comms - sdwan-solutions.co.uk · sd-wan wave call recording 30 update 2019 - time to go with the...

Selling in the Public Sector38Catching the

SD-WAN wave24 Call Recording update30

2019 - Time to Go with the Flow! UKs fastest growing UC solution

TELAVOXCover StoryPages 22-23

IN THIS ISSUE

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FEBRUARY 2019 @commsbusiness

001 COMMS 0219.indd 1 22/01/2019 16:52

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The Brexit headlines are coming thick and fast right now and I can’t remember a time when so much of the market faced this kind of uncertainty. I still can’t decide if I am excited or worried about the year ahead, 2019 could prove to be one of the most challenging to date for the Channel as businesses delay purchasing decisions or decide to sweat assets so they

can preserve that ‘rainy day money’.On the � ip side the ONS has just announced some of the best employment � gures we

have seen in the last � fty years. Are UK employers ignoring the Brexit chaos? � e jobs market traditional trails the economic climate so the jury is still out on that one!

I ran my own poll online and asked my followers what they thought would happen next. Just over half of respondents (55%) seem to think we are heading for another referendum which some think is just a Conservative ploy to reverse the process and swing us back into the EU.

Amid all of the political games and spending slowdown there are still those companies who are continuing to innovate and invest. Wildix are hosting their � rst ever UC&C summit this February in Barcelona for European partners. I will be going along to see what kinds of innovations are coming to market which will sit around their WebRTC enabled platform. I’ll be reporting on the event in the next issue so watch out for that.

Nextgenaccess are investing in some heavy hitters as they embark on an ambitious plan to disrupt the wholesale access space. Bob Falconer has become a Non-Exec Director whilst Steven Marshall has joined as Chairman, both are major coups for the company as they look to invest £22m in their 10GB � bre network.

It’s great to see such a dynamic sector bucking the trend, I hope that con� dence continues to reverberate throughout the Channel.

Enjoy the issue,

Editor

www.commsbusiness.co.uk February 2019 | Comms Business Magazine | 3

FROM THE EDITOR

Editor David DungayT 01322 466018

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Chaos continues…

MISSION STATEMENTComms Business is the Channel resource for the B2B ICT market. From the vendor technologies through to distributor activities and service provider offerings, we are the leading plaform for Channel Partners to educate themselves on every aspect of the market.

We provide resellers with the knowledge to confi dently procure the products and services they need to supply to their business customers. We do this via accurate and timely reporting on key Channel companies, trends, regulatory changes and more through a series of interviews, in-depth features and market reports.

Technology is evolving at a rapid rate today, staying abreast of the changes and advances in the ICT space can prove invaluable to readers to help them stay ahead of the competition. Comms Business strives to hunt for the most relevant cutting edge technologies across the ICT space which includes IT, cloud, comms, mobile, security, data and more.

www.markallengroup.com

003 COMMS 0219 v2.indd 3 22/01/2019 15:10

4 | Comms Business Magazine | February 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk

NEWS05Ingram up for Sale$7.5bn price tag

06The Sound of GammaRoadshows announced

07Rydal ExpandsCloudsource acquired

08Video in a BoxKonftel launches solution

09Now What?City Talk

10Movers and ShakersChannel talent on the move

12Blockchain RoadmapExertis invests in technology

14Nimans and Red BoxCapturing voice revenues

15UC & C SummitWildix launches event

16New IP PBX LaunchedNet:telecom hits market

INTERVIEW18Dropbox InterviewSimon Aldous

@CommsBusiness Join Channel Live Discussion Group

To read the full stories and keep up to date on the latest news visit www.commsbusiness.co.uk

8

28Demand GenerationTim Stone explains

36Lal Hussain – Insight UKInterview

52Lawrence JonesQuick start to 2019

FEATURES22Cover Story Telavox

24SD-WAN is ComingFeature

30Call RecordingMarket report

38Selling in Public SectorFeature

EVENTS20Comms Business AwardsEntries open now!

OPINION50Pain PointsCall & Contact Centres

INSIGHT46A Two-Way StreetThe latest on video

30

38

42

004 COMMS 0219.indd 4 22/01/2019 15:11

www.commsbusiness.co.uk

COMMS NEWS

February 2019 | Comms Business Magazine | 5

Ingram Micro in talks over saleINGRAM MICRO’S PARENT company HNA announced recently it is in talks over a potential sale of Ingram Micro to Apollo Asset Management. The deal comes with a $7.5bn price tag, including $1.5bn of debt. HNA purchased the distributor in 2016 for $6bn but due to a recent crackdown by the Chinese government on aggressive deal making fi rms.

HNA released a statement on Christmas Eve as to why they were dumping the asset, it read, “due to changes in market conditions and the company’s

JULIAN NIMAN AWARDTom Maxwell has become the inaugural winner of a special award in memory of the company’s founder Julian Niman. Tom is the fi rst recipient of the Award for his ‘outstanding contribution’ over his 30-year career.

5G WHOLESALEArqiva and CityFibre have revealed details of the UK’s largest pilot of wholesale, 5G-ready small cell infrastructure. The multi million-pound project in Hammersmith & Fulham is creating a brand-new 15km high density fi bre network.

BYTES...

85%of IT channel companies have recognised the need to move towards a customer-centric model, according to new research by Agilitas IT Solutions.

COMMS NEWS


strategy, the company is in talks with a concerned party on selling Ingram Micro.” HNA is reportedly looking to unwind a $50bn worth of debt in international acquisitions and

refocus on its core business.Initially reported by the Wall

Street Journal, apparently Apollo has already made one offer which was considered too low to accept.

NTT acquires majority stake in TransatelNTT COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION has entered into exclusive negotiations with Transatel to acquire a majority stake in in the company.

This transaction will allow NTT Com to drastically extend its Global IoT solution offering. The combined synergies between Transatel’s Worldwide data MVNO solutions and NTT Com’s Global Network infrastructure, data center, cloud and IoT

platform will bring to this alliance the ability to provide a unique value proposition to the market.

Transatel, established in 2000, has since 2012 been a pioneer in deploying its own worldwide data MVNO network compliant with Embedded SIM (eSIM*2) technology to address three key market segments: Consumer Electronics, Automotive and Industrial IoT (IIoT).

SPITFIRE HAS LAUNCHED its new hosted telephony service which has been developed in-house. The proprietary system is being offered at only £6 per user license a month, including free service setup on one-year contracts. The minimum contract period is three months and customers can opt to manage their own setup.

Unusually Spitfi re is not charging additional fees for multiple endpoints on the same user extension. This allows a user to have a desk-phone, PC softphone and mobile client app for example, at no extra charge. Call twinning will ring a desk-phone and mobile simultaneously if required.

The service is delivered over Spitfi re’s own Voice Approved Broadband circuits with guaranteed call quality and SLAs.

Commenting on the launch of Spitfi re Hosted PBX 2.1, Dominic Norton (pictured), Sales Director stated, “Our Spitfi re 2.1 PBX hosted telephony service has been designed by Spitfi re cutting out third-party costs. This has allowed us to deliver a highly featured service at very competitive rates, with zero upfront costs. In addition we are already planning a series of upgrades to the service which customers will benefi t from when available at no additional cost and with no disruption to service.”

SPITFIRE LAUNCHES HOSTED PBX 2.1SPITFIRE LAUNCHES HOSTED PBX 2.1SPITFIRE LAUNCHES HOSTED PBX 2.1

©lucadp-stock.adobe.com

005-015 COMMS 0219.indd 5 22/01/2019 16:09

COMMS NEWS COMMS NEWS


SMART SPEECHGlobal market report Voice, Speech, Conversation-Based User Interfaces 2019-2029: Technologies, Players, Markets from IDTechEx Research forecasts the market for smart speech/voice-based technology will reach $ 15.5 billion by 2029.

FORGESERVESwoop Datacom offerings are now available through ScanSource. Though this new relationship, ScanSource resellers in Europe have access to the ForgeServe solution, which complements AV and IP handsets for many of ScanSource’s trusted suppliers.

I3-TECHNOLOGIESi3-Technologies has teamed up with Westcoast as its UK distributor. The agreement covers the distribution of the company’s full range of collaboration technologies and solutions. I3 specialises in interactive solutions to learning and meeting environments.

BYTES... Gamma launches roadshow events for 2019THE GAMMA ROADSHOW is set to return in 2019, with the senior management team touring the UK over two weeks in February and March. After the success and positive feedback from partners of the 2018 theme ‘Gamma at the Movies’, they will be heading back to the cinemas as ‘The Sound of Gamma’.

Gamma will be addressing the ever-changing behaviour of the market and end customers, whilst giving practical advice to Channel Partners on how they can resolve some of these challenges and adapt to this new environment. The much-anticipated launch of Gamma’s new Horizon Collaborate solution will be presented to delegates as well as a keynote from CEO Andrew Taylor.

Daryl Pile, Managing Director at Gamma commented: “We understand that the market and

requirements of end customers are evolving and it is Gamma’s priority to help our channel partners navigate through this change successfully, whilst providing them with innovative, disruptive products that will meet the needs of their customers. Our annual roadshow is a unique platform to not only inform our partners on the latest news from Gamma but also to hear their invaluable feedback, ensuring our

roadmap is accurately shaped to their needs.”• Glasgow, Wednesday, 27

February 2019 – Vue Cinemas, Glasgow Fort, G34 9DL

• Manchester, Thursday, 28 February 2019 – Vue Cinemas, Manchester Printworks, M4 2BS

• Birmingham, Wednesday, 6 March 2019 – Vue Cinemas, Star City, Birmingham, B7 5SA

• London, Thursday, 7 March 2019 – BFI IMAX, London, SE1 8XR

Read the full story on pg 18

Persistent Content and Collaboration

52%of enterprises expect their business models to be moderately or signifi cantly disrupted by 2020 according to CIF.

Mitel announces UC solution updatesMITEL HAS UPDATED the company’s fl agship unifi ed communications (UC) solutions to offer more advanced voice, collaboration and contact centre features.

The newly expanded capabilities include:• MiCollab – multiple customer interface enhancements that make it

even easier for employees to talk, meet and share information.• MiContact Center and MiContact Center Enterprise – expanded

omnichannel capabilities for MiVoice 400, MX-ONE and MiVoice 5000 that enable businesses to leverage web, chat, voice and social media interactions.

• Mitel SIP-DECT – 4th-generation SIP-DECT technology that brings a new portfolio of base stations and feature enhancements to the full line of Mitel cordless IP and SIP devices, solving companies’ vertical-specifi c mobile communications requirements.“Businesses are at different points in their cloud journey, and the

collaboration solution an individual customer ultimately chooses depends on their operating and economic models,” said Martin Bitzinger, Vice President, Unifi ed Communications Products and Solutions, Mitel. “No matter the industry, company size, or how they are geographically-dispersed, Mitel’s commitment to making communications seamless ensures protection for new and existing investments, as companies seek to drive productivity and create exceptional customer experiences.”

MEDION

Tech Data has added MEDION’s range of

high-spec ERAZER gaming systems and

AKOYA laptops to its system portfolio. The

agreement with Tech Data means that all

retailers and resellers will now be able to

access and offer the company’s consumer

and SMB computing products.

PLATINUM

Commsworld has been awarded ‘Platinum

Partner’ status by Mitel, the highest

accreditation given by the comms vendor.

BYTES...

177%TMT deal value soared 177% to r each €169.1bn in 2018, up from €61bn in 2017

005-015 COMMS 0219.indd 6 22/01/2019 16:10

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COMMS NEWS

RYDAL COMMS SNAPS UP CLOUDSOURCERYDAL COMMS HAS acquired the assets of Cloudsource which will see over 400 phone systems move into the Rydal fold. Cloudsource has had a blistering start to its life as a business, founded by Carl Lowe (pictured above) about four years ago. In that short time Cloudsource grew into a multi-million pound company and picked up several awards along the way, including a few Comms Business Awards.

Writing on the Rydal blog last month, Managing Director Steffan Dancy said “We are delighted to confirm our acquisition of Cloudsource Technologies Telecoms & IT assets from its benefactor Tower Leasing for an undisclosed fee. Cloudsource Technologies have been trading for some time and specialise in providing IT and Telecoms services to business users across the UK.”

Dancy continued, ”The opportunity proposed was a ‘no brainer’ and as a fantastic move for our Group. The acquisition adds over 400 phone system clients, all with network services and IT contracts to support. The majority are already today supported on our flagship product, Ericsson LG IPECs and IPECs Cloud. This means the migration for the customer base will be seamless and we can focus on delivering our customer service excellence into the clients. I would like to personally welcome all the customers to Rydal Comms.”

AVAYA ENHANCES DESKTOP EXPERIENCE PORTFOLIOAVAYA HAS ENHANCED its Desktop Experience portfolio of smart business devices, including a new line of professional-grade communication headsets, expanded Broadsoft UC feature support, enhancements to its Essential Experience J100 Series, and the availability of Device Enrollment Service 2.0.

The new portfolio of L100 series professional grade headsets initially includes five corded headsets, with cordless headsets available in the near future. These headsets enable unique AcousticEdge technology to provide the maximum audio experience while protecting employees from long-term headset usage issues.

Building on the November 2018 expansion of its Open SIP smart devices portfolio, Avaya has increased the ability of the

Essential Experience J100 Series of smart business desktop devices to support Broadsoft UC features, enabling UCaaS service providers to add Avaya Open SIP to their UCaaS offerings on a broad scale.

