Comms Dealer

As long as resellers consider leasing as a last resort missed opportunities will be endemic in the channel, according to Julie Henehan, Sales Director at PEAC (Pan European Asset Company).

Among the lasting lessons that can be drawn from our discussion with Henehan is that old concepts of leasing in the comms and IT sector require fresh ways of thinking or resellers could find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. She says the best course of action for resellers is to reconsider traditional attitudes towards finance and redress the imbalance between the comms sector and other industries where the benefits of leasing are reaped with enthusiasm. That said, comms and IT resellers, so often off the finance message, are starting to get the leasing lowdown and act on the good advice of experts such as PEAC (which is engaged with almost 150 UK IT and comms resellers and manages the Avaya Financial Services programme).

"The IT and telecoms channel has traditionally delivered low leasing penetration," said Henehan. "Most times, leasing was only used when requested by the customer. Today, more partners understand the importance of offering finance to customers who need equipment to enhance their business performance. This is an ongoing process of education and raising awareness. But there's a long way to go before we see the penetration levels achieved in other markets."

The outcome of current trends in ICT procurement are likely to be driven by the evolving preferences of end user buyers and a growing number of resellers who readily build leasing into their modern day propositions. "There is a move away from traditional equipment sales with hardware becoming just a part of an overall solution rather than making up 70-plus per cent of the sale," added Henehan. "The structured payment terms of a subscription can easily be matched to a lease rental which is ideal following the rise of 'as-a-service' solutions in the market. This has driven greater adoption and created the need to develop funding models for intangibles such as whole software and hosted solutions, moving from a straight cash loan to a more sophisticated leasing approach that matches the subscription payments to the lease rentals."

As intangible solutions become a dominant feature in resellers' product portfolios the emphasis will move further away from traditional selling and installation towards a consultative approach, providing value added services on top of the diminishing levels of hardware relative to the overall customer project. "Leasing plays an important part in this consultancy process, driving a different and valuable dialogue around the customer's short, medium and long-term plans and financial budgets, as well as the anticipated impact of planned investments," noted Henehan. "This enables resellers to offer alternative and competitive payment solutions that are aligned with the customer's acquisition strategy, positioning the reseller as a trusted advisor and differentiating their offering."

Henehan cited figures from the Finance and Leasing Association that suggest the UK ICT leasing market was worth £2.3 billion in 2015. With numbers such as this, it is a wonder that leasing has not gone viral in the ICT sector. Low interest rates and an uncertain economy have helped to stimulate this growth, putting a brighter spotlight on the traditional benefits of leasing as an alternative source of funding, with the ability to fix repayments for the term of the lease becoming a more influential factor in rising adoption rates.

The leasing industry has also witnessed the retrenchment of some big global players, leaving independent finance companies such as PEAC to fill the vacuum. Although a new name in the leasing market PEAC brings strong experience in the IT and telecoms space and has worked with many of its partners for over 10 years. "Our organisational structure means that we are agile and quickly adapt to changing market conditions," commented Henehan. "As technology evolves we are constantly reviewing the assets that we fund, with the term 'asset' becoming less and less relevant to the IT and comms market with the move into the cloud and IoT."

PEAC acts as a finance partner to its reseller community, helping them and their customers to finance as much of the project as possible, thereby simplifying the acquisition process. "It is important for partners to combine as much of the hardware and project costs into the lease as possible, to include software, up-front training, consultancy and cabling as well as the hardware element," advised Henehan.

"Operating in the financial services market is not, as a rule, a core area of expertise among resellers, so we have developed operational guidance which details key areas of compliance in simple terms. Our partners also get instant online credit decisions, same day payments, electronic documentation and e-sign, supported by a team that understands the market."

Henehan believes that resellers who act against the wider demand for leasing risk putting themselves at a disadvantage that could jeopardise their progress. To any reseller, leasing is a gift. It is cash in the bank today rather than postponed payments tomorrow. "Leasing allows resellers to be paid up front for the total solution, and PEAC funds them the same day," said Henehan. "We urge resellers to fully embrace the benefits of leasing and encourage them to highlight financing options early in the sales cycle in all of their proposals. Leasing doesn't just mean a structured payment plan. Our most successful relationships are built on the foundation of understanding the lease cycle and making the most of upgrade opportunities."•

Philip Carse, Analyst at Megabuyte.com, reports on the recent performance of leading companies in the comms space during the last quarter.

