We anticipate that this will be popular with our partners and their customers."

There is strong evidence to show that a large portion of London's boroughs are no longer prepared to suffer the limitations of legacy ICT infrastructures.

According to the findings of a Freedom of Information (FoI) request conducted by Cloud firm HyperGrid, over half of London boroughs are currently planning to replace their IT infrastructure, meaning that there is an open door for qualified ICT resellers to push against.

Of the 32 boroughs, 30 responded to the request, and 53% displayed a commitment to refresh their infrastructure, while a further 20% are in the process of an upgrade.

Doug Rich, VP of EMEA at HyperGrid, said: "The findings provide a clear indicator of a need for change and modernisation in local Government IT estates.

"Legacy systems are no longer capable of coping with the challenges brought about by budget cuts, increased demand for higher quality services and reorganisation to fit the changing role of local Government.

"The demands of digital transformation and ever-increasing workloads mean that IT infrastructure needs to be high performing yet flexible to rapidly changing requirements."

The FoI also indicated that 43% of boroughs would be receptive to a consumption or subscription-based model.

Rich added: "It is evident that there is an appetite for changing the way IT is consumed in the data centre as refresh projects get under way.

"Choosing a consumption-based model enables local authorities to be much more agile in how they update their infrastructure. This can come in the form of cloud-based services, including email, apps or the Government's G-Cloud procurement system.

"Digital transformation is placing a significant amount of strain on both public and private sector organisations, and local Government cannot afford to be left behind."

Vodafone UK has raised the profile of its top partners by hand picking an elite group and giving them Total Communications Status, its first round of top draw accreditations under its new partner programme.

The selected companies include Boosh 365, CCS MPW, Comm-Tech Voice & Data, Connected Telecom, DRC, Excalibur Communications, Pescado, PMGC Technology Group, Pure Business Services, Olive Communications, Onecom, Redsquid Communications, Trinsic and Vohkus.
 
Phil Mottram, Enterprise Director of Vodafone UK, said: "Over 100 Partners have achieved new Status accreditation in the first phase of our programme, which has been designed to specifically recognise capabilities and specialisms."

Pictured: Vodafone UK's elite grouping, with Phil Mottram (front centre).

Britannic Technologies has been awarded the Sapphire accreditation and named a Partner in Customer Excellence by Avaya.

Jonathan Sharp, Sales and Marketing Director, Britannic Technologies, said: "We have demonstrated that we are a customer-centric business, deliver value and can meet and exceed the strict credentials of the Avaya Edge programme."
 
 

BT has gone live with Tollring's new real-time Credit and Fraud Management System (CFMS) on its Wholesale Hosted Centrex (WHC) platform.

The cloud-based CFMS has been delivered in BT Wholesale's data centre to provide real-time fraud detection and protection of the hosted platform.

The CFMS monitors call trends, implements rules and triggers alerts to protect resellers' and their customers from illegal usage and 'bill shock'; and the credit management element of the solution constrains legitimate spend in order to manage 'risky' customers.

Fraud and credit management is a powerful combination. Each call must pass through four rigorous gates including a risk register of continents, countries and regions, a blacklisted destinations register, followed by rule profiling before adhering to spend limits.

Live dashboards, reports and notifications keep BT informed in real-time, enabling fraudulent calls to be terminated and destinations blocked to prevent further fraud from happening.

Dave Axam, Director Hosted Communications at BT Wholesale, describes fraud as one of the key challenges in the marketplace.

He said: "We are seeing that fraudsters are becoming increasingly astute, making more frequent, smaller hits, which render the 'capping' approach insufficient in the battle against fraud.

"So BT is taking a completely different approach by looking at the analytical capabilities within the network, customer data and trends, and taking a proactive stance by anticipating what might happen.

"We believe Intelligent analytics is the only way to stop the next type of fraud. By embedding Tollring's intelligence and analytics tools into the network for hosted communications, we are providing our partners and their customers with a whole new level of security."

Tony Martino, Managing Director of Tollring, added: "We have taken major steps to tackle the key issues of fraud and credit management in cloud telephony. We believe that the adoption of this new product provides BT with a competitive differentiator to partners and resellers and most importantly a more secure service to customers."

Avnet is in collaboration with IBM to speed up the time to market for IoT solutions.

Led by its Technology Solutions team, Avnet will hook up with IBM to establish a Watson Internet-of-Things (IoT) Joint Lab within IBM's newly opened global Watson IoT Centre in Munich, Germany.

Avnet will use this environment to showcase, demonstrate, develop and sell IoT solutions.
 
"There is no limit to how IoT can be used to improve the world," said Patrick Zammit, global president of Avnet Technology Solutions. "We're already seeing tremendous potential in new IoT applications that we're developing with our customers, which range from protecting our children to preventing Legionnaires' disease.

"Avnet's latest collaboration with IBM will accelerate our ability to provide customers with the foundation they need to rapidly develop marketable IoT solutions."

Staff from Rochdale-based ISP Zen will brave the potentially icy temperatures of a February night to raise money for homelessness charity Petrus Community.