Ard Verboon, General Manager of the Devices portfolio, Avaya commented “With the availability of support for Broadsoft advanced features combined with the large breadth of the Avaya Desktop Experience portfolio, Avaya is now a one-stop shop for any smart device that a company may need, and UCaaS providers can now look to Avaya to meet their smart devices needs–from the professional desktop, to campus mobility, to personal and room conferencing, to headsets–as well as industry vertical solutions.”

005-015 COMMS 0219.indd 7 22/01/2019 16:10



KONFTEL HAS OPENED up the video conferencing market to all resellers following the launch of its ‘video in-a-box’ innovation. Konftel Collaboration is a range of plug and play solutions designed to make video conferencing easy and great value for any type of meeting room – based on single USB cable to connect a conference camera, speaker phone and the room’s screen to an app on a laptop.

CALLWAREThe Sabio Group has acquired Callware, a Spanish provider of Workforce Optimisation (WFO), Unified Communications and Cloud contact centre solutions. The acquisition follows Horizon Capital’s original 2016 strategic investment in Sabio, and is part of an ongoing growth strategy.

1PORTALVirtual1 has released more functionality which automates the majority of moves and changes requested by its partners and makes the control of these all available via 1Portal. The release delivers features to optimise the flow of traffic, including control of Quality of Service settings and IPV4 routing.

GOING GREENNimans has signed an environmental management partnership with a pledge to divert 100% of its waste from landfill. Nimans has teamed-up with local specialist JWS Waste to reprocess over 100 tonnes of waste consisting of tonnes of card, paper, plastics and general waste.

BYTES...

UK Sales Director, Jeff May, says with the explosion of huddle rooms and wider collaboration trends, now is the time for all resellers to embrace video conferencing.

“In the past we know many resellers have been reluctant to enter the VC market, avoiding complex camera and codec set-ups because it was too complicated. They felt AV was not for them so just stuck with

traditional audio conferencing. But our latest innovation is a great upgrade and upsell opportunity as it’s a high quality plug and play solution; video conferencing for anyone and every reseller can embrace this type of technology.”

Flexible and modular with different options depending on room size and budget, prices for a huddle room package start from £419 RRP (ex VAT).

VIDEO IN-A-BOX LAUNCHED BY KONFTEL

Westcon creates Tech Xpert Community for partnersWESTCON HAS ANNOUNCED the Westcon Tech Xpert Community, an initiative for partners to grow their technical expertise and solution-selling capabilities without any hard-sell involved. It is free to join and open to all partner technical staff looking to expand their knowledge, build their skills and contribute to a supportive and mentoring community. The Tech Xpert Community is for technical people only, vendor agnostic and led by Westcon’s pre-sales solution architects.

Members benefit from exclusive access to community events, both online and offline. Knowledge share events see topics and issues aired where members can engage in an open dialogue with guest speakers, vendor technical leads and Westcon pre-sales team.

Mike Cox (pictured), Westcon Vendor and Alliances Director, said: “There is a lot of pressure on partners to deliver ever greater value to customers in a more technologically complex world. By sharing experiences and building relationships with

technical peers, the Tech Xpert Community gives individuals the opportunity to learn from each other and deepen their understanding of technologies.

Ultimately everyone will be able to design and build better solutions at the crucial pre-sales stage and deliver greater customer value.“

005-015 COMMS 0219.indd 8 22/01/2019 16:24


COMMS NEWS

Indicator 23 Jun 16 Jan 18 Change Change %

FTSE 100 6,338 6870.73 532.73 8.41%

FTSE 250 17,333 18477.00 1144.00 6.60%

BT 439.70 228.40 211.30 -48.06%

Vodafone 217.90 147.78 70.12 -32.18%

TalkTalk 226.60 114.04 112.56 -49.67%

Gamma 440.50 785.92 345.42 78.42%

£/$ 1.487 1.286 0.201 -13.52%

£/€ 1.307 1.129 0.178 -13.62%

KEY CHANNEL INDICATORS

Pre & Post EU Referendum Vote

NOW WHAT?'SACKINGS WILL CONTINUE until morale improves’. I was reminded recently of this typically stoic British saying I fi rst heard during the early 1990s recession when the TV told me on a Monday morning that yet again this would be a pivotal week in the life and times of Brexit.

As I write, Theresa May’s deal has been dead in the water for less than 24 hours and in a short while her government faces a vote of no confi dence which if lost will lead to a fresh election. I now understand Brenda from Bristol far better than I ever did a year ago.

The City seemed to have developed a sang froid attitude to Brexit as Sterling rose against the dollar on news of EU withdrawal deal defeat – received wisdom apparently being that any possible delay to Brexit is good news.

Meanwhile, what is happening with our tracked share prices? Well, FTSE have both risen on the month but each is below their 12 month highs, Gamma dropped 75 points and Sterling is marginally better than in December against the Dollar and the Euro

If I wrote this tomorrow morning it could be different.

Or maybe not…

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005-015 COMMS 0219.indd 9 22/01/2019 16:10

COMMS NEWS COMMS NEWS - MOVERS & SHAKERS


CHALLENGESNew research, by the Cloud Industry Forum and BT, has revealed that while large enterprise organisations are investing in new technologies in pursuit of digital transformation, skills shortages, and migration and integration challenges, are inhibiting the pace of change.

SKILLS NEEDEDAnalytical skills including data analysing and risk analysis are all set to be strong skills requirements for the job specifi cations of tomorrow’s IT and telecoms employee, according to a new YouGov study commissioned by AAT.

BYTES... GREENING APPOINTED UKFAST CFOBRITISH CLOUD FIRM UKFast has appointed Catherine Greening (pictured) to the role of Chief Financial Offi cer (CFO) as the fi rm embarks on an ambitious fi ve-year growth plan. The move comes as part of the expansion plans linked to the recent investment from Infl exion Private Equity announced by the hosting provider last month.

Greening, who joined UKFast fi ve years ago as M&A director, played an important role in the recent deal with Infl exion alongside GCA Altium which saw UKFast valued at £405m.

With more than 18 years’ experience in the M&A and private equity industries prior to joining UKFast, qualifi ed Chartered

59%of enterprises stated that they lack staff with integration and migration skills (compared to just 28% of SMEs),

64%of enterprises say they need more security expertise

54%of enterprises require more strategic digital transformation skills

Accountant Greening has worked for heavyweights including PwC and mid-market private equity house, LDC.

Greening said: “As M&A director, I was more focussed on one-off projects designed to add value, such as the acquisition of S-IA. The move to CFO sees me far more involved in the day-to-day operations of UKFast, working more closely with the

other directors to drive business performance.

“The timing wasn’t right at the end of 2018 for an IPO. However, with Infl exion as business partners that still remains a viable option for the future. I’m also excited to see how ClearCloud and Public Sector develop throughout 2019, with both having incredibly strong pipelines.

VOICEFLEX APPOINTS EXPERIENCED LILL NEW DEALER ACCOUNT MANAGERVOICEFLEX HAS ANNOUNCED that Dawn Lill has joined the company as Voicefl ex Dealer Account Manager, responsible for recruiting and managing the dealer community. Dawn brings with her over 25 years’ experience in the Unifi ed Communications and telecommunications sector.Dawn Lill commented, “I’m looking forward to helping Voicefl ex dealers prepare for Digital Britain.”

Paul Taylor, Sales & Marketing Director said “We are delighted to welcome Dawn to Voicefl ex. 2018 has been a fantastic year for Voicefl ex and 2019 will be an exciting year with the Unify Circuit and Openscape Cloud products. Dawn’s industry knowledge and experience will allow us to develop existing and new relationships and support our partners with the growth opportunities available.”

Bob Falconer takes Non-Exec role at Nextgenaccess NEXTGENACCESS HAS ANNOUNCED the appointment of former Gamma CEO, Bob Falconer (pictured), as Non-Executive Director. His appointment is in line with the company’s aggressive growth strategy as it ramps up the expansion of its core fi bre network and the roll out of affordable full fi bre services to businesses and the public sector, delivered through third party sales channels including telecom resellers, network installers and operators.

A veteran of the telecoms industry, Bob Falconer led Gamma Telecom for 15 years from the position of a start-up wholesale voice provider in 2003 to a substantial innovative and disruptive player in the UK B2B telecoms sector, consistently growing ebitda, profi t and cash over the period.

Falconer commented “The reality of fi bre to the premises and 5G is driving unprecedented change and with this Nextgenaccess has a compelling and differentiated full fi bre offering. I relish helping the company’s excellent senior management team maximise the substantial market opportunities and growth potential on offer. I hope my industry and management experience can bring value and help ensure Nextgenaccess achieves its business goals. An integral part of this is the forging of strong mutually profi table relationships with channel partners.”

Read the full story on pg 20Awards Open Now!

005-015 COMMS 0219.indd 10 22/01/2019 16:11


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COMMS NEWS - MOVERS & SHAKERS

Kilpatrick steps into strategic role at NuviasIAN KILPATRICK IS taking on a new strategic and consultative role within Nuvias. As Strategic Advisor for Cybersecurity, he will advise Nuvias’ CEO on long-term development and technology focus for this important, growing segment. He will continue to be responsible for Nuvias’ overall cybersecurity strategy, for security vendor selection and for security public relations. Going forward, the operational aspects of the Cybersecurity Practice will be handled within Nuvias’ expanding company infrastructure.

Kilpatrick (pictured) commented: “I am delighted to focus on this consultative and advisory role as it draws more on the areas where my strength and experience in security lie. It enables me to leverage the benefi t of my many years in the industry and use those skills to further develop and grow Nuvias’ Cybersecurity Practice.

“I will be looking at the big picture, in terms of winning strategies for Nuvias across an international market. Security is an exciting and dynamic area, with huge potential for future directions and expansion. There are a great many opportunities here for Nuvias to grow sales for existing vendors, to take on more new vendors and to increase penetration throughout EMEA.”

Kilpatrick steps Kilpatrick steps

new strategic and consultative role within Nuvias. As Strategic

Weller steps into Datto CEO positionDATTO HAS APPOINTED Tim Weller (pictured) as its new Chief Executive Offi cer. Weller succeeds Founder Austin McChord who, last fall, transitioned away from the day-to-day management of the company but continues as a board member. Weller will assume the position immediately.

“I’m honored to be named CEO of Datto,” said Tim Weller, CEO of Datto. “We remain committed to serving the MSP community as we grow. I look forward to working with Austin, the rest of the board, and the entire Datto team as we create open, partner-centric solutions and reimagine products for MSPs globally.”

“We are excited for this next phase in Datto’s growth and we are confi dent that Tim is the right candidate to lead the company and to continue its industry leadership through strategic growth and MSP-centric innovation,” said Nadeem Syed, Vista Operating Principal and Datto Board Member. “Tim’s extensive global leadership experience with public and private companies, combined with his deep technical and fi nancial expertise make him a natural fi t to help the company continue to scale and grow.”


005-015 COMMS 0219.indd 11 22/01/2019 16:11



IDEALCBPE Capital has acquired a majority ownership position in IDEAL Networks, a provider of portable handsets for data cable and network testing, validation and certifi cation.

UKFASTGlobal investment bank GCA Altium has advised UKFast on a landmark investment from Infl exion Private Equity. The transaction sees Infl exion’s Partnership Capital fund complete a minority investment in UKFast, at a valuation of £405m.

ONELOGINOneLogin, specialists in Unifi ed Access Management, have struck a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro.

NEW PARTNERITS Technology Group has announced that Network Connect have joined as a new connectivity partner. Based in the North West, Network Connect will promote and sell full fi bre and wireless services across its 22 networks.

BYTES... Exertis to develop Blockchain roadmapEXERTIS SUPPLY CHAIN Services (SCS) has secured funding for its ground-breaking “Blockchain in the Technology Product Supply Chain” project. Announced as one of 27 projects to be funded as part of the Irish Government’s €75 million Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF), Exertis SCS will lead the project in collaboration with the Centre for Applied Data Analytics Research (CeADAR) at University College Dublin (UCD) and Dublin based software company, Sonalake.

Commenting on the announcement, Brian Cassidy, Exertis Supply Chain Services IT Director said “Our intention is to bring to market a fi t for purpose Blockchain platform for the Technology Product Supply Chain within 3 years. This will complement Exertis’ global technology market reach and supply chain expertise, while leveraging the research and implementation experience of CeADAR & Sonalake.”

Among the benefi ts that this project will bring, will be:• A shared visibility to orders across the supply chain, from

component manufacturer to consumer;• Detailed product provenance information based on product serial

numbers which is key for reducing counterfeit and managing warranty liability;

• Simplifi ed fi nancial reconciliation for promotional rebates;• Reduced IT integration overhead;• Vastly improved market analytics across the entire supply chain of

a fi nished technology good.

PURPLE WIFI LAUNCH NEW PLATFORMPURPLE WIFI HAVE today announced the launch of their brand new platform. Over the course of 12 months, Purple’s existing platform underwent a complete rewrite to improve the overall look, navigation, depth of reporting, and speed.

Gavin Wheeldon (pictured), Purple CEO, said: “This isn’t just a simple update, or an improvement on the previous platform, we have built this new platform from the ground up. We’ve taken what we have learnt over the past six years and combined this with new ideas and new technology. It’s by far the biggest launch in our history and puts us miles ahead of the competition.”