While there were several private equity deals in the sector over the summer (such as Lyceum/Sabio, GCP/Arrow, Beech Tree/Wavenet), the more recent interesting corporate activity has involved M&A, particularly Daisy's agreed £185m/9.6x current EBITDA bid for Alternative Networks and Metronet's £48m/8x acquisition of M247. While these are trade deals, both buyers are PE backed and have used debt funding for a major part of their deals.

So how does the Daisy deal change the B2B supplier landscape? We estimate that Daisy and Alternative today have about a 3.1% and 0.8% share of the UK's £19 billion B2B comms market respectively (though less if one also included the similarly multi-billion UK IT services market). The deal elevates the combined business to about £720-730 million revenues, or about a 3.9% market share. It also moves Daisy above Virgin to behind Arqiva, though the latter with its mobile and TV masts and broadcast transmission is a very different business to Daisy. In pure business comms and IT services terms, we estimate that Daisy is now fourth behind BTEE, Vodafone and O2.

Meanwhile, the pick of the bunch of recent results and updates, for all the wrong reasons, are Alternative Networks' third profit warning in 12 months, a major accounting issue at Redcentric, TalkTalk admitting what all the City analysts already knew, that full year EBITDA would be at the low end of guidance, and more dire results from PCCW-backed wireless broadband provider UK Broadband.

Alternative Networks reported on its year to forget, with EBITDA down 17% to £18.4 million on revenues down 8% to £135.8 million for the year to September 2016. As the details show, the year was derailed by non-EU roaming and Advanced Solutions' non-recurring revenue weakness, offsetting some good progress in mobile subscribers, connectivity and hosted desktop. With a better second half than the first (EBITDA down 27% on revenues down 4%), the outlook is reasonably positive.

In somewhat of a shocking statement, AIM-listed managed IT services provider Redcentric announced in November that historic accounting misstatements over several years have overstated net assets by at least £10 million, while net debt is nearer £30 million than the high teens implied by an earlier trading update. The company does not appear to be in any fundamental danger given that the higher and more accurate net debt of £30 million is still only just over 1x full year EBITDA, but it will clearly need to regain the trust of its bankers and shareholders.

TalkTalk reported first half to September 2017 EBITDA up 44% to £130 million on revenues down 1.1% at £902 million, within which corporate was strong at a carrier driven +11% to £208 million (underlying +2.3%). With a sense of déjá vu the company now expects full year EBITDA to be at the bottom end of the £320-360 million range, though the city had already guessed this given current consensus of £318 million.

KCOM announced first half 2016/17 EBITDA down 14% to £32.0 million on revenues down 7.1% at £165.3 million, partly reflecting increased costs following the sale of its national network to CityFibre and lower spending on the major HMRC project. The results can best be described as reflecting a period of transformation for KCOM as the company starts to reinvest some of the £90 million received from CityFibre for its national network into its Hull fibre network and enterprise national business.

Adept Telecom reported interim revenues up 19% to £16.5 million, although the majority of this growth came from the five month contribution of Comms Group, with adjusted EBITDA up 20% to £3.5 million. Adept also revealed the £2.0m/1.5x 2015 sales acquisition of CAT Communications, further strengthening its Avaya presence.

Accounts to April 2016 from Excell Group showed a second year of solid growth with EBITDA up 23% to £3.0 million on revenues up 10% to £30.0 million, with exemplary operating cashflow. However, the fireworks are happening this year off the back of a major contract with Workspace Group and an acquisition. In contrast, accounts to January 2016 from BGF-backed mobile-cum-unified comms service provider Olive Communications showed a poor year, with revenues down marginally at £28.6 million, a one third decline in estimated EBITDA to £3.1 million and substantial cash outflows.

The overdue 2015 accounts for PCCW-backed wireless broadband operator UK Broadband showed yet another poor cash-guzzling year, with EBITDA losses up 6% at £17.2 million on revenues up 114% at £3.3 million, with the company's Relish 4G product yet to deliver the goods.

Share price under-performance
Although telecoms and networks share prices broadly tracked both the Megabuyte universe and the FTSE All-Share over the last three months, with a decline of 2.4%, the peer group has under-performed considerably over the last year. The average one year decline of 0.7% compares with +8.5% for the FTSE All-Share and 15% for the broader Megabuyte universe in which software stocks have generally performed well. The major share price under-performer over the last three months is Redcentric, down 60% on its accounting issues. Alternative Networks is down 16%, but only after the shares jumped 18% on the Daisy bid announcement.

