Comms Dealer

Virgin Media and BT have sealed a new five year Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) agreement.

Under the new deal, EE, a BT Group company, will provide wholesale mobile network services to Virgin Media, a subsidiary of Liberty Global.

The full MVNO agreement, which covers voice and data services, replaces an existing MVNO wholesale agreement between the two companies and extends its exclusivity to 2021.

Peter Kelly, MD of Virgin Mobile, said: "This will give Virgin Mobile more control and firepower to deliver services to the UK mobile market."

Gerry McQuade, CEO of Wholesale and Ventures, BT, added: "This has proven a successful relationship for both parties for many years and, as we enter a period of further technological change in the mobile market, we are very pleased to renew and extend our 17 year old relationship.

"BT values the economy of scale that Virgin Media brings to our network."

Virgin Mobile was established in 1999 and is said to be the world's first virtual mobile operator. It boasts three million UK subscribers.

In November 2016 Virgin Mobile launched fast 4G in the UK.

Wholesale and Ventures is a BT business that provides network products and services to more than 1,400 communication providers operating in the UK.

Cisco partner Ideal has appointed former Trustmarque cloud and managed services chief Mike Henson (pictured) as MD, taking over from co-founder Claire Hopkins who becomes Founding Director and will focus more on supporting the executive management team.

Henson has also held senior roles at Maxima, Xchanging and Morse.

Hopkins, who set up Ideal in 2009 with Mo Merrick, commented: "Mike is taking responsibility for leading Ideal through the next phase of its growth, building on last year's move to larger offices and our continued investment in our team and portfolio.

"We have always been about delivering on our promises, and bringing Mike on board means that we can continue to do this as we grow the business.

"He has great experience in putting the customer first and creating propositions that leverage technology to deliver tangible business outcomes."

Henson added: "I'm hugely excited about the company's potential for further growth."

The deal registration schemes of multiple vendors can now be accessed by Tech Data resellers via a new streamlined Bid Portal.

Cathi Low, Director of SMB at Tech Data, said: "The idea is to remove all of the complexity and make it as easy as possible to apply for special bid pricing.

"Every vendor handles bids in their own way, making it confusing and time-consuming for resellers. The Bid Portal irons out the differences and provides customers with a single form to complete for all vendors covered."

Initially, around 15 of Tech Data's vendor partners will be covered by the portal, including HP and Dell. More will be added at a later date.

A reseller event hosted by Nimans, Microsoft and Yealink at the Belfry golf and leisure resort aimed to raise awareness of Skype for Business and its projected 250% growth trajectory this year.

Keynote speaker Ian Woolner, Microsoft's Skype for Business Development Professional, was joined by Ian Brindle, Head of Conferencing and Telephony Sales at Nimans, and Yealink General Manager Steve Watts.

"Globally, 75 million people work from home, there are 600 million mobile workers along with one billion office cube spaces," explained Brindle.

"Full collaboration of voice, video and content sharing is the way forward with Skype for Business revolutionising the way many people work."

Pictured: Ian Brindle and Steve Watts

Pennine stalwart Geoff King (pictured left), Product and Services Director, has retired following the sale of the business to the Nycomm Group.

He joined Pennine in 1984 as a technician and after a series of promotions became a board member in 2004.

Following King's departure Pennine named Stephen Duffy as its new Group Head of Technical Services, reporting to former Pennine MD Andrew Roberts who now sits on the Nycomm board.

Duffy (pictured left) is a Fellow of the Institute of Science and Technology and brings over 26 years experience working in IT and technical services.

He joins Bury-based Pennine from the Higher Education sector, moving from the Manchester Metropolitan University where he was Head of Technical Services responsible for 200 staff across 35 technical teams.

Duffy's previous experience also includes a stint at the University of Manchester where he was responsible for the School of Electrical Engineering and Electronics' £200m estate, including the development of its specialist teaching and research facilities.

"Through the knowledge and experience I bring, I aim to make a significant contribution to the continued success of a fast growing business," said Duffy.

Zen Internet has been awarded Public Service Network (PSN) accreditation for its IP VPN product, allowing the independent connectivity provider to offer services to the public sector, including local authorities and NHS hospitals.
 
PSN accreditation recognises that Zen's infrastructure and protocols are sufficiently robust and secure to safely carry sensitive public sector data.

To demonstrate this, Zen had to achieve CESG Assured Service (Telecoms) certification - known as CAS(T) - and undergo an IT health check. 
 
Jon Bauer, Zen's Technical Director, said: "PSN accreditation will give us the opportunity to support a whole new sector. 

"But what is equally important is that it shows all our partners how seriously we take the security of their customers' information and data. Our network, and the management that supports it, have achieved the high standards expected of a public sector supplier."
 