The changes mean customers can now segment and understand the data they capture from their physical venue – whether that is through Purple WiFi, or other connectable data sources – more effi ciently and at a much more granular level.

A10 Networks launches Secure Service Mesh

A10 NETWORKS HAS announced availability of the A10 Secure Service Mesh solution for applications deployed in open-source Kubernetes container environments. The solution provides teams deploying microservices applications with an easy, automated way to integrate enterprise-grade

security and load-balancing with comprehensive application visibility and analytics.

A10’s Secure Service Mesh protects east-west traffi c and transparently encrypts traffi c between microservices

without requiring changes to those applications. The result is a higher level of security and performance for microservices-based applications.

“With the Secure Service Mesh solution, A10 continues to deliver on its promise of intelligent automation and security for both modern multi-cloud and traditional infrastructure,” said Lee Chen, Founder and CEO of A10 Networks. “Organisations are turning to containers for their production applications to become agile and scalable in meeting the demands of digital transformation. The A10 Secure Service Mesh is a signifi cant advancement for these environments.”

©LuckyStep-stock.adobe.com

©sdecoret-stock.adobe.com

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Plantronics upgrades Manager ProPLANTRONICS HAS LAUNCHED a new version of its Plantronics Manager Pro cloud software along with partner momentum in adopting Polycom Device Management Services (PDMS-SP) cloud solution.

Plantronics Manager Pro v3.12 allows enterprise IT managers to administer and support audio devices from a central location. This new release expands device support with the latest Plantronics enterprise headsets, Savi 8200 Series and Voyager 4200 UC Series as well as the My Habitat Soundscaping feature to help IT administrators

and employees manage noise and distractions.

In addition to expanding support for devices, this new release adds contextual data points to the critically important insights. IT Pros can equip their entire enterprise with Plantronics data to enhance and improve their employee collaboration experiences. Plantronics Manager Pro now offers the ability to save, schedule and deliver reports and customers can utilise the newly released Plantronics app for Microsoft Power BI.

AVAYA EXPANDS A.I. CONNECT

5G to expand enterprise opportunities AMDOCS HAS REVEALED the findings of a new survey that shows nearly 80% of European CSPs expect the introduction of 5G to expand revenue opportunities with enterprise customers. It also finds that 34% of operators plan to offer 5G services commercially to this sector by the end of 2019, a figure that will more than double to 84% by the end of 2020.

Conducted on behalf of Amdocs by market research and consultancy firm IDC, the survey interviewed C-level executives and other senior management from 105 communications service providers across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

In-depth qualitative interviews were also conducted with a selection of respondents.

Matthieu Loreille, VP Head of Consumer, Enterprise and Technology Marketing at Amdocs commented, “5G technologies such as network slicing will allow them to tailor the performance, security level and characteristics appropriate to each business, opening up differentiating monetisation opportunities. Furthermore, by leveraging additional technologies such as artificial intelligence, edge computing and hybrid cloud, operators will be strongly positioned to support enterprises in their digital transformation journey.”

AVAYA IS EXPANDING its A.I.Connect ecosystem with new partners and partner offers, including an increased focus on incorporating new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into its unified communications (UC) solutions. Knowmail and over.ai are the newly designated A.I.Connect partners with solutions aligned to Avaya’s overall UC and collaboration strategies.

“Avaya’s deep expertise in creating communications and collaboration experiences for enterprise workers leverages AI capabilities for natural language understanding and personal assistants. With the addition of new AI solutions from companies like Knowmail, over.ai and others, our A.I.Connect initiative continues to expand the ecosystem helping to provide optimal AI capabilities for strengthening workforce engagement across omnichannel communications,” said Eric Rossman, Avaya Vice President, Alliances and Partnerships.

“Avaya continues to aggressively position AI as a critical element of both the UC and contact centre strategies offered to their clients,” said Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research. “Building off the long-standing success of their DevConnect Program, Avaya’s A.I.Connect initiative allows them to capitalise upon the expertise of their ecosystem for a wide range of use cases, helping enterprises establish early leadership positions through the application of analytical and predictive capabilities enabled by AI and Machine Learning capabilities.” © zapp2photo-stock.adobe.com

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CALISTOPlantronics has launched Calisto 3200 and Calisto 5200 portable, personal speakerphones for personal computer (PC) and mobile devices. The Calisto 3200 devices are a plug-and-play design to provide a professional audio conferencing experience.

ASCOM Pragma has recently announced a new partnership with Ascom which will see them supply Ascom’s VoWiFi products, with the company initially focussing on Ascom’s i62 WiFi phone.

50% STAKEInfracapital has reached an agreement with SSE plc to buy a 50 per cent stake in SSE Enterprise Telecoms for a total consideration of up to £380m

BYTES... Cloud security offers cost-effective cyber protectionSOUTH WEST COMMUNICATIONS Group can now supply protection against web-borne threats to offi ce, fi eld and home-based workers.

Working in conjunction with technology hardware specialists Cisco, swcomms is offering a cloud security platform that provides the fi rst line of defence against threats on the internet wherever staff members are working.

The Cisco Umbrella product uses the internet’s infrastructure to block malicious destinations before a connection is ever established. By delivering security from the cloud, not only can businesses save money, but they will also benefi t from more effective security.

ICT director John Holdstock (pictured) said: “This is a

security product that suits the modern working practices of today’s businesses. We can no longer assume that all members of staff sit at a desk using a PC.

Cyber security products are needed to protect the mobile workforce too and to cope with the millions of threats that lurk on the internet.

Nimans captures more voice revenues with Red BoxNIMANS HAS STRUCK a new partnership with voice capture specialist Red Box. The new alliance sees Nimans featuring the Red Box platform, as well as offering value added applications and services, such as speech-to-text transcription, which helps maximise the value of captured voice data.

Tom Maxwell, Nimans’ Head of Channel Sales, says organisations are increasingly recognising the valu e of captured voice as a data set and voice-based interaction is now being used to address a whole host of business use cases including automation, security, fraud and enhancing employee


engagement and the wider customer experience.

He explained: “With the Red Box platform, resellers and their customers can capture and transcribe voice communications from over 55 systems (legacy and new), across global enterprises and SMEs.”

Martyn Ward (pictured), Red Box CRO, says “Working with our global reseller channel, we are already trusted by leading organisations across fi nancial,

contact centre, government and public safety sectors. We capture and secure millions of calls daily for over 3,000 customers around the world and connect them to an ecosystem of application and value-added service partners.

Snom launches D3xx seriesSNOM HAS LAUNCHED its D3xx series fl agship, the D385 desk phone. The premium IP desk phone is equipped with a tiltable, high-resolution 4.3” colour TFT display, which can show information and images, including company logo and user ID. The D385 offers additional screen displaying options, including 12 confi gurable function keys with dual-colour indicators.

To read the full stories and keep up to date on the latest

Snom launches Snom launches

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WILDIX HOSTS INAUGURAL UC&C SUMMITFOR THE FIRST time Wildix are hosting their UC&C Summit in Barcelona this February (18th – 19th). Organised and sponsored by Wildix, will bring together the best partners from around the world to take stock of the Unified Communications development with the support of MZA analysts and value-selling sales experts.

According to Wildix, many companies that sell UC are observing their turnover reducing in an alarming way: fierce competition, radical change of the way companies purchase and manage technology, rapid spread of the cloud-based services, all these factors influence

the Industry and System Integrators.“What is needed to adapt to the

Industry changes? – radical rethinking of the business model and System Integrators transformation from simple “one time Suppliers” to real reoccurring model operators , who are able to understand and implement this market switch from on Premise sales of UC as a Service. In some countries this evolution is already taking place and we have been talking about it for a long time, however many parts of Europe are still pretty far from this shift”, comments Steve Osler, CEO of Wildix.

Colt launches Intelligent CommunicationsCOLT TECHNOLOGY SERVICES has announced the launch of Colt Intelligent Communications – an enterprise solution integrating Microsoft’s cloud productivity applications with Colt’s voice and data networks to deliver end-to-end performance, security and reliability for a unique one-stop IT capability.

Through a customisable combination of Colt’s SIP trunking services, premium internet or cloud access as well as Microsoft’s Office 365 product offerings including Teams, Colt can provide businesses with a superior communications solution that will drive productivity and collaboration.

Applications are delivered on Microsoft’s flagship Office 365 cloud-based platform, ensuring a familiar desktop experience as well as providing an immersive collaborative experience with Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business. With Colt Intelligent Communications, organisations can benefit from lower administration costs and the simplicity of utilising one provider for desktop, voice, connectivity, collaboration and professional services.

This offering will be delivered in collaboration with Ingram Micro Cloud and its CloudBlue division, which by leveraging its high-performance commerce platform, Colt can align its support, delivery, and provisioning standards for all their customers regardless of physical location, or vertical.

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ierney-stock.adobe.com

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ARROWArrow has acquired Abica Ltd and it’s subsidiary PCR IT Ltd. Abica and PCR are providers of Telecoms and IT services with offi ces in Glasgow, further expanding Arrow’s presence in Scotland.

50% STAKEInfracapital has reached an agreement with SSE plc to buy a 50 per cent stake in SSE Enterprise Telecoms for a total consideration of up to £380m. £215m will be paid on completion of the transaction with up to £165m to be paid in a series of instalments, subject to future performance.

MI-WIFIExertis has announced an exclusive distribution agreement with Mi-WiFi, providers of a captive guest portal that manages and controls users’ access to the internet in public and private locations.

BYTES...

ICON Now launchedMAINTEL HAS LAUNCHED ICON Now, a Unifi ed Communications as a Service offering aimed at companies with 100 to 1,000 employees.

Clients can select from a range of user types – from basic telephone users up to full team-collaboration – and can fl ex the service up and down as their usage patterns change.

ICON Now is available as an “op-ex only” service, minimal set-up costs, and removes from organisations the requirement to “manage” their communications systems, being always up-to-date, compliant with the latest regulations.

Commenting on the launch of ICON Now, Maintel’s CTO Rufus Grig (pictured) said “Business is changing – organisations need their people to be productive

Net:telecom offers more control with IP PBXNET:TELECOM COMMUNICATION SERVICES Ltd has launched its own IP PBX solution after 5 years of development and deployment in the market.

Henry Forde (pictured), MD, explains why he has embarked on this journey, “After 15 years in the telecoms business and having worked as a reseller with most of the providers, there was one thing that we have always wished for; more control over the services we provide to our clients; and that goes for the technical support as well as the prices. Engaging the right expertise, we set the goal to build a robust, future proof solution that will allow us to maintain our independence without compromising on features and resiliency. And we

have come up with a very cost effective alternative to existing telephony managed services.”

The net: IP PBX box is a purpose-built, high-performance IP PBX solution, designed to offer direct and complete access and highly

customisable features. Who is it for? Any reseller looking for alternatives to the existing third party, priced per user, hosted telephony services. Smaller versions are also available as an on-site solution to end users.

BLENDING BACKUP WITH DISASTER RECOVERYDATABARRACKS HAS PARTNERED with Rubrik. The Cloud Data Management provider blends future-proof architecture with consumer-grade simplicity to pioneer a fresh approach to an old problem.

Databarracks managing director Peter Groucutt (pictured) commented, “Rubrik is an incredibly impressive company. The way the team has taken it to market and seen such incredible growth is a terrifi c story but beneath it all is fantastic technology.

“The combination of backup, disaster recovery and archive in a single, scalable product is exciting and addresses a need we see from mid-market and enterprise organisations.

“As a specialist service provider it’s important to us that we offer a variety of technologies to meet the needs of our customers, but it’s also vital that we don’t just use every product on the market. We chose only the best and know those technologies, inside and out to build solutions for our customers.”

BLENDING BACKUP

employees.

range of user types – from basic telephone users up to full team-collaboration – and can fl ex the service up and down as their usage patterns change.

“op-ex only” service, minimal director Peter Groucutt (pictured) commented, “Rubrik is an and available wherever they are, whatever device they are on, whatever network they are using. They also want to get value from the IT spend quickly and see immediate return on investment. With ICON Now, we put the tools previously the preserve of large enterprise in the hands of small and mid-sized businesses and they can start to get value from day 1.”

005-015 COMMS 0219.indd 16 22/01/2019 16:13

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017 COMMS 0219.indd 17 21/01/2019 16:41

INTERVIEW Simon Aldous - EMEA


“Many resellers today just do not understand digital transformation (DX) but we see the reseller challenge as one of ‘embrace DX or die’...” Simon Aldous, Head of Channels EMEA, Dropbox

Persistent Content and CollaborationL

ike many others, I have been a Dropbox user almost from their 2007 beginnings. I even recall

who recommended the service to me; Jim Robertson, at the time of ScanSource and latterly with NEC prior to his retirement.

Here’s a couple of other facts; since then the number of users has grown exponentially from one million in April 2009 to over 500 million today. Secondly, my wife and I progressed to the paid for Plus service a few years ago; she to back up her rapidly growing Ebay business � les – pictures and text mostly, and myself for everything I have written and photographed over the last 20-years.

Being happy campers, I was pleased therefore to be able to formerly discuss business with one of our key service providers.

Simon Aldous is steeped in channel service have spent time with Tech Data, Microsoft, Ingram Micro and other players before joining Dropbox two and a half years ago.

WHAT IS DROPBOX’S CHANNEL PROPOSITION? (WHERE IT WAS, WHERE IT IS AT AND WHERE IT IS GOING IN THE FUTURE) When we started Dropbox Business (Plus today) four years ago we established a direct sales team across the US and quickly discovered a lot of accounts preferred to source applications via a trusted reseller channel so we set up a channel operation and began to build it out worldwide. � is year we signed our 10,000th channel partner so we’ve have made good progress.