IS Research publishes www.megabuyte.com, a company analysis and intelligence service covering over 400 public and private UK technology companies.
philip.carse@megabuyte.com

For MF Communications, it's time to move forward and exploit a different strategy for growth - acquisitions - a new approach that has been catalysed by the introduction of a successful network services operation, according to Director and Operations Manager James Donovan.

Donovan's reaction to the success of the network services arm was as decisive as the roll out itself. "The biggest turning point for us has been introducing the network services side of business three years ago," he stated. "Since then we have built our reputation, particularly in the local market, for telecoms services based on customer service, competitive pricing and excellent suppliers. While telephone hardware is a huge business area for us, we intend to grow and further compete in the UK network services arena and are looking for a telecoms company, or comms part of a business, to purchase. We are self-funded for this acquisition and positioned to move quickly."

While the introduction of network services has sown the seeds of a great harvest, to favour one group of technologies is not to exclude another, even if it falls into the category of 'legacy' systems. According to Donovan, traditional products are often overlooked despite being in strong demand. "We have stuck to our roots of selling telephone systems and last year reached the milestone of exporting hardware to more than 100 countries with record sales," he stated. "One of the main challenges we face is the sourcing of telecoms equipment that meets our high standards. Although we remanufacture and refurbish products at our facility in Tunbridge Wells, the base level of quality still needs to be there."

The company was established in 2000 by Fraser Young and Matt Emmins who saw an opportunity to use their knowledge of the telecoms industry to buy and sell telephone hardware to businesses and trade companies. "With huge advertising campaigns at the time promoting new technologies it was initially thought that the business had a finite life span," added Donovan. "However, time and hard work has shown that there is, and will continue to be, a market for new and second user telephone hardware."

The company has a headcount of 20, annual turnover of circa £2.5 million, and serves international businesses and telecoms trade companies as a full service telecoms business providing telephone systems, accessories, parts and replacement phones, all service requirements, maintenance and support.

"We have increased the range of telephone manufacturers we supply and support, expanded our maintenance services with new engineers and secured better deals for our customers on network services," said Donovan. "We have the foundations of a strong business and are working on increasing our profile and reputation within the industry and among our potential customers."

In other developments, MF Communications launched Office Phone Shop, an online portal for UK businesses to purchase telephone hardware and accessories, a move that displays the company's agility as a fast responder to industry requirements. "Like many markets, telecoms is fluid, so we have to be too," stated Donovan. "Furthermore, the market is moving towards being software licensing based, so resellers will need to be manufacturer approved. This means they will either have to align themselves to specific manufacturers or be more consultative in looking for customer solutions."

As for MF Communications, key considerations right now include Brexit and keeping a keen eye on how this affects the free market throughout Europe and opens up opportunities in emerging markets. "The pound rate is also important to us, as is new telecoms technology, acquisitions within the industry, discontinuation of phone models by manufacturers and new market players," noted Donovan.

He knows that all of these areas, and more, require his full attention, and will draw on his skill sets and experiences. "After 15 years of working in business information, followed by two years of sales and marketing training and strategy, I turned to the telecommunications industry," he explained. "While it seems like a big change to move into telecoms, my strengths lie in business strategy and planning as well as sales and marketing, so I did my research before jumping in. My background is helping MF Communications to continue to grow at excellent rates."•

Playing close to the wind of developments in ICT as they happen is not in VSL Director Adrian Auld's business plan, but that's not to say he doesn't get the full measure of new technology to give customers exactly what they want when they want it. By keeping both ears to the ground, he has mastered the art of listening as a strategy.

The task for any good sales person is to listen attentively to their prospects, which can be instructive, helping them to take on the character of a trusted adviser. Much has been made of practicing a consultative approach, and from the basic act of listening the conversation becomes customer led. It's a simple philosophy that has served Auld well.

"The biggest influence on our development has always been the messages coming from our customers," stated Auld. "We do not always lead the charge on the introduction of new ideas, but if a customer pushes us in a certain direction we will go there. Getting into hosted because it seemed like a good idea was not on the agenda, but coming up with hosted services to satisfy the requests and needs of our customers most definitely was."

VSL's future outlook is predicated on putting basic principles back at the centre of business activity. "VSL will continue to listen to customers and move in a complementary direction," added Auld. "Currently, this means improving the completeness of our end-to-end provisioning. Once this is in place there will be a platform to sell other applications, perhaps including non-voice solutions."