Among those wrapping up warm on 23 February will be chief executive Richard Tang and divisional managing director Martin O'Donnell, who will be joined in the grounds of Manchester Cathedral by eight other members of staff. The sleep out will take place between 6pm on 23 February and 8am on 24 February.

Petrus, also based in Rochdale, has been providing supported housing and related services to homeless people since 1972. Petrus is Zen's chosen charity for 2017.

Tang said: "We're supporting Petrus throughout the year with our regular itinerary of fundraisers and social events, and given the nature of the charity a sponsored sleep out seemed a natural extension of those efforts. We want to use the night to raise funds, and also to raise awareness. Petrus does some really important, really necessary work, and we hope that after the sleep out a few more people will know about it."

Natalie Hodgson, from Zen's systems development department, who is organising the sleep out, added: "It's probably going to be cold, it may be wet, and we have no idea what sort of reception we'll get from ordinary members of the Manchester public who might be in the city centre that night. But that's what homeless people go through every night. If nothing else I think it will make us all aware of how lucky we are that we only have to do it once."

Sonia Denham, Deputy Coordinator at Petrus, said: "Petrus are grateful to Zen for choosing us as their charity for the year, and have already received a vast amount of donations such as clothes and food for people we support. We're looking forward to taking part in the upcoming fundraising events and will, of course, be present in Manchester for the sleep out."

Zen hopes to raise well over £1,000 from the sleep out, and anyone wishing to donate can do so at bit.do/zensleepout. For more information on Petrus, please visit www.petrus.org.uk.

Ingram Micro has revamped its go-to-market management in EMEA, bringing in cloud specialist Jacek Murawski who has been appointed to the new role of vice president, EMEA vendor engagement, and who joins the EMEA leadership team.

Murawski most recently served as General Manager and VP EMEA for Odin Automation, a cloud provisioning management technology platform acquired by Ingram Micro in December 2015.
  
Murawski brings experience from both the distributor and vendor side to his new role, as he previously served as general manager Microsoft Poland, general manager for Dell in Eastern Europe and senior VP, strategic industries, EMEA with SAP, as well as 9 years in EMEAR leadership roles at Cisco.

Günter Schiessl, who until recently led volume vendor management for Ingram Micro Germany, is also taking on a new role with the company. Schiessl, who will report to Murawski, is tasked with the new role of leading Ingram Micro's volume vendor engagement team in EMEA.

Jordi Muñoz will also now report to Murawski in his new position leading Ingram Micro's value vendor engagement team in EMEA; he formerly served as the value business lead for Ingram Micro Spain.

Sabine Howest, Ingram Micro vice president global vendor engagement, commented, "Each of these individuals is well-respected in our industry, having distinguished themselves as experts in their fields. We are extremely pleased to be strengthening and investing in our regional go-to-market team and capabilities in EMEA. In 2017, you will see Ingram Micro put our vendors' and resellers' needs at our core as we aggressively grow our market relevance."

Alongside the aforementioned changes, Tasneem Baldiwala, formerly vendor engagement lead for EMEA, will move to a new role leading strategic planning and execution for the region, reporting to Ingram Micro executive vice president and president EMEA, Mark Snider, and remaining a member of the EMEA leadership team.

Mark Chlebek, who formerly led the value vendor engagement team, has been promoted to executive director, EMEA development and also joins the EMEA leadership team. 

Colt Technology Services has marked its 25th year in business with the delivery of a three year growth plan aimed at network expansion and a move to greater customer centricity. The company will invest more than €500m throughout the project, with a €200m spending plan set for 2017.

Colt reported strong top line growth in 2016 and a new executive leadership team has pledged to continue this trend having implemented a strategic and cultural shift in the organisation.

Colt's operations have been segmented into the core areas of innovation, the Colt IQ Network and improving the customer experience.

There has also been an increase in investment in sales and marketing.

To help deliver the increased network capacity and reach, Colt has appointed a new Chief Commercial Officer, Tom Regent. The company will hire hundreds more staff to support customers.

CEO Carl Grivner (pictured) said: "We are fortunate to not have many of the distractions of our peers, such as wireless, consumer and content.

"This means we can focus on building an intelligent network to meet the businesses requirements of today's demanding enterprises.

"In fact, we believe our customers, and indeed all our competitors' customers, should be more demanding of the industry. We are up for the challenge and we are confident we will deliver."

Grivner added that investing in the Colt IQ Network is vital. It currently spans 24,500 buildings and 700 data centres, and serves, in the main, enterprises with an increasingly global reach while retaining a local presence.

Colt's investment this year will triple the number of sites across the Colt IQ Network capable of providing 100G enabled Ethernet and IP connectivity, and optical services up to 9.6Tbps capacity per site.

According to Grivner the customer experience matters now more than ever. So Colt will roll out On Demand network services, and also redesign its internal processes and systems to bring service delivery times down from weeks to days and put customers in control. The revamp is critical to managing growth in customer acquisitions, which amounted to 1,700 new customers worldwide in 2016.

"Almost 25 years ago, we emerged as a disruptive challenger in the market, and our mission for 2017 is to increase this challenger status as a digital enabler with global reach and local presence and agility," added Grivner.