We o� er partners something unique and di� erent; ease of use and great technology that can be used on any device that addressed user business challenges. Dropbox Plus is more than storage management; we call it a ‘Persistent Content and Collaboration Platform’ and it is a constituent part of a digital transformation journey that enables the management of data and content. It can connect natively to any application, say, 365, Salesforce

and Slack with all data saved and shared with permissions and version management which makes it very e� cient for team working – you can begin and complete work� ows within Dropbox.

Our ethos on security of data is ‘Be worthy of trust’ so we have bank level of encryption and have industry standards implemented. With regards to data location we have sites in the US and Frankfurt for the EU market.

WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE MAJOR CHALLENGES THAT HE SEES IMPACTING THE CHANNEL RIGHT NOW?Many resellers today just do not understand digital transformation (DX) but we see the reseller challenge as one of ‘embrace DX or die’; it’s the di� erence between survive and thrive and a position where reseller have to become cloud savvy. � e cloud and the ‘as a Service’ model has imposed a new � nancial model on resellers which many have resisted.

However, the cloud has been around a while now and many resellers were ‘born in the cloud so full get DX and the � nancial model.

AND LOOKING AHEAD…?Arti� cial intelligence and machine learning will create an enormous quantity of data and will also play a part in the ongoing development of our product. Vendors today have recognised that life is not just about selling SKUs (Stock Keeping Units is an inventory management term/jargon) it’s more about what can our product do for the customer. Dropbox is in a good position for this.

We are a member of the Cloud Industry Forum in the UK and at a recent members meeting where it was apparent that a commonly held belief existed that, despite what Microsoft might say, holds that we are not ready for AI just yet and that the need instead is for education on the topic to set realistic expectations.

Ian Hunter met up with Dropbox’s Head of Channels for EMEA, Simon Aldous, to discuss the company’s channel strategy, challenges in the channel his vision for Dropbox and their partners for the next year

Simon Aldous, Head of Channels EMEA at Dropbox

www.p-rd.com

Untangle your Billingu Packed with powerful features

one of ‘embrace DX or die’...” Simon Aldous, Head of Channels EMEA, Dropbox

Content and Collaboration

Simon Aldous, Head of Channels EMEA at Dropbox

018 COMMS 0219.indd 18 22/01/2019 14:55

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Learn more herewww.8x8.com/uk/about-us/partners

Find a more fulfilling partnership with 8x8• 2018 Winner Call & Contact Centre Expo – Best Communications Provider

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Together we grow your customer base:Partner with 8x8

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019 COMMS 0219.indd 1 21/01/2019 16:42


EVENTS Comms Business Awards

“‘No channel lobby is complete without a Comms Business Award adorning it!”David Dungay, Editor of Comms Business

Enter NowMEET THE JUDGESOur judges have an enormous amount of collective industry experience and really help the Comms Business Awards be the valuable accolade they are. Take note of the judges top tips on entry here to make sure you give your company the best chance of winning one of these prestigious awards.• Adam Zoldan, Director of

Knight Corporate Finance• Paul Richens, Managing

Director at Tricca• Adam Simon, CEO at

ContextWorld • Lucy Green, Managing

Director at Larato• David Terrar, Director and

Entries are open for the 2019 Comms Business Awards! It’s time to dig out those customer testimonials and remember all the exceptional things you have done over the last year. Get you entries in now!

01403 224450 www.soscommunications.co.uk

support from SOSEXPERIENCE

&

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

Comms_business-feb3.ai 5 18/01/2019 16:43:39

THE CATEGORIES:• Small Reseller

• Medium Reseller

• Large Reseller

• MSP

• SMB Solution

• Mid-Market Solution

• Enterprise Solution

• Deal of the Year

• IT Distributor

• Comms Distributor

• Connectivity Supplier

• Hosted Platform Supplier

• Ones to Watch (Editor’s Award)

• Specialist Supplier

• Hardware Vendor

• Specialist Vendor

• Cloud Services Vendor

• Women in Channel

• Services to the Channel

• Hidden Heroes

FACTS

Entries Open – NOW

Entries Close – 5th April 2019

Awards – 21st June 2019

Where – Lancaster London

Bookings – [email protected] or [email protected]

Deputy Chair, CIF• Vince Potter, Independent

Consultant• Ian Hunter, Independent

Consultant• Itret Latif, Interim CEO of

FCS

JUDGES TOP TIPS• Convey Emotion, according

to Paul Richens “Emotion is missing from a lot of entries, if a company really cares about its products then its customers will too.”

• Context, Richens says “Articulating the di� erence you are making to a particular customer is important. It doesn’t have to be saving them

millions, it could be about transforming processes in the face of digital transformation.”

• Don’t cut and paste from your website

• Customer satisfaction scores matter, if you feature on platforms such as TrustPilot then let us know.

• Include important data like company turnover – if you omit data and another company doesn’t, the judges have to mark you down.

• Stand out – concentrate on making your entry stand out within a sea of entries. � is should be done within the entry text and not with attachments etc. • • David Terrar, Director and David Terrar, Director and

TOP: Adam Simon, Lucy Green, Vince Potter, Itret Latif BOTTOM: Ian Hunter, David Terrar, Adam Zoldan, Paul Richens

David Terrar, Director and David Terrar, Director and doesn’t have to be saving them doesn’t have to be saving them doesn’t have to be saving them doesn’t have to be saving them attachments etc. attachments etc.

FACTSFACTS

Entries Open – Entries Open –

Entries Close – Entries Close – 5th April 20195th April 2019

Awards – Awards –

Adam Simon, Lucy Green, Vince Potter, Itret Latif Adam Simon, Lucy Green, Vince Potter, Itret Latif BOTTOM: Adam Simon, Lucy Green, Vince Potter, Itret Latif BOTTOM: Adam Simon, Lucy Green, Vince Potter, Itret Latif Ian Hunter, David Terrar, Adam Zoldan, Paul Richens Ian Hunter, David Terrar, Adam Zoldan, Paul Richens

020 COMMS 0219.indd 20 22/01/2019 15:54

Guest Presenter

for 2019,

Katherine Ryan

For all sponsorship enquiries and to book a table please call Mat: 07919 177099 or Moh: 07766 081822

Main Sponsor 2019

Is your company a major Channel Supplier?

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We have a range of sponsorship packages available at the event. For the full list, please visit our website or call 07919 177099 or 07766 081822

Category sponsorship price is £3,950 to £5,150 and includes a table for 10 worth £2650

ENTRIES NOW OPEN

020 COMMS 0219.indd 1 22/01/2019 10:56

COVER STORY


TELAVOX LOGO CMYK COATED

C63 M0 Y84 K0 C56 M2 Y78 K5

Telavox, Scandinavia’s fastest growing Hosted UC provider has just o�cially opened up services to the

UK market. Telavox has been disrupting the business comms market for 15 years. Starting with operations in Malmo and Stockholm in Sweden. In 2015 Telavox established bases in Denmark and Norway. In 2018 Telavox launched in Finland and in the UK.

Telavox now have 250 employees and has a solid history of success year on year - in every location. We truly believe the user-friendliness of being able to handle all your business communication needs in our solution, Flow, from your personal or company mobile puts Telavox 3-4 years ahead of the players on the UK market. �e initial uptake and reseller feedback are testament to this.

During our Beta launch year, Telavox has on-boarded more than 15 reseller partners and has more than 1,500 live end users on Flow, with more than 250,000 live users on our platform Internationally. Telavox reseller partners call Flow ‘Refreshing & Di�erent’ from the existing solutions in terms of user-friendliness, billing ease, top quality features and administration.

Bored of Broadsoft, Annoyed with Asterisk or just Let down by Linux? �e UK market is becoming stagnated because there are hundreds of providers all pushing the same products (e.g. BroadSoft & Asterix). Telavox focus on service and value for our customers, o�ering a di�erent proprietary solution

One year on and ready for full UK Launch!

to make us (and you) stand out from the crowd. We also really care about the feedback from our partners. We keep complete control over the entire product, and develop everything in house to stay more agile in meeting (and foreseeing) customer needs.

A testament to this is the feedback from one of our ‘CTO for a Day’ workshops. Our partners told us that the live chat feature (part of Flow widget) provides an invaluable direct contact with potential customers who are interested in that exact research moment. �is is backed up by studies from Forrester and

“The Gui across all operating systems is user-friendly and intuitive. The UC aspect of the solution allows companies to communicate with ease and the price point really works for both myself and my client. Not to mention the complete ease of which the install was completed. This will be a solution that actually evolves as the market changes” Seb Longrigg - Toucan Telecommunications

022-023 COMMS 0219.indd 22 21/01/2019 16:43


COVER STORY

Zendesk. According to Forrester, the customer experience of being able to live chat directly with your business makes them 2.8 times more likely to buy. Customers who use live chat also spend an average of 60% more than other customers.

We have created the Flow Widget because we are thinking of our partners’ customers. It displays your company’s contact information, opening hours and wait time in the phone queue in real time. With the widget you will be easy to reach, you won’t risk missing a sale and you will make it easier for your customers by o�ering more communication channels into your business.

Flow Widget is free and as user-friendly as our other products, and the settings are easily adjusted in the Flow admin tool. �ere you can choose which number to display,

add the company’s email address, opening hours and even change the colour of the widget. �is enables you as a channel partner to add real value to your customer’s user experience.

Join the movement - Enabling resellers into 2019Going into 2019 Telavox is really excited about growth in the UK market, adding more resellers and continue to develop our product. Telavox doesn’t profess to be the cheapest in the market. Flow is a premium quality product giving the reseller the ability to o�er something special. It’s not just ‘another string to the bow’ but an elite product, giving resellers the ability to provide top class solutions for customers who demand mobility, rich features and user friendly experiences.

We have followed a pricing structure that is modern and

honest, which is adapting extremely well in the UK market. Our research shows that when you stack a telephony deal with the features that we o�er as standard, against both a Broadsoft and Asterix based competitor, then customer RRP is not a worry.

Our commercials and feature set o�er the customer a lot more for their money but also allows the reseller to earn more on the deal.

Adding Flow to your portfolio is easy. Telavox provide

“The ability to manage our call profile from the app really allows us to be a company that is flexible, in one swift movement I can change the routing of a hunt group or the members of a call queue group - This allows me to not

worry about the day to day staffing of my office” SL, The Food Brands Group

“Our resellers are excited by the solution which allows a true UC experience to be integrated to their client base. The business is growing at a phenomenal rate and we are looking to partner with other resellers that want a true ‘different telephony platform’”. Head of UK Channel, Richard Jones

full training, support and on-boarding with zero upfront costs or commitments to the reseller. We give you full support with marketing material and sales advice. Simply call or email and we can start by giving you a live demo of the Flow system so you can see the true solution in action.

Give one of the team a call - 0203 026 1010 or e-mail [email protected]

022-023 COMMS 0219.indd 23 21/01/2019 16:43


MARKET REPORT SD-WAN

Catching the SD-WAN WaveDissecting the SD-WAN market is a little like trying to perform a colonoscopy on a fl y… blindfolded. It’s diffi cult to pin down an exact, non-biased, defi nition and even when you get close it would seem it means different things to different companies. Then there are those companies that take advantage of the lack of defi nition to jump on the bandwagon. One thing most people would agree on is that there is an opportunity here for Channel to get involved and educate the business market as to how they might utilise the technology within their current connectivity setup. In this feature David Dungay takes a look at the UK SD-WAN market

SD-WAN adoption is gathering pace, particularly in the enterprise, and IDC predicts that the market

will be worth $8 Billion by 2021. Digital transformation projects looking to deploy cloud, big data, analytics and mobility are key drivers of the technology.

In a survey of 200 senior IT and networking managers in the US and the UK, Sapio Research found 20% of respondents said they have a software-de� ned WAN project in progress, while 32% haven’t explored the technology and 27% may look at it in the future. About one-third of respondents said they wanted to reduce network costs and to better manage their network infrastructure. � e research study found that 48% of those are running SD-WAN proof of concept at select sites or other limited deployments. � at means only about 10% are transitioning fully to SD-WAN.

We asked the Channel ‘What makes a good SD-WAN proposition?’. Nick Sacke, Head of IoT and Products at Comms365, commented, “� ere are several key attributes of an SD-WAN proposition that stand out immediately: highly

agile, rapid con� guration and deployment (‘zero touch’), Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritise applications (comparable to MPLS networks), connectivity agnostic delivery (even over 4G), and security. Given the increasing commitment to improving user experience (‘Quality of Experience’ or QoE) and enhancing the management of application performance, it is the ease with which the features of the SD-WAN technology can be programmed and used by a variety of stakeholders – that should be an essential consideration.”