Auld's part-reactionary response to market dynamics fits with his methodical growth strategy and sensible planning. "VSL has adopted a conservative approach to expansion," noted Auld. "All growth has been organic, the office premises are owned and there is no debt in the business. However, we have seen a tenfold increase in turnover since our incorporation. Growth has continued at a steady rate and two new staff members were added this year."

VSL has touched over 1,300 customers in its 20 year history and most of them are still on the books. Customer type varies from owner operator businesses through SME, public (education sector) to large global businesses. The company has also committed to a 'year out scheme', every year taking a business studies student from either the University of Herts or Portsmouth.

Auld himself completed a degree in business studies at what was then Liverpool Poly. The third year entailed a placement with BICC, a global business, working in the fledgling IT department. "I realised that the sales guys coming to see us with the latest and greatest ideas were having more fun and I decided that was the career for me," he said. "In 1985 the best opportunity for a career in IT sales was in the telecoms sector, BT having just lost its monopoly position. So I joined the Norton Telecom graduate scheme. After three years at Norton Telecom followed by one year with Siemens I was ready to have a go myself."

In 1992 Auld began operations from a spare bedroom with just a mobile phone, Amstrad PC and a dot matrix printer. "I started out as a freelance salesman selling voicemail and IVR solutions for existing reseller businesses," he recalled. "There was an opportunity to sell this new technology at a premium and it was being missed by most traditional PBX vendors. The late John Massey at Callback Communications and a then youthful Tony Parish at Genesis were great supporters.

"As the business grew I developed customers of my own and then pushed the button on the next level in 1996 when VSL incorporated and took on its first engineer. Voicemail and IVR products were joined by Toshiba and Mitel with a particular leaning towards call centre solutions. The business is still owned by me although run more and more by my management team."

The focus on call centres differentiated VSL from traditional PBX vendors. "We were providing a complete solution - PBX, voicemail, IVR and reporting tools," explained Auld. "Adding a calls and lines business was also a significant change. This eventually led to a close relationship with BT Wholesale which has been transformative - the development towards becoming a provider of connectivity grew from here. VSL is now a fully fledged provider of connectivity and hosted applications."

Other developments of significance include an investment in a co-located data centre facility as well as connection to BT Wholesale services to provide Ethernet, ADSL, SIP trunking and BT hosted services. The investment in Mitel MICD enabled VSL to build bespoke hosted solutions including the provision of private cloud for key customers. "Hosted has happened and connectivity is important so we need to make sure that we can manage the whole provision end-to-end," commented Auld. "We now have the capacity to deliver a full MPLS network for our customers and to provide them with resilient applications such as voice, call centre and recording. All of this has resulted in a swing to the provision of subscription-based services, although we still sell our fair share of CPE."

VSL offers a full suite of voice applications either as local CPE or hosted. "With the benefits of Mitel's offering we can show our customers a clear migration path from bespoke tin through ISS, virtual provision to full hosted," added Auld. "We can provide basic Internet access (resilient across six ISPs) protected by the latest Cisco technology right through to the most sophisticated multi-media call centre. We have solutions that scale from two users to thousands and offer a support service to back this up. We are particularly strong in the financial sector and have traditionally done well with schools.

"We see an opportunity to add value to our hosted and CPE offerings by taking up a more pro-active role in the provision of the LAN infrastructure. We are looking at options here, again driven by feedback from our customers. Our customers are by far our most valuable and vital asset and they provide most of our marketing resource. Nothing sells better than word of mouth."

Ireland-based UCaaS provider Blueface has gone into overdrive, launching a new platform into seven operating markets while revving up its channel proposition and setting out big ambitions to become a global top ten player in cloud communications. We got the story from Group CEO Alan Foy.

Foy offers a vision of Blueface at the vanguard of a UCaaS-led march across territories far and wide. His key to unlocking international business is an in-house designed and built UCaaS platform being rolled out in Ireland, the UK, the US, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. "All elements of the platform were developed in-house to reflect the demands of the market, and the entire value chain of activities are controlled by Blueface end-to-end," said Foy. "To become a top ten global provider we need to operate in more markets, more verticals and build strong partnerships."

The clout exhibited by Blueface in UCaaS driven growth is as much about ambition as technological innovation. "With our new territory launches we are building a global SaaS business model that can deliver growth and scale in a managed way," added Foy. "We intend to build large direct customer bases and partner relationships in these markets in order to scale the business significantly over the next few years.