PSN accreditation comes on the back of a major investment in Zen's core network and an expansion of the company's on-net presence to over 500,000 postcodes, covering nearly every corner of the UK.

iHub and Panasonic Business have launched a joint hosted telephony offer including Panasonic SIP handsets with iHub's BroadSoft based hosted voice platform.

Steve Day, CEO at iHub, said: "We have seen the requirement for bundled minutes decline as fast as the costs of minutes.

"This proposition is provided on iHub's latest BroadSoft voice platform that is fully virtualised and geo resilient."

Panasonic Group Sales Manager for the UK Bob Mercer added: "The way telephony is bought is changing, with strong choices in traditional bundles or hosted solutions. Panasonic has developed a SIP telephony range to meet the needs of this market and we believe that this collaboration helps do just that."

Operator and vendor revenues for the year ending September 2016 reached $148bn across six key cloud services and infrastructure market segments, a 25% annual increase, reckons Synergy Research.

IaaS and PaaS services had the highest growth rate at 53%, followed by hosted private cloud infrastructure services at 35% and enterprise SaaS at 34%.

Synergy Research also said that 2016 was notable as the year in which spend on cloud services overtook spend on cloud infrastructure hardware and software.

In aggregate, cloud service markets are now growing three times more quickly than cloud infrastructure hardware and software.

Companies that featured the most prominently among the 2016 market segment leaders were Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, HPE, Cisco, IBM, Salesforce and Dell EMC.

Over the period, total spend on hardware and software to build cloud infrastructure exceeded $65bn, with spend on private clouds accounting for over half of the total but spend on public cloud growing much more rapidly.

Investments in infrastructure by cloud service providers helped them to generate almost $30bn in revenues from cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS, hosted private cloud services) and over $40bn from enterprise SaaS, in addition to supporting Internet services such as search, social networking, email and e-commerce.

UCaaS is also growing steadily and driving some radical changes in business communications, observed Synergy Research.

"We tagged 2015 as the year when cloud became mainstream, and I'd say that 2016 is the year that cloud started to dominate many IT market segments," said Synergy Research Group's founder and Chief Analyst Jeremy Duke.

"Major barriers to cloud adoption are now almost a thing of the past, especially on the public cloud side. Cloud technologies are now generating massive revenues for technology vendors and cloud service providers, and yet there are still many years of strong growth ahead."

Across seven key enterprise infrastructure segments vendor revenues for the last four quarters declined by 1% on an annualised basis, claims Synergy Research Group.

Aggregate revenues for the last four quarters reached $88bn, with revenue in each of the last 12 quarters typically in the $20-23bn range.

Data centre servers comprise the largest segment of the market though revenues here declined by almost 5% in 2016.

Switches and routers are the second largest segment and they experienced growth of 1%.

WLAN grew the most while the enterprise voice and telepresence markets continued to be challenged by aggressive price competition and market disruption.

According to Synergy Research Group, Cisco is the market leader in six of the seven segments with the exception being data centre servers, where it is ranked fifth.

In aggregate across the seven segments Cisco's market share over the last four quarters was 33%, in line with its share in the preceding four quarters.

HPE is the leader in data centre servers and is the number two ranked vendor in both switches and routers and WLAN.

Its aggregated market share over the four quarters was 16%. The number two ranked vendors in the other segments are Dell EMC (enterprise data center servers), Avaya (enterprise voice systems), Juniper (network security), Microsoft (UC applications) and Polycom (telepresence).

Vendors who have been achieving steady market share growth in these competitive markets include Palo Alto Networks (network security), Arista Networks (Ethernet switching), Huawei (Ethernet switching), HPE (WLAN) and Dell EMC (servers).

"Cisco continues to control a third of the enterprise infrastructure market and remains in a league of its own despite a variety of challenges," said Synergy Research Group's founder and Chief Analyst Jeremy Duke.

"HPE is the only broad-based competitor to challenge Cisco's dominance though it does not compete in all of the major segments.

"The main disruption to the market is being provided by the growth of cloud and hosted solutions, which are redefining markets and enabling new competitors to emerge."

Cardiff-based thevoicefactory is set to realise its international expansion ambitions following a funding boost that enables the firm to address opportunities in the United States.

Knight CF advised thevoicefactory on a significant debt funding package from Finance Wales that also allows the hosted telephony provider to increase its headcount and strategic focus.

Paul Billingham, Director at Knight CF, said: "thevoicefactory is a fast growing company but was constrained by a lack of funding. We knew that an injection of cash would enable the business to recruit new people, invest, and most importantly free up management resource so key staff could focus their time more strategically."

Paul Harrison, MD, thevoicefactory, added: "Knight ensured that we could secure the required funding with no disruption to the business."