Anthony Senter, Managing Director, SDWAN Solutions added “Even though the market hasn’t yet been tightly nailed down, this is still a bit of good news for the Channel - From late Q1 we will see the number of “SD-WAN” solutions currently being promoted to the Channel reduce as some products don’t quite meet the new SD-WAN standards. � e Channel will still need to be educated and trained on SD-WAN but the pseudo-solutions will no longer feature. So to � nally answer the question – What makes a

GARTNER’S SD-WAN DEFINITIONSD-WAN solutions provide a replacement for traditional WAN routers and are agnostic to WAN transport technologies. SD-WAN provides dynamic, policy-based, application path selection across multiple WAN connections and supports service chaining for additional services such as WAN optimization and fi rewalls.

good SD-WAN proposition? – � e solution will � rst and foremost BE ALLIGNED TO THE CUSTOMER REQUIREMENT i.e. the SD-WAN vendor solution chosen will satisfy the unique requirements of the customer –

and educate the business market as to how they might utilise the technology within their current connectivity

Anthony Senter, Managing Director, SDWAN Solutions

024-026 COMMS 0219.indd 24 22/01/2019 14:57


SD-WAN MARKET REPORT

there are many decent SD-WAN �avours to choose from.”

Justin Fielder, CTO at Zen Internet, commented “Whilst this all seems ideal for the Channel, at present, SD-WAN is used to de�ne a broad range of services, products and technologies – from simple to scalable, DIY to a fully managed service. Several kinds of proposition are now described as SD-WAN, from on-premise �rewalls enhanced to include simple orchestration of VPNs to sophisticated and scalable solutions managed in the cloud with additional features such as SD-WAN integrated with service provider MPLS networks; virtual network functions; and multiple cloud computing platforms providing a sophisticated feature set for HQs and the smallest o�ces. For this reason, vendors and distributors must work together with their partners to

ensure that they understand the services they’re o�ering to customers, making themselves invaluable, and ensuring partners don’t miss out on the bene�ts of SD-WAN.”

A straight MPLS swap?When the SD-WAN hype started a couple of years ago the victim was clearly painted. MPLS had a target on its back and everyone was predicting its demise. �e market’s understanding has matured somewhat on this front and the MPLS doom mongers have been taking their prescribed ‘chill pills’. A recent IDG Market Pulse survey showed that when it comes to SD-WAN, 80 percent of enterprises opt to augment (rather than replace) their existing network infrastructure. It’s perceived as risky to jump o� an established platform. Despite this there are still established research organisations who are

>

“From late Q1 we will see the number of “SD-WAN” solutions currently being promoted to the Channel reduce as some products don’t quite meet the new SD-WAN standards.”

Anthony Senter, Managing Director, SDWAN Solutions

A DISTIE VIEWMark Curtis-Wood, Head of Network Services at NimansNetwork performance and agility are critical to the success of digital transformation initiatives and the effectiveness of the IT environment that underpin them. As data volumes grow and applications become more distributed – network technologies must be equally agile to keep up with pace. When it comes to connectivity, no two customers are alike. As such, you must understand your customers’ unique use-cases and networking challenges. From there, you can select the SD-WAN vendor and specific solutions that match their needs. Some questions you might ask to better understand your customers’ challenges are:• What are the issues you face with your current network

infrastructure?• Do you plan to fully move to the cloud or deploy a hybrid

environment?• What is your cloud migration strategy, and what services and

applications are you looking to invest in?• What are your budget restrictions? Do you want to hire more IT staff

or scale back?

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keen to adopt a more dramatic message. Gartner released a white paper in September 2018 titled “SD-WAN is killing MPLS, so prepare to replace it now!” Before people start preparing for an SD-Zombie apocalypse type scenario I thought I would ask some Channel providers their thoughts.

Russell Horton, CEO of FluidOne commented on the potential for replacing MPLS with SD-WAN. He said, “Our experience providing connectivity to thousands of end customers over many years is that in the UK, mission-critical applications such as voice and ERP require the quality, latency and security end to end that an MPLS network provides. �e opportunity for SD-WAN is for cloud-based applications (that are not hosted in the MPLS) to be routed over a DIA line, and so blend the bandwidth required on MPLS with a second DIA line (or 4G). �is also provides value from a backup circuit by

utilising it live ongoing when the primary MPLS experiences high utilisation, re-routing at an app level dynamically to the backup circuit.”

Claudio Scola, Director of Product Management, EMEA at CenturyLink, commented “With the growth of software-de�ned networking solutions, it might be tempting to toll the death knell for MPLS, but that would be a mistake. SD-WAN can overlay MPLS and Internet. CenturyLink customers want the best of both connectivity types in a Hybrid model. It is still important for businesses to have guaranteed end-to-end performance with MPLS, and to now blend that with the scale and cost e�ectiveness of Internet. SD-WANs are most impactful when they support a Hybrid WAN underlay because this enables organisations to optimise price and performance.”

Senter added, “SD-WAN is replacing pure MPLS networks

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MARKET REPORT SD-WAN

“WAN solutions always require a consultative pitch, however with SD-WAN in your portfolio, it is even more important to focus on discovery of the customer’s requirements before defining and delivering any solution.”

Justin Fielder, CTO at Zen

ED SAYS…SD-WAN is a beast not to be ignored right now. You can bet your customers are already looking into how they can leverage the technology in order to save money. Be careful as claims of 90% savings over MPLS have been thrown about in the market (particularly in the US). Whilst cost savings could be a benefi t, the sheer effi ciencies the technology can bring to businesses are what really makes the proposition stand out. Take some time to choose a provider as standards are only just starting to come in, this means there are still providers out there using clever marketing tricks and hype with not much substance behind them to get you on-board.

with hybrid SD-WAN / MPLS and pure Internet SD-WAN networks. At SDWAN Solutions we see customers initially wanting to retain some of the existing MPLS infrastructure to main sites, but also replacing smaller or “expensive” sites with pure SD-WAN. MPLS bandwidths are bolstered by Internet services making new MPLS sites or even MPLS upgrades to existing sites essentially non-existent. Some customers drop MPLS circuits totally once the services are out of contract as SD-WAN has proved itself in the � eld.

Cost saving is a major consideration for any new network SD-WAN network. � is is where we di� er from the US. In the UK, MPLS is sold at only a very slight premium so customers can a� ord to retain MPLS but grow and expand with SD-WAN. Soft cost savings with SD-WAN by far outweigh traditional hard costs. It is questionable however when providers discount existing MPLS services by over 75% when faced with an SD-WAN alternative. It is in these cases that customers cannot allow their FD to make a network technology decision based purely on presented costs. MPLS was not designed to access cloud applications and the actual network cost is not only the cost of the circuits and routers.”

Channel PitchFor Channel Partners looking to delve into the world of SD-WAN how can they ensure they get the pitch right? Selling this type of technology in a consultative

approach may be outside the remit of many partners especially if it involves changing business models within the strategy.

Sacke commented, “� e pitch for partners is to look at the hybrid opportunity in addition to full replacement. � e approach � rst should be about understanding the application tra� c � ows between sites and the cloud,

and then applying SD-WAN selectively for agility, expansion, aggregating multiple types of connections at ‘problem’ or high value sites, ensuring that the network can balance and route the user application � ows correctly for a quality of experience. For example, non-business applications are segregated at sites into the broadband access links but mission-critical applications can still ride on the MPLS backbone.

However, for brand new multi-site networks, such as small retail setups which require a network that is more agile and can � ex in di� erent ways – SD-WAN may be an ideal solution. � erefore, partners must endeavour to understand the customer needs and business plans; how many sites are in operation, the application � ows and the plans for expansion of those applications over the term.”

Fielder added, “WAN solutions always require a consultative pitch, however with SD-WAN in your portfolio, it is even more important to focus on discovery of the customer’s requirements before de� ning

and delivering any solution. First establish what the customer is hoping to achieve, what locations, networks, services, software, hardware and human resource they have now, and where they expect to go in the future. Demonstrating an understanding of customer requirements and the capability to satisfy them is essential, and this means establishing credibility across a wide range of technologies, and of course a supportive network service provider can help where expertise is lacking.”

Senter commented, “Two of the largest multi-million pound channel partners that we work with are struggling as their business models and current sta� cannot mould to the changes required to o� er SD-WAN solutions. One is working with us to � nd a workable way around while the other has stuck its head in the sand, unfortunately to the detriment of their customers. I wonder which one will come out on top in the long run?

We are in an era where your customer might know more about SD-WAN than you do. SD-WAN adoption in the UK is being requested by C-level directors and fed down the chain. You need to be able to pitch

SD-WAN to the board, to the IT department and to the FD. � ese are di� erent conversations but you need to be consistent in your messaging, consultative and honest in your advice.”

Wayne Mason, sales director, Advanced Networking – EMEA at Nuvias commented “We are seeing a lot of consolidation as major players such as Cisco, Oracle and VMware acquire SD-WAN companies to accelerate their route to market. Telcos, aware of the threat to their MPLS business, are also doing deals to o� er SD-WAN as a service. But smaller resellers can leverage trusted advisor relationships with their customers to navigate the SD-WAN mine� eld and use innovative network performance monitoring technologies from companies such as Juniper, Riverbed and Sinefa to help make the right SD-WAN decisions, based on intelligent network visibility and analysis. When a partner is competing against a ‘titan’, o� ering a network performance service is a strong di� erentiator. While some organisations will jump straight into SD-WAN, for many there will be a transition period where they migrate to a best-of-both hybrid model and hold on to their MPLS networks.”

DRIVERS FOR SD-WAN?According to an IDG Connect study of over 339 IT decision makers• Automated, on demand provisioning of network capacity to connected

sites (27%)• Support for ongoing migration of applications and data to public cloud

services like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure (26%) • Improved network availability, resilience and uptime (24%)

within the strategy.

pitch for partners is to look at the hybrid opportunity in addition to full replacement. � e approach � rst should be about understanding the application tra� c � ows between sites and the cloud,

and then applying SD-WAN Nick Sacke, Head of IoT, Comms365

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DIGITAL BRITAIN It has been 30 years since the internet became available to the masses in the UK and in that time it has changed the way we work and live immeasurably. We have developed a digital culture which now underpins the UK economy and has attracted more talent and businesses to the UK than ever before. Some would argue that our digital infrastructure has been holding the UK back rather than empowering its businesses and the government has been slow to get behind fi bre initiatives (among others).

2019 marks a change in the mind-set of the UK, digital is now the future and we need the appropriate tools to continue our transition into a digital economy. The big question? What part will the Channel play in this transition?

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INTERVIEW Tim Stone - Polycom


“Its also about ‘looking digital’ as a company in terms of products, sales and marketing - however this cannot be achieved without taking steps to ‘be digital’ as a business internally around your systems and processes. ”

Tim Stone, Independant Consultant

Demand Generation 2019

Over the past couple of months, Tim Stone has met with some of Europe’s leading marketeers,

Industry analysts and industry �gures through chairing of �e CMO Event, an ideas network for leading business executives that can assist organisations to build lasting relationships between selected educational partners, innovative businesses and respected professionals from around the world.

Attendees at last November’s CMO event included Bloomberg, Avery Denison and Lego, so I asked Tim for a snapshot of the impact Digital Transformation is having on businesses.

“One of the sessions I chaired was on the topic of leveraging digital strategies where you have to remember that digital business means many things to di�erent

people. Most enterprises struggle with understanding the overall journey, where their organisation is and what steps need to be taken.

�e key takeaways we wanted to deliver were; the opportunities and challenges of leveraging the digital ecosystem in the enterprise, how to measure business impacts relevant to digital business and identify business models that reach customers e�ectively.”

AWAY FROM THE CONFERENCE SESSIONS, WHAT WERE THE HOT MARKETING TOPICS CHIEF MARKETING OFFICERS ARE TALKING ABOUT FOR 2019?“�ere’s such a lot happening at the moment but it would be useful to highlight six key areas that are exercising CMOs today.

Digital disruption is Accelerating and leading through

market transitions is key to survive with marketing needing to play a major role in sensing transitions. Its also about ‘looking digital’ as a company in terms of products, sales and marketing - however this cannot be achieved without taking steps to ‘be digital’ as a business internally around your systems and processes.

�ere is now a shift from ROMI to CX Metrics – Let me explain; a greater emphasis will be placed on metrics around customer experience (CX) as opposed to Return on Marketing Investment. Many companies do not have a single owner for the end to end Customer Experience which is a challenge. A consequence of this is that many new Martech companies are springing up who can help with things like engagement scoring.

Analytics – As Marketeers we are overloaded with data and often get wrapped around the axle discussing it. We in marketing and our business leaders need actionable insights. Human intelligence combined with Arti�cial Intelligence is required to gain much more meaningful insights. As a marketeer this is essential to spend budgets in the most e�ective way and demonstrate to your sales stakeholders the increasing spend on digital!!

Arti�cial Intelligence (AI) however is THE current hot topic with an explosion of companies and startups entering the AI

space. AI will be a game changer for many areas of business marketing and use cases today include customer behavior analytics and social monitoring, A/B testing, targeting, advert writing, agent assistants and staggeringly, chatbots are predicted to power 85% of customer service interactions by 2020 according to Gartner.

I CAN SEE THESE FOUR TOPICS FIGHTING FOR PODIUM POSITIONS BUT WHAT ARE THE NOTABLE CHALLENGERS FOR 2019?�ere’s an increased use of virtual reality in marketing with enterprises considering how they could embrace this technology to improve the customer experience in the product or service sales cycle. An example would be, for an event marketeer, having a virtual tour of a prospective venue dressed in their own theme and branding prior to deciding on your choice of venue and design.

�e workplace – it’s amazing how many companies are not keen on �exible working which is at odds with many employee’s preference and government guidance. Some of the best marketeers I have worked with over the past 20 years are working parents who rely on �exible working, why would you exclude them from your talent pool?

So all in all 2019 looks at exciting year for Marketing with lots of new trends and technologies to keep us busy.