"Globally, there is a significant uptake of UCaaS in enterprises and companies moving from on-premise solutions to cloud-based delivery models. The cloud model goes well beyond prior online delivery approaches by combining the efficient use of shared resources, simplified solution packaging, self-service provisioning, with elastic and granular scaling."

Blueface is a challenger brand with a challenger mentality. As such, it constantly seeks new ways to optimise the value chain of communications activity and add value to its customers. "This drives the development of our business model, which is to focus on the efficient delivery of service, removing waste and empowering the user as much possible," commented Foy. "Our entire platform is designed around achieving the aim of offering scale and delivering a better customer experience."

Blueface employs almost 50 people in Dublin, London and Rome. It serves circa 20,000 customers, all business clients with a good mix of SMEs and enterprises. The firm is set to grow top line revenue by 35 per cent this year and has been ranked in the Deloitte Fast 50 of Ireland's fastest growing technology companies over the last five years.

The Blueface story is not akin to yarns of 'born in the cloud' upstarts with no legacy in their short wake. It is a narrative laden with experience, both in technology and business. In the early days Foy pursued a business degree and a strategy research degree at the University of Dublin, Trinity College. He then joined Ireland's leading independent investment firm, NCB Stockbrokers, and worked in corporate finance, investment banking, wealth management and equity research.

"During my time at the firm I met many companies in the IT, communications and telco landscape and developed a keen interest in the IT services sector," explained Foy. "I left NCB to establish or join a technology start-up that I could both invest in and work with. In 2010, I joined Blueface and conducted a management buy-in to the business with the backing of Lord Iveagh of the Guinness family."

Blueface was founded by Aaron Clauson and Feargal Brady in 2004 as a VoIP player that initially serviced the residential market. Six years later Blueface decided to target small to medium sized businesses that needed VoIP services as its platform was bristling with a range of business grade offerings including call conferencing, follow me functionality, SMS marketing tools, global numbers etc. Since then, Blueface has successfully pivoted entirely from residential to business customers and is now 100 per cent business or carrier focused.

"We have increasingly focused on large enterprise customers across multiple sites and jurisdictions," commented Foy. "We are experiencing real growth in this segment in addition to our SME and corporate business. Also, large carriers and mobile operators have opted to take a white labelled managed service from Blueface whereby we deliver our platform as an end-to-end branded experience for a third party. This has been successfully deployed through a white label or full service API approach. We expect to see more international customers and white label opportunities in the months and years ahead."

Foy noted that integration with other business applications and SaaS based products is vital for voice communications and there will more adoption of cloud communications as integrations and delivery models evolve over time. "These cloud-based models are changing everything, and tomorrow's competitor will look entirely different to the traditional contenders we see today," he added. "But resellers are well placed to service the customer. As cloud communications platforms evolve and adapt, there is an important role for these partners to develop new approaches to serving the end customer as part of a total solution sale and managed service." •

SureVoIP's Managing Director Gavin Henry is over the moon about last year's ITSPA award win for Best Business ITSP (medium enterprise), an accolade that was achieved just three years after pressing the ISP button. In many ways, this industry recognition was determined long before Henry even established the company.

Henry's teenage ambition was to become a pilot - his training funded by a spell working on the tills of a large supermarket. Although he rang up the cash for flying school in Florida, USA, it turned out to be a case of the school 'ripping off' UK learners, so he flew home and was accepted for a degree course. "My path to where I am today is just how it was meant to be and I wouldn't change anything," stated Henry.

A stint at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen studying for a degree in Electronic and Communications Engineering introduced him to Linux, programming and open source software, and before the course had finished Henry secured his first job as a graduate engineer. "But I became disillusioned and kept going back to Linux on my desktop, realising that other businesses could benefit from it," he explained. "In 2003, a year after starting the job, I asked my boss if I could establish Suretec Systems with two other directors, whom I bought out at a later date. The plan was to sell Linux IT support and consultancy."

It soon became clear that the business of consultancy was a 'long slog'. "There were great day rates with excellent big clients using open source software, but no service revenue," added Henry. "After getting into Asterisk and VoIP in 2006 I looked at my options for a service type business and focused on VoIP on-site systems for three years. In 2009, when SureVoIP was founded, we applied to Ofcom for number allocations and signed up to BT Wholesale's IPEX service."