Ian Hunter talks to Tim Stone about what’s on the mind of Chief Marketing Officers – after all, as the former Head of EMEA Marketing at Polycom who previously ran the collaboration marketing for Cisco EMEA, together with an ear to the ground, he should know

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MARKET REPORT

Call Recording vs. GDPR meets CPE vs. CloudToday call recording is used just about everywhere. Driven to a large extent by compliance - including greater emphasis on data regulation, call recording today has a pivotal role to play within business

I’m sure many of you will recall the early proponents of VoIP rolling out the phrase, ‘Voice is just another application on

the company network’. Usually accompanied by the subtle, semi-discrete smirk that was meant to convey they were ‘in the know’ and de� nitely running ahead of your legacy game.

Of course, they were right too, even though there was a lot of experience to be gained (instead of money) during the intervening and evangelistic years before cloud-based telephony became a real and productised o� ering.

In today’s world of digital transformations (DX) and customer service excellence (CX) I sometimes feel that voice is still lagging behind the game. How can you for example, transform the vast company database of client call recordings into readily usable data for Analytics engines, AI and Machine Learning without listening to each and every recording?

And what about GDPR?

How has GDPR affected the use of call recording applications?According to Iain Sinnott, Head of Sales at Vanilla IP, GDPR can potentially scare businesses, and suppliers, into turning o� this highly valuable productivity tool and revenue stream.

“After years of establishing the massive bene� t of listening back to customers calls then using what you learn to improve employee’s skills and e� ciency in both the key sales and support teams, GDPR has raised the questions - can we comply and is it worth the risk? Where MiFID ii has made it compulsory those who have highly capable services can deliver, but for general business we have seen some cloud players adopting the defeatist attitude of the PBX world (for whom the cost was always very di� cult to sell) and stripping call

recording out of their progressive services pitch. We are running workshops with partners this quarter to ensure they know how and why our call recording service delivers fully on GDPR and MiFID II requirements.”

Ian Bevington at Oak Innovation believes that the need to manage and control compliance has driven organisations to rationalise and consolidate data.

“� is will have caused some businesses to revisit the need for call recording. In a market where the need to protect reputation,

meet compliance and improve the quality of conversations is increasing. We’re not aware however of any organisations that have ceased recording.”

Markus Krammer, Vice President Products & New Business at NFON AG says his company actually can’t observe a big change in the use of call recording applications since most of their customers already had to ful� l high standards like the predecessor of GDPR in Germany or MiFiD II for the � nancial sector.

On the other hand, Sarah-Jane Heber-Hall at Computertel says that the increased service requirements from their customers indicate they have been a� ected by the GDPR regulations with regards to their call recording applications.

“Di� erent market sectors have come to address the challenges in several di� erent ways. Within the sectors where Governance and compliance were already prevalent, our customers have tended to focus on addressing the process control elements, rather than adapting the physical call recording equipment. Recording retention times and the archiving process itself seem to have been the main areas of focus.

Within the public sector, especially local government,

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MARKET REPORT

we’ve noticed a more cautious approach towards call recording. As a result, we have introduced a range of keep and delete software applications. � ese enable suitably trained sta� to operate within the framework of their organisations current GDPR Policies.”

Chris Berry at Liquid Voice says, “GDPR continues to be a major source of confusion in the marketplace and we have heard of instances where organisation were so concerned about the implications of this regulatory environment that they have switched o� their call recording systems and await reassurance that it is safe to record and the required controls are in place. � is may be a little extreme, but it illustrates that the introduction of GDPR was not accompanied by greater clarity.”

What are the top three differences between SME and Mid-Market Solutions? “Mid-market deployments tend to apply across multiple

departments and address a range of business needs,” says Ian Bevington at Oak.

“Typically, this will necessitate more discovery and project management to ensure all needs are accommodated. � is is a market where users are more likely to demand centralised call recording solutions operating across multiple sites and high availability systems, typically provided by resilient or redundant con� gurations.

A call recording failure may not be immediately apparent, so we have recently introduced a clever health monitoring system that noti� es the helpdesk when an issue is identi� ed.”

Simon Whatley at Tollring says Mid-market businesses are more likely to have larger customer-facing teams or contact centre environments where customer interactions need to be monitored and measured in line with business SLAs.

“In our opinion, the call recording features which are most prevalent in mid-market

A ‘VOICE FIRST’ STRATEGY?New research from Red Box, the call recording platform company, suggests that C level enterprise respondents to their survey are recognising the value that lies within their call recording data but are unable to realise that value with analytics.• 76% of those surveyed believe that a ‘Voice First’ strategy will be

in place within less than fi ve years showing a clear shift towards recognising the value of the spoken word.

• 95% regard voice data as ‘valuable’ or ‘very valuable’ to their organisation.

• However, just 49% of organisation-wide conversations are being captured, suggesting limitations with current call recording solutions and set up.

• Furthermore, 51% of the data being captured is locked away and inaccessible for AI and analytics.

organisations are: PCI DSS automated stop/

start of call recordings: � is is an important feature for a team of agents that need to take payments over the phone. Although a feature that is available to SMEs and mid-market companies, mid-market organisations would be more likely to opt for more formal and automated stop/start functionality. PCI DSS compliance for card payments tends to involve more sophisticated solutions that allow customers to enter credit card details using their keypad and hence call recording solutions must be able to cater for DTMF suppression.

Supervisor call recording control via permission-based access. In order to monitor calls, call recordings are reviewed by supervisors, whether for training purposes or customer service improvement/review. � e bigger the team the more important performance monitoring is.

Speech intelligence: Speech analytics, sentiment analysis and keyword ‘spot and search’ functionality is becoming available to the mid-market and this functionality is still

unlikely to be adopted by small companies. � e driver for speech analytics is the management of a team of agents dealing with large volumes of customer interactions, where automated analysis of transcribed calls is valuable to improve overall customer experience.”

“Our perspective is based on our work with the mobile communications side of call recording compliance,” says Gavin Sweet at Simetric.

“Larger companies are likely to have made extensive investment already in recording systems for compliance, training purposes, or communications quality control. Because many of the earlier deployments of these systems have been premises-based, it’s likely that larger enterprises will have their compliance systems on their corporate premises.

Because of their lesser prior investment infrastructure, smaller companies are sometimes faster to adopt ‘mobile � rst’ strategies, in which they make mobile devices the primary communications tools of employees. � is means the compliance and recording tools they use must have mobile >

Simon Whatley, Director, Sales Operations at Tollring

“The driver for speech analytics is the management of a team of agents dealing with large volumes of customer interactions, where automated analysis of transcribed calls is valuable to improve overall customer experience.”

Simon Whatley, Director, Sales Operations at Tollring

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MARKET REPORT

“With a flexible cloud solution, organisations can react dynamically to regulatory changes, from GDPR to more industry-specific regulations.” Edward Winfield, Sales Director, Content Guru

ED SAYS…It’s a great time for call recording sales – especially if you know what you’re talking about when it comes to GDPR. Businesses are still confused (to the point of halting their recording systems) and craving for some knowledgeable input and assistance from their trusted reseller partners.

communications in scope. Also, if the company has already adopted UC-as-a-Service, or cloud-based communications, they may also be open to cloud-based recording and communications archiving solutions.

In both cases, the trend is increasing toward becoming mobile � rst companies. But the larger companies often will need compliance approaches that support hybrid mobile and landline environments, while smaller companies that have already made the transition to mobile are less likely to worry about supporting a hybrid infrastructure.”

For John McKindland at Nimans the biggest di� erences are not between SME and Mid-Market but between individual vertical sectors.

“� e basic functionality of call recording remains the same but in certain vertical sectors such as � nance you have to keep call recordings for seven years so this then has an impact on the type of solutions required especially around back-up. When dealing with the stock market there needs to be extension side recording as well. So, it’s not so much the size of the market but the type of arena a reseller is operating in.”

Let’s not beat around the bush; Chris Berry at Liquid Voice says the traditional segmented approach taken by manufacturers developing systems is dead!

“It is no longer the case that just because an organisation is small then they don’t need access to advanced functionality such as speech analytics, particularly for the way that it helps search for data to meet regulatory requirements. Conversely, just because an organisation is large, it does not automatically mean they need full enterprise functionality when just a simple system is all

that is required.” With cloud-based models

gaining all the traction these days, why should resellers continue to provide premises-based call recording solutions to their clients?

According to Content Guru’s Edward Win� eld, in a post-GDPR world, many companies have shown a reluctance to move call recording solutions to the cloud, raising cyber security concerns.

“However, cloud-based models have gained traction over the past few years and o� er more

options for GDPR-compliant call recording. With a � exible cloud solution, organisations can react dynamically to regulatory changes, from GDPR to more industry-speci� c regulations. � is � exibility extends to homeworking, enabling agents to record their interactions remotely and securely via the cloud.”

Simetric’s Gavin Sweet says that whether recording is in the cloud or on premises it often boils down to an IT department’s preferences around security and control over archived content.

“For example, an enterprise might have the security policy that all archived communications must reside in storage within the perimeter of the corporate � rewalls. So, in that instance, a premises-based recording solution may be an attractive option. Our advice for resellers is to maintain the � exibility to support multiple models and con� gurations, since enterprises have varied requirements depending on their industry, business model, workforce distribution and so on.”

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035 COMMS 0219.indd 35 22/01/2019 14:44

INTERVIEW Lal Hussain - Insight UK


“Despite these concerns over providing a good customer experience are prevalent, just 10 percent of IT leaders said marketing influences technology decisions in their company.”

Lal Hussain, Director of IT Applications at Insight UK

What Keeps IT Leaders Up at Night? F

rom customer experience and engagement to data privacy and the pressure to constantly adopt new

technology, IT leaders have a lot to worry about. � e 2018 Insight Intelligent Technology Index reveals that 79 percent of IT leaders believe the reason IT is being set up to fail, is because of competing demands from di� erent lines of business, as well as a lack of resources to e� ectively support the organisation.

Lal Hussain, Director of IT Applications at Insight UK, says that research by his organisation has uncovered the top three concerns that are keeping IT leaders up at night.

DATA PRIVACY � e top headache amongst IT leaders was data privacy, with 94 percent admitting they were concerned about it. But how can they address this concern? It was found that just 24 percent use a bimodal IT talent approach, with one group focused on predictability and operations, while another IT Team focused on innovation.

Allocating resource in this way could be the answer to ensuring data privacy is maintained. One group focused on ensuring operational excellence and an innovation group examining new ways technology could be used to enhance security – for example, strategies for engaging employees in the day-by-day e� ort to correctly store and protect data.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Improving customer experience came in a close second (87 percent), and a further 84 percent highlighted the need

to provide consistent customer engagement as vital to addressing this. � e research also highlights an opportunity to create better connections with lines of business, particularly the marketing department who place customer relationships at the heart of everything they do.

Despite these concerns over providing a good customer experience are prevalent, just 10 percent of IT leaders said marketing in� uences technology decisions in their company.

STATE OF TECHNOLOGY� e state of their current technology, and having the ability to adopt new technology were each prime concerns for 7-in-10 IT leaders. � is has implications across the business in terms of being as productive as possible, driving e� ciencies and driving innovation, but also in being an attractive employer. With 77 percent of IT leaders concerned about talent retention and attraction, o� ering the

best technology to existing and prospective employees is a powerful means of keeping them happy and feeling like they have the right tools to get their job done.

Hussain says, “IT is now taking on a central strategic role that touches every facet of the business. With data breaches making daily news headlines, increasing customer demands and the consumerisation of IT, IT leaders have more responsibility than ever before. � at’s why working with a trusted partner who understand these pressures, as well as the technological capabilities, regulations and budget restrictions faced by organisations today is so

important. By working in collaboration with the right partners, IT leaders can ensure they develop an overall strategy with cross-departmental solutions that meet their business needs and customers’ expectations.”

Lal Hussain, Director of IT Applications at Insight UK, says that data privacy, customer experience and the state of technology are amongst top concerns for IT leaders

ED SAYS…A couple of points here; it was very interesting to hear that three-quarters of IT leaders were concerned over their ability to retain existing and fi nd new talent and that they believed having the best technology was one of their key attractions of their employment – a useful conversation starter for resellers and a probable result of millennials now being ever present across the enterprise.

What about compliance? A year ago, I’m sure that issues such as GDPR would have forced compliance to take a place on the podium but now you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s all under control.

And Artifi cial Intelligence? Also not in the top 3, AI has garnered a majority of the hyperbole lately and predicted to impact business modelling, decision making, market strategising, customer experience and other spheres. As per a survey by Gartner, 59% of companies are already working on their strategies for implementing AI. Perhaps that too is just more hype?

Lal Hussain, Director of IT Applications at Insight UK

036 COMMS 0219.indd 36 22/01/2019 15:11

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037 COMMS 0219.indd 37 21/01/2019 16:45


MARKET REPORT Vertical Markets

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Selling in the Public SectorIn this series of features we will be looking at industry verticals the Channel is serving with a view to determining, this month, the opportunities, challenges and market movements which are impacting those partners selling into the Public Sector

One year ago, it was announced that the Government and other public sector organisations

had spent more than £3.2bn on digital, data and technology services since 2012.

�e �gures were released as part of the need for transparency in the workings of the Digital Marketplace - created in 2014 by Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and Government Digital Service (GDS) to make government procurement easier and more transparent.

At the time, Niall Quinn, Director, Technology Strategic Category for CCS said, “In the three years since Digital Marketplace was launched, we have overhauled the public sector procurement landscape, harnessing the expertise of innovative companies and giving thousands of SMEs the opportunity to supply to government for the �rst time.”

Warren Smith, Director, Digital Marketplace, added, “We’ve started to bring the tools, techniques, technologies and culture of the internet to public procurement and contracting. What we’ve achieved so far is testament to an amazing team and the importance of user-centred, design-led, data-driven and open approaches, but we’ve only scratched the surface. �e period to 2020 will see a step-change where these approaches are mainstreamed across

government.”All the contracts for products

and services awarded can be seen on the www.gov.uk web site in fully transparent quarterly reports including individual contract values and details of the supplier. �is includes the G-Cloud framework, Digital Outcomes, Services and Specialist Frameworks.

Prospective suppliers can get on a framework list by applying on line at the same site which also holds the master list of approved suppliers the public sector can look up when they are seeking quotations etc. If it sounds easy to get on the list then that would be misleading but it’s the same process for everyone.

AusterityOne of the things austerity has driven hard in recent years is greater commercial awareness within the buying communities across the public sector.

A former CIO and senior leader across central and local government, now the owner and managing director of his own consulting business, says he often get asked by vendors of all shapes and sizes to help them improve their ‘market position’.

�ese questions invariably start with the following:• Our product is unique in the

market;• We can help public

organisations achieve

signi�cant savings with our product/s;

• We enable service transformation;

• Who do we need to reach to secure sales?But all too often our start

points are:• Why are you unique?• How can they cash-in those

savings and what will it cost to release them?

• Who do you think needs to transform and why?

• Do you understand how the public sector and, in particular, the various sectors within it work?

• What about the customer (residents, businesses - taxpayers)?

How difficult is it to become an authorised supplier to public sector organisations?Bernie McPhillips, Sales Director at Pangea says that despite what many people may think, selling

to the public sector isn’t vastly di�erent to private organisations.

“It’s still all about being in the right place at the right time, with the right product that solves a problem.

�at said, the supply chain in public sector organisations can appear rather complex; much more so than their private counterparts, where sales cycles tend to be shorter and involve fewer stakeholders.

�ere’s a number of �ne details that need to be grasped to succeed in the bidding process and high-level procedures. If you lack the ability to do this, don’t be afraid to �nd help—either paid for, or from a government advice service.

And �nally… patience is a virtue! Developing relationships with public sector companies is generally very rewarding, as many are keen to develop strategic partnerships and enter long-term agreements with

038-040 COMMS 0219.indd 38 22/01/2019 15:57


Vertical Markets MARKET REPORT

16.5% For September 2018, of all people in paid work, 16.5% were employed in the public sector.

attractive contractual terms.”Myles Leach, Managing

Director for NFON UK, says it’s crucial to invest in becoming accredited on the right frameworks.

“�e RM1045 framework has proved to be an important framework for comms suppliers. It replaced three existing agreements RM860 PSN Connectivity, RM1498 PSN Services and RM1035 Telephony Services. �e process of accreditation can be complex – as is evidenced by the fact that some very large Telco’s failed to get into lot 10 of the RM1045 framework.”

Which products and services are selling well?Myles Leach at NFON says there is a huge push in the public sector to switch to uni�ed communications.

“�ere are two big drivers for this – �rstly the increased mobility of the workforce and rise in �exible/ remote working, and secondly the need to consolidate o�ce space to reduce property commitments.”

Bernie McPhillips at Pangea clearly believes IoT is a hot topic amongst many public organisations.

“Smart solutions are often

key to achieving critical objectives in reducing crime and pollution, tra�c management, refuse collection, and public safety. Many local authorities are now being awarded budgets to adopt IoT and similar technologies to enjoy all the associated bene�ts. �e Channel is in a prime position to capitalise on this opportunity, as it’s already the trusted supplier of communications, hosted services, infrastructure, and IT to these organisations.”

Are there new products on the horizon?Myles Leach at NFON sees one of the hottest trends as the rise in omni-channel contact centres – interacting with constituents beyond voice, to include webchat and social media channels.

“Looking even further ahead there are de�nitely opportunities with AI; the public sector wants to automate where possible to save costs, so it may be a trailblazer for new voice recognition technologies.”

According to Bernie McPhillips at Pangea IoT solutions drive all manner of bene�ts for public sector organisations, including cost savings, time e�ciencies, employee and public safety, positive environmental impact and more.

“However,” he says, “the initial conversations with clients in the public sector and beyond shouldn’t be based on products at all; rather, they need to focus on the client’s problems and key objectives that your IoT solutions are potentially the answer to. ”

How is the purchasing behav-iour of this vertical changing?Myles Leach at NFON says that in the last �ve years there has been a clear move away from big open tenders that are advertised in a European journal, towards

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PUBLIC SECTOR UK – FAST FACTS:• For September 2018, 5.36 million people were estimated to be employed

in the public sector.• The number of people employed in the public sector was estimated to

have increased by 20,000 between June and September 2018.• Between September 2017 and September 2018, public sector

employment fell by an estimated 120,000; this large fall was entirely due to the transfer of housing associations in England, Wales and Scotland to the private sector during this period.

• Excluding the housing associations transfers, the estimated number of people employed in the public sector increased by 51,000 between September 2017 and September 2018, due mainly to more people working for the National Health Service and the Civil Service.

• For September 2018, 27.12 million people were estimated to be working in the private sector, 516,000 more than for a year earlier.

• Source: Office for National Statistics (ONS) 11 December 2018

038-040 COMMS 0219.indd 39 22/01/2019 15:57


MARKET REPORT Vertical Markets

“Smaller providers are now seen as just as reliable as their larger counterparts, while boasting a greater agility and a place ahead of the curve in terms of product innovation and adoption”

Bernie McPhillips, Sales Director, Pangea

ED SAYS…Many vendors and distributors have specialised sales support teams and commercials to help channels with their sales in to the public sector – a resource that should be tapped whenever possible. Whilst the gov.uk site says that 45% of all framework sales are now being supplied by SMEs – resellers to you and me, the sales values of these orders can be seen to have lower averages. I would take that as being expected but never the less, compared to previous times, the fact that the reseller community is actually getting to regularly sit at the table is a welcome trend.


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frameworks that enable a more level playing � eld for smaller companies.

Bernie McPhillips at Pangea believes public organisations are now far more willing to deal directly with providers of various scales, whereas in years gone by they chose only to deal with the largest and longest-established players.

“Smaller providers are now seen as just as reliable as their larger counterparts, while boasting a greater agility and a place ahead of the curve in terms of product innovation and adoption.

What are the top tips for sales success in this sector?Bernie McPhillips at Pangea has a top three.

“Firstly, you really need to understand the speci� c sector you are targeting, including the issues that are unique and important to the decision makers and key in� uencers (exactly as you would with a private sector client).

Often, a good idea is tender for framework agreements to get on the list of pre-quali� ed

suppliers. � ere is no guarantee of immediate sales success, but it’ll be much easier for the customer to purchase a service from you in the future.

My � nal point (and it’s a big one) is not to mess up on the delivery of a project once you have been selected. � e Public Sector is very sensitive to the risk of failure, perhaps even more so than private companies, and tenders can often require full disclosure of all the projects you’ve worked on in the last 5 years - including the outcomes.”

ChallengesCCaas solutions provider Content Guru says working within the

public sector can represent a wide variety of challenges for solution suppliers.

“With the majority of sales being won through inclusion on very speci� c and lengthy frameworks, the tender process is very di� erent when bidding for public sector business. Public sector organisations have niche needs, a strong � nancial focus and vary in level of technical knowledge, creating an often challenging, and remote sales cycle. � is process looks unlikely to change, with frameworks being the Holy Grail of public sector business, so how can suppliers harness this to their advantage?

In addition to applying for places on the relevant frameworks, solutions providers need to understand which frameworks organisations can procure through and then listen to the speci� c needs of di� erent public sector organisations and remain � exible to accommodate the vast quantities of legacy systems still in use. With an array of unique requirements, solutions providers must understand the current situation of each individual organisation, � nding innovative ways to achieve key outcomes and objectives, rather than sticking to the processes currently in place.

� is innovative way of thinking is re� ected in the

products and services which are popular in the public sector. To make di� erent departments work together in a more cohesive fashion, easy data sharing, integration and recall are vital. Many public-sector organisations are looking to bridge the gap with cloud communications solutions that link citizen services to internal systems, eliminating data siloes and streamlining citizen interactions. Moving to the cloud makes citizen data more accessible to those who need it, driving huge internal e� ciencies and creating signi� cant cost savings.”

New products on the horizon revolve around developments in AI, chatbots and Natural Language Processing (NLP), with some public-sector organisations already embracing these solutions to enhance their citizen communications. � ese disruptive technologies can help to � lter citizen contact, directing routine enquiries to automated self-serve options and preserving agent time for vulnerable citizens and potentially complex issues. For instance, NLP allows citizens that prefer to get in contact over the phone, such as the elderly, to make bookings and access basic information through their preferred channel without the need for a live agent, unburdening agents of time-consuming, routine enquiries.”

September 2018, 5.36 million people were estimated to be employed in the public sector

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OPINION Viewpoints

“‘WebRTC advancements have changed the nature of informal comms in our personal lives, evidenced by the rocketing use of tools like WhatsApp. ” Tim Mercer, CEO of Vapour Cloud

Video: A Two-Way Street in 2019?

According to Tim Mercer, CEO of Vapour Cloud, savvy marketers have long realised the

potential of video so brands are increasingly embracing the medium to promote products and services or educate their customer base.

“Given some of the stats surrounding video marketing, this media-rich approach to comms is hardly surprising – 78% of people are said to watch online videos every week, for example, and 55% on a daily basis (HubSpot).

But the key thing to note

Tim Mercer, CEO at Vapour Cloud believes video engagement with consumers needs to become far more interactive – more ‘talk with’ rather than the present ‘talk at’. The good news is that Richard Middleton at Lifesize hints at this capability heading our way soon

here is that the majority of brand communication videos talk at a customer. �ey rarely invite real-time two-way or multi-way dialogue, which is why conversation surrounding video has really revved up this year.

WebRTC advancements have changed the nature of informal comms in our personal lives, evidenced by the rocketing use of tools like WhatsApp. Yet the evolution of video tech in the business environment has been comparatively lacking. Solutions like Skype have tried to bridge the gap, but sound

quality and connectivity is often questionable, plus the security and accountability isn’t geared up to support the modern needs of commercial entities.

�e channel has to do more, and I think 2019 is the year for it to do just that.

With some clever thinking and intuitive deployment, WebRTC innovations could change the face of business comms. We keep talking about uni�ed communications and truly omnichannel capabilities, but video regularly comes last, with many organisations having to default to a free browser-

based solution or a standalone conferencing device that doesn’t integrate into the rest of their infrastructure.

2019 has to be the year when the channel starts to recommend video �rst (providing it is relevant to the client of course). Forrester research has found that one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, and it is claimed that 55% of executives would rather watch a video than read text (Wordstream). We have to empower businesses to capitalise on these trends.

But the channel partners

Tim Mercer, CEO at Vapour Cloud

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that put these solutions forward, must be true specialists in this � eld. We need to o� er technology that is recordable, resilient, secure, encrypted, device-independent and with a level of quality that makes people feel as though they’re in the same room – if the right, media-rich experience is provided, video consultation/conference participants should bene� t from many of the same visual cues.

Consumers are demanding it. It’s about time organisations stopped solely adhering to their own agenda and adapted to re� ect the demands and requirements of their customers and colleagues. From the ability to deliver a more personalised level of customer service, to the provision of powerful � exible working capabilities, remote healthcare consultations and more evidenced insurance claims, the potential of video is vast. If only it could be unlocked…”

Richard Middleton, country manager for UK and Ireland at Lifesize points to two key issues impacting VC in 2019 – Quality and Technology.

“As 4K has become

increasingly prevalent in the home, users expect this same quality and ease of use at work too. � is, coupled with more millennials entering the workforce, means that the demand for high-quality video in the o� ce will grow exponentially. Businesses need to know that these services are available through the channel, and that they are easy to set up, can integrate with existing systems such as Microsoft Teams, and don’t have to cost the earth, there is a quality solution available for every business situation.

Looking forward, in addition to providing a better visual experience, video � rst solutions are also getting smart on how they deliver analytics. By integrating arti� cial intelligence and machine learning into their o� erings users can get real time analysis of the quality of their meeting – delivering feedback and making video increasingly bi-directional and interactive.

2019 will be the year that video really connects people and answers users demands to deliver a more streamlined, productive and better-quality experience.”

Richard Middleton, country manager for UK and Ireland at Lifesize

042-043 COMMS 0219.indd 43 22/01/2019 15:23

INTERVIEW Bart Delgado - Akixi


“Do you know how many emailed sales enquiries you get every day and what your response times and success rates are for each of these?” Bart Delgado, MD of Akixi

Now is the Time to Accelerate

Productivity, the ratio of output to inputs used in a business process, is often seen as a key to business

growth. It is a crucial factor in the performance of organisations and nations and it is often said by economists that the productivity of UK businesses should be improved.

Until very recently, digital transformations (DX) have been almost entirely focussed on the need to develop a customer led business strategy that would lead to the achievement of customer service excellence. But this focus has shifted as in mid-2018 analyst �rm IDC, the early headline advocate of the DX mantra, announced that organisations were now prioritising productivity over service excellence – albeit these two aims are now actually pretty much neck and neck on the DX shopping list.