In 2014 the company moved from renting equipment to becoming a fully fledged network operator supplying its own VoIP optimised Internet connectivity - first in London, then Edinburgh as well as being on every public peering exchange in the UK. SureVoIP also started work on SS7 interconnects in 2015, set to go live in Q2 2017. "This, and the addition of WLR3 in 2016, allows us to move up the supply chain to offer the highest quality and pricing for customers and partners as well as long-term company stability and offerings," said Henry.

His target markets are medium enterprises ranging from oil and gas, travel and hotels, care homes and technology companies. "We plan to move into Europe within three years and have a strong focus on encryption, data analytics, machine learning and innovative comms," added Henry.

The company generally grows at least 50 per cent each year but 2015 saw 63 per cent growth, while 2016 is looking steady due to changes in the oil and gas market. "We're getting close to the milestone of £1 million turnover which I can't believe for a small self-funded company of six people," stated Henry. "All of our guys live and breathe VoIP. We still have a long way to go, and the next three years are going to be amazing."

SureVoIP has grown organically and Henry's never borrowed money, but he has re-invested wisely. "I'd be classed as a slow burner to date as all of our progress and decisions have been expensive and involved big changes," he said. "Now we are established but not complacent. We have a platform and infrastructure that allows us to move fast when we want to test something or ask customers via beta programmes. As well as organic growth, we are considering the possibility of acquiring right fit companies in our sector."

According to Henry, SureVoIP currently lists the 'ingredients' of VoIP on its website but the focus has swung sharply onto improving the sale of 'recipes' to partners and customers. "We are launching a new portal to front our API," noted Henry. "This is going to help us get to the next level in terms of customer self-service, bring innovation to the customer quickly, and simplify the management of pricing plans and data analytics. We are also engaging with software consultancies to give us more flexible billing solutions and various other offerings that will be presented via our new portal. These will address the new ways in which we wish to sell to help customers' budgets and offer greater choice.

"We have almost seven years of data for some customers and when we apply machine learning to this information it will reveal lots of useful intelligence for clients. This is the real opportunity in the telecoms sector right now that no one else is offering easily at our level. We want to be at the forefront of giving customers the insights and data they need to do business in the most informed way possible."

He believes that analytics and standards-based communications are key trends, most notably WebRTC and the IoT. "There are big changes happening with everything trying to find its place - the same is true in the virtual mobile world," commented Henry. "We've been tempted by that in the past but no one has really solved the number porting issues."

Henry also plans to strengthen SureVoIP's partner channel operation and potentially establish a wholesale division. "Our new partner portal will take us there," he said. "In fact, our new portal will drive so much. I'm also exploring a suite of native mobile apps to give customers their data instantly. There's a lot of cool and valuable things that can be done that the bigger guys simply are not doing."

Rewinding the clock, Henry's early career achievements are more remarkable considering tough challenges in his personal life. "My son Ben was born at 28 weeks and weighed less than 2lb 13oz," explained Henry. "He was in neonatal care for 10 weeks before we got him home. After some time it was explained to us that Ben had Cerebral Palsy due to a brain bleed from a lack of oxygen at some point. He's now 12 and happy, but can't walk or talk. We're lucky because he is a very happy kid."

The death of Henry's father last year at the age of 59 also put things into a wider perspective. "I've had a good think about life as I'm getting close to 40 myself, and looked at how my Dad influenced things," he said. "Personally, becoming a father and overcoming the term 'normal' was a challenge. There's no such thing as normal. Everyone, everything and every business is different."

'Difference' is something that can be found in abundance within SureVoIP's client base. "The mix and locations of our customers are interesting," commented Henry. "We have them all over the world, even an island in the Bahamas. Our customers range from oil companies, TV channels on Sky, care homes, start-ups, wind farms, hotels etc - all business clients. We've built a wonderful platform to enable us to do many things. So, it's time to start showing that to more people.

"Myself and the team cannot believe how far we've come since October 2013 when I pushed the ISP button and now winning the ITPSA award. It makes me go 'wow' and smile. I am a humble guy but it's nice to think about these things sometimes."•

Supplier and reseller operations must be brought up to date if the comms industry's cogs are not to jam. But fear not - the rise of highly developed portals will ensure that the channel's wheels remain well greased for today and the times ahead.

The comms industry has in the past been guilty of creating ill-considered user interfaces that are, at best, clunky in terms of the flow of information, user interaction and user experience, believes Aled Treharne (pictured), Director of Innovation and Development at Siphon (part of the Nuvias Group). "As an industry, our benchmark should have been higher," he stated. "We're providing communications systems, so communicating with customers should come easily to us. The onus is on us to deliver new ways of communicating with end users."

Putting words into action Siphon has developed Dovetail, a new portal to help customers deploy and manage CPE, which is scheduled to launch in Q1 2017. "We took the decision to build our own system," said Treharne. "The biggest change is a different approach around the data model. Dovetail has been designed to have a multi-tier channel model at its core and we've made it flexible enough to fit any business model. Couple that with the white label functionality, which allows our channel partners to present a branded interface of their choosing, and Dovetail represents a significant shift for us in the distribution market."

There are two key factors motivating Siphon's focus on software development - commercial drivers and customer feedback. "Style preferences change over time without delivering incremental value, so we've focused the development effort on the delivery of tangible value changes for end users as well as for our channel partners," added Treharne. "The biggest challenge is to ensure that we allow our customers to stay ahead in a rapidly changing industry."

Dovetail provides a pre-deployment network assessment tool to verify the inherent capabilities of the network as well as a simplified interface to configure and manage the handsets through their whole life. Dovetail also offers a consolidated view of the quality of service experienced by customers as well as diagnostic information required by support engineers so that channel partners can be notified proactively when they need to take action.

"Self-service and automation form part of an overall channel offering that builds a trusted partnership," said Treharne. "As many partners segment their market focus to serve specific business verticals, the personal touch is a key part of that delivery. We've been working with a number of partners to deliver attributes of human interaction to their portals through the integration of technologies like WebRTC. This work recognises that not all users understand the language that's used in the industry to describe the technologies available - nor should they need to. With the rise of Amazon Echo and Google Home, it's feasible that an enterprising B2C communications provider will deliver seamless integration between those physical interfaces and their control systems."

There's a drive to improve efficiency by integrating portals and back office systems. From Siphon's own experience, around 70 per cent of orders are placed over an API that provides direct feedback to customers as well as minimising the potential for human error and the time taken to process an order. In the absence of this kind of efficient process, the ability for Siphon to scale its business would have been restricted.

Despite big advances in portal development there is often a misconception about the extent of automation they offer resellers, believes Dave Dadds, CEO, VanillaIP. "Our concept with Uboss is that it goes beyond bundling services and reseller branded billing," he said. "It is the central platform for managing all elements of the reseller's business and back office, including adding their own non VanillaIP services."

Single bundle solutions are not cutting it any more, believes Dadds. "Resellers need to be able to put together their own mix of services, tariffs and 100 per cent white label all customer touch points," he added. "We have to continually develop Uboss to give resellers the differentiation they need as well as additional revenue streams. For example, the SMS integration we have built into the BroadSoft call centre solution. Another key focus area is reporting and analytics, not just for customers but also for resellers."

The Internet has changed everything, not least buyer behaviour. And considering the way customers purchase and consume service now, portals like Uboss are not just a way of accessing the service they actually become a part of the product. "Customers can take service from our resellers 24/7 and they only see the packages and tariffs that the reseller is using," said Dadds.

VanillaIP has just moved into a brand new 10,000 sq ft office in India to support its 80-plus plus Uboss software development team and the growth it sees within this unit. "Interestingly, we only need four BroadSoft engineers, which is what many people in the channel know us for," said Dadds. "This reflects the reality of our business as a software development firm. I don't think any of us are in 'telecoms' anymore. The days of buying a closed PBX that did everything the customer wants are over and customers and resellers are embracing multi-vendor solutions.

"The key question for the channel is how can you bring all this together and present it as a single solution for the customer where they can access everything in one place. Uboss unifies everything for the customer and reseller. If the customer has to log into different portals to get billing, call recordings, call centre reports, add users etc, that's just a mess. Customer service is absolutely key for us all in reducing churn but if you are running around hand cranking different services you will struggle."

Uboss includes a fully featured ticketing system provided free of charge for reseller partners that use VanillaIP's billing. And a Feature Request button offers a traffic light system where requests are accepted, prioritised and scheduled, so the partner can see the status of all their open feature requests. "Typically, we release 20 new features in Uboss each month," added Dadds. "Approximately 50 per cent of the product development in Uboss is driven by partner feature requests. Innovation and enhancement is vital to our partners and their customers' tools. So we've gone a long way beyond provisioning and billing but have a lot further to go yet."

Virtual1 has always placed 1Portal at the centre of its business, with committed budget and previous spend now in excess of £2 million. "We know that making things easy for our partners is a huge part of our differentiation in the market," stated Neil Wilson, Product and Marketing Manager. "So we built 1Portal to combine quoting, ordering and service management as well as to share sales enablement collateral and operational guides.

"This helps to drive more collaboration with our partners, helping them to keep overheads down while driving revenue opportunities up. The success of 1Portal is clearly shown in the usage data, with over 90 per cent of partners transacting through 1Portal and an average of 5,000 quotes being produced every month. Over 60 per cent of our orders are fully automated from quote to go live. This means we can run leaner than many legacy networks while delivering a higher level of service, driving down our costs and ultimately those of our partners."

Business value can take many forms, but automation is going to be the difference maker in today's marketplace, believes Wilson. "Partners need to provide differentiation through service and customer satisfaction, as well as reduced costs and quicker time to revenue," he added. "Automation is how they can realise this, as well as other benefits such as improved end customer satisfaction through faster, right first time delivery. The more successful the project, the happier the customer and the greater the scope for upsell opportunities."

Wilson believes that the future for portals lies in an accompanying suite of APIs. "Portals have been fantastic at moving the industry forward and streamlining the relationship between wholesaler and channel," he commented. "The next generation of resellers are pushing that relationship further and want to integrate their own systems directly and deliver a native experience that connects with their supply chain automatically. To that end we have already delivered the first of a suite of APIs to allow our channel partners to integrate directly with us for quote generation."•

UKCloud has introduced its tenth round of price reductions across its Cloud Storage and Enterprise Compute Cloud, its most popular services.
 
The company's investment in hyper-converged infrastructure has refreshed its cloud storage platform, which is designed to deliver improved performance and functionality at a reduced cost.

Customers with large-scale requirements will pay just 1.5p per GB per month, a reduction of 66%.

Customers with smaller requirements will see the price of their services fall by almost 80%, from 9p per GB per month to 2p per GB per month.
 
"Our continued growth means that we can pass on these savings to our public sector customers," said Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud.

"Our tenth wave of reductions coincides with cost increases from other providers, most notably US corporations."
 
Various virtual machine sizes on UKCloud's Enterprise Compute Cloud will also see price drops from 1st February 2017.

Intelisys Global has signed its 40th EMEA sales partner since launching its US two-tier distribution channel model in the UK less than six months ago.

The technology services distributor reached this milestone following deals with UTelcom, Primetel and Allumno.

"Selling cloud-based solutions is very different to selling traditional telecoms or IT systems, and firms such as UTelcom, Primetel and Allumno recognise that they need a new kind of approach to succeed," said Stephen Hackett, MD for Intelisys Global. "That's where Intelisys Global can help."

Lorent Reid of UTelcom, added: "The Intelisys Global model immediately opens up opportunities for smaller channel players like us. We're now able to bid for larger projects that previously we wouldn't have been considered for.

"With the backing of Intelisys Global, we can take advantage of its supplier partners, effectively broadening our solutions range and opening up the prospect of more secure, sustainable business.

"Since joining the Intelisys Global community, we've already looked into projects with Level 3, Masergy and RingCentral, and we look forward to building out our proposition for customers."?

Mobile data firm Tutela has launched a $1.2m recruitment drive to sign-up new mobile app developers into its partner programme.

With a focus on the UK and Western Europe, Tutela is actively signing agreements with mobile app publishers with one million-plus daily active users (DAUs).

Tutela currently works with over 100 app developers with over one billion combined users and aims to double that amount in the first quarter of 2017.

Large app publishers who enrol in the programme can typically expect to see $1 to 4m in additional revenues within the first 24 months, claims the firm.

Tutela collects and monetises mobile network quality data using a software package that mobile - and particularly mobile game companies - embed in their apps.

The software runs in the background and collects anonymous data about the coverage and quality of mobile networks, which Tutela uses to create reports and heat-maps of the world's network coverage.

Tutela sells these reports to mobile telecoms companies and shares the revenue with the app publisher.

"Mobile coverage and quality data collection is a multi-billion-dollar industry and our doors are open. We are actively looking for app publishers to partner with," said Tom Luke, VP Sales and Marketing at Tutela.

"We call this model Anonymous Data Monetisation (ADM). The data we collect doesn't affect the user or device, but it helps mobile telecoms companies quickly understand and improve networks for their users.

"They pay us for the data and we share the revenue with the mobile app publishers, so it's a win-win-win for the mobile companies, the app publishers and the users."