Of course, you can have both – the two objectives are both

Software as a Service vendor Akixi, welcomes the Digital Transformations that organisations have implemented but says the benefits they can bring now need to be accelerated in terms of increased productivity and customer service excellence. Comms Business asks Managing Director Bart Delgado how this can be done


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highly valid and certainly not mutually exclusive. Neither need their achievement be intolerably complex, expensive nor restricted to large enterprises.

�e technologies sitting behind business transformations are today a�ordable and available to everyone; they provide the tools to be able to di�erentiate both product and service o�erings and improve productivity.

For people that ask how our product can improve their productivity and customer service levels we can quickly point to three feature illustrations to assure them we are really in this game – no matter what size their business is.

How many calls to the organisation were not answered nor had return calls made to the caller? If the business can’t answer then they are just throwing productivity in to the wind and losing income. All the e�ort put in to marketing their products

and services to generate business is wasted. To establish how much resource and income is wasted just multiply the lost calls by a typical conversion rate and an average order value. Do it daily, weekly and monthly and you get a big number.

Scenario two - which promotional sales campaigns are the most e�ective for the organisation? How do they assess each? Applications such as Akixi can, if a di�erent, discrete phone number is assigned to each campaign, measure the success and rate each accordingly. You can see which contact channel was the busiest, which channel was most productive in terms of sales.

�irdly, imagine a wallboard that indicated response times for call answering. Is that the only form of contact measured? Today we are in a digital age; many customers like to do everything on their phone and that means

not just call you. �ey like messaging and they like chat. Do you know how many emailed sales enquiries you get every day and what your response times and success rates are for each of these?

Omni-channel experiences such as these have become the norm for a generation of customers which leads us on to another question – is your business open at the right times of the day?

Unless a business can see the frequency of contact and time patterns for each how do they know what further business productivity and income is being �ushed down the toilet?

Customer service excellence can only be assessed by customers. Customers want their calls, emails, chats etc answered and dealt with in a timely manner.

Business productivity can always be improved and these three illustrative scenarios should be givens for any organisation.

Bart Delgado, Managing Director of Akixi

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INSIGHT Customer Excellence

“If you don’t know this stuff about your customers then there’s no need to worry about it as some other firm will take the problem away from you by finding it out and stealing all your customers.”

Ian Hunter, Contributing Editor, Comms Business

One Step Beyond

Nothing stands still in business other than the need to control costs, retain customers and

gain a competitive advantage. �e trouble is that these three business objectives are constantly under pressure and/or attack from competitors.

We live in an age of disruption typi�ed by the fact that worlds largest taxi �rm own no vehicles and the biggest accommodation out�t own no hotels. Whilst disruptors such as Uber and AirBnb are the poster boys for disruption there are freshly minted and innovative competitors of all shapes and sizes emerging and only too willing to relieve you of long term clients and contracts. �ey are seizing their competitive advantage and at the same time destroying your objective of holding on to your customers. And as for your cost base? �at’s just �own out the window.

In a nutshell, this describes the case for Digital Transformation and the need to mitigate against being digitally disrupted.

Today, having a customer �rst ethos within an organisation and customer led business strategy should really be a given – after all not much happens without customers and the revenues they generate. Leave aside all the �rms that have never made a dollar in real pro�t that have market capitalisations measured in the billions – that’s fairy dust that can and does frequently disappear in the wind.

In another nutshell, the case for a customer led strategy could be summed up as follows. If you know as much as you can about your customers – what they like, dislike, what they want next, then

Ian Hunter takes a look at the business trend towards achieving Customer Excellence (CX) and what is driving it. He says that having a customer first or customer led ethos throughout a business should be a given these days but how can you develop this further?

you can fast track giving them more of what they like, eliminate what they don’t like about your products and services and save a fortune on product development by giving them new stu� that they actually want.

If you don’t know this stu� about your customers then there’s no need to worry about it as some other �rm will take the problem away from you by �nding it out and stealing all your customers.

So, this leads us neatly on to collaborative working and in this context collaboration means sharing the information that all your customer facing teams have garnered from your clients. �is is the ‘collaborative workgroups in – silos out’ strategy being adopted by businesses that have recognised customer data has a far greater value to them when it is more widely shared and its meaning and implications understood and acted upon.

Here’s an illustration of why working in silos is bad.

�ere’s little point in Marketing launching a new product they believe will be a top seller if the Sales team already know it will be too expensive and the Technical team don’t have the skills to maintain in the �eld.

You can see why, according to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, each year more than 30,000 new consumer products are launched and 80% of them fail.

Another nutshell; In short, customer excellence is about being excellent in the eyes of your customer. A simple concept, but very important. Customer Excellence drives pro�table growth. By putting your customer at the centre of everything the company does, you’ll ensure that you’re delivering the product or service that they need.

A study by Forrester found that CX leaders delivered compound annual revenue growth rates (CAGR) of 17%

compared to just 3% for CX laggards.

�e major wins from CX are in the existing customer base, helping businesses increase life-time value of customers, reduce churn and drive customer advocacy through better relationships. �ese aren’t marketing KPI’s, these are the operational fundamentals for most businesses, underpinning the case for much wider ownership of CX, including at senior levels, within organisations.

I said that nothing stands still and it’s now a fact that those organisations that have already undertaken their DX/CX journeys are now planning their own next steps to maximise their return on investments.

And those moves almost certainly, and worryingly for the laggards, involve accelerating their performances and coming even harder after the competition.

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INTERVIEW Andres Sintes - Cisco


“To stay competitive, Cisco and our partners must adjust our technology portfolios to accommodate flexible consumption models, new sales motions and customer engagement throughout the lifecycle.”

Andres Sintes, Global Senior Director for Worldwide Partner Organisation, Cisco

Cisco Fires the Starting Pistol

Following the Cisco Partner Summit in Las Vegas last November, which featured the theme of Perform

and Transform, the vendor is kicking o� 2019 with a focus on enabling their channel partners to transform their own organisations and accelerate performance.

Andres Sintes, Cisco’s Global Senior Director for Worldwide Partner Organisation, says that we all know, the way customers buy, use and consume technology is rapidly changing.

“To stay competitive, Cisco and our partners must adjust our technology portfolios to accommodate �exible consumption models, new sales motions and customer engagement throughout the lifecycle.

At our Partner Summit 2018, partners heard the big theme of Perform and Transform, where we highlighted the need for all of us to work on maintaining growth and pro�tability today, while also investing in new capabilities and go-to-market approaches for the future.”

WHY PERFORM AND TRANSFORM?“Because customers are demanding solutions that deliver business outcomes, rather than technologies. And because you can access new total addressable markets by reaching beyond traditional IT buyers and engaging other decision makers. By becoming a partner of the future, you are able to digitally transform your organisation so you can enable new business models – for you and your customers – so we can all continue to win and grow.

And whatever the solution is, software represents the last

Cisco has released more details on its Digital Navigator, a digital transformation methodology where, says Andres Sintes, their Global Senior Director for Worldwide Partner Organisation, all Cisco partners can assess their digital business readiness and build a patch forward

Andres Sintes, Global Senior Director for Cisco

mile where the business value is experienced.”

HOW CAN CISCO NAVIGATOR HELP PARTNERS TRANSFORM?Selling and delivering the value of solutions that provide business outcomes and enable digital transformation – now that’s a big lift for channel partners and if they are not sure where to start then they need look no further

than Cisco Digital Navigator, a digital transformation methodology where all Cisco partners can assess their digital business readiness and gain a clear, personalised path forward, including recommended role-based trainings and resources, and ecosystem partners to help to address needed capabilities.

Digital Navigator can quickly take you from ‘where

do I begin?’ or ‘how do I accelerate?’ to building your own personalised digital solutions go-to-market plan. It can also help you �nd the right path when it comes to adding new software and lifecycle service capabilities to your practice to ultimately deliver the best value and customer experience.

Here are a few of the new capabilities Cisco Digital Navigator can help partners with:• Business-Outcome Oriented

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AND WHAT ARE THE EARLY RESULT INDICATORS?Several partners participated in the Digital Navigator pilot program and the results have been outstanding, including one partner who expanded a $1 million deal with a customer to over $20 million after the pilot.

�is is consistent with what we’re seeing from Cisco’s most pro�table resellers who have built successful solution practices. �ey’re growing 20 percent faster year-over-year, seeing 50% higher margins, and getting 3x more revenue from line-of-business buyers.

Partners who have already participated in the Digital Navigator pilot program are growing 20 percent faster year-over-year, seeing 50% higher margins, and getting 3x more revenue from line-of-business buyers.

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OPINION Pain Points

“A challenge exists in providing what is still perceived as a personal service where the customer is king.”Carl Boraman, Senior VP - Strategic Alliances, Tollring

Soothing the HurtI

an Bevington, Marketing Manager at Oak Innovation, points to managing quality as a pain point in contact centres.“As businesses move to

ecommerce multimedia interaction, they may be judged by their weakest channel. When it comes to voice, those rare opportunities to talk need to be exceptional. Today, few organisations make e�ective use of tools like workforce management, speech analytics and sentiment analysis to manage the quality of conversations e�ectively. It’s about providing individuals and teams with the information they need to work more e�ectively.

Bad new travels fast in an online world. �e smallest customer dispute can be shared on social media and damage reputation. Speedy problem resolution is key. Organisations need to monitor social media channels, prove who said what, get to the truth and resolve disputes before they escalate into more serious and costly cases.”

Customer expectations are a problem according to Carl Boraman at Tollring.

“A challenge exists in providing what is still perceived as a personal service where the customer is king. �is includes giving the customer the ability to contact you in their preferred medium, showing them that their business is important to you and giving agents easy access to the information they need to be able to facilitate a successful interaction.

�is allows expectations to be properly set as well as serving as the foundation for KPIs, SLAs and other metrics that allow the contact centre to be managed e�ectively. �is task can be made much easier with the right technology in place –

We asked channel players what they considered to be the biggest pain points today in call and contact centres

particularly where insight from across the business can be used to feed into these processes.”

Gary Bennett, VP Sales EMEA at Enghouse Interactive says that lack of planning around the customer journey presents problems.

“Businesses have o�ered their customers a range of di�erent channels through which to interact - but they have generally not looked at the situation holistically. �ey haven’t mapped out an optimised customer journey. As a result, customers are often interacting with them through channels that are poorly matched to what they are looking to achieve.

�at ultimately leads to longer journey times with higher costs and levels of friction. It also leads to agent and employee dissatisfaction because sta� are having to undergo the stressful process of wrestling with di�erent systems and information types and build up a picture of what is going on.

Organisations increasingly need to rethink their whole customer service culture – and

that often means moving away from the existing functional silos that exist within the business. Instead with the most straightforward, routine enquiries increasingly solved by self-service, businesses are looking to draw on skills and expertise held more widely by sta� across the organisation to answer more complex or specialist enquiries. �at requires an agile connected infrastructure capable of supporting interaction with sta� in the middle and back o�ce; and a �exible business culture able to empower sta� to make decisions that meet customer needs.”

Tim Mercer, CEO at Vapour Cloud believes the biggest pain point for some contact centres is, paradoxically, that they feel pain free.

“�ey’re still operating under the mindset that they’re driving the customer agenda. �ey’re not. But, slowly, in every sector, there’ll be a contact centre that is listening to customer requirements and adapting accordingly – look at BetFred in the bookmaking sector!

Legacy infrastructures make it di�cult to enable multichannel, uni�ed comms, never mind PCI compliant call recordings, remote working and data-rich contact centre analysis. But the longer organisations try to cope with the voice platforms they have, the more they’ll get left behind.”

Edward Win�eld, UK Sales Director at Content Guru, makes a top-level observation when he says that underpinning all of these pain points, is the integration of customer and organisational data into contact centre infrastructure.

“Often analytics and security are separate modules to customer care, regarded as bolt-ons or afterthoughts to the core contact centre solution. �is however creates siloes of data and raises questions surrounding data protection. Organisations must interweave internal infrastructure with customer care, e�ectively using big data to drive business decisions and ensuring that data remains secure, with PCI-compliance as standard.”

©R

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INTERVIEW Lawrence Jones - UKFast


“When your business is fundamentally underpinned by innovation you’ve got to expand that area and put significant resource into that.” Lawrence Jones, CEO & Founder, UKFast

UKFast Gets off to a Quick Start in 2019COMMS BUSINESS MAGAZINE (CBM): CLEARLY YOU ARE LOOKING AT AN IPO IN THE NEAR FUTURE; WHAT KEY OBJECTIVES DO YOU ANTICIPATE ACHIEVING BEFORE YOU ARE READY FOR THAT STEP?LAWRENCE JONES (LJ): It’s no secret that we are keen to IPO UKFast at some point. We went to the market and had some very positive conversations, but the sentiment was that pre-Brexit, and even after March 2019, the analysts were anticipating quite a di�cult time for businesses on the stock exchange.

At the same time a number of organisations, including In�exion, threw their hats into the ring.

We looked at In�exion’s track record and they are the highest performing private equity house of their size in our sector. �ey also had a brilliant record of �oating businesses, like On the Beach in Manchester and various others.

When we met with In�exion there was a clear synergy and we gelled with their management team. It was a very easy decision.

Life is about timing. We’ll �oat UKFast when the market is right and the business is in the right position. We’re likely to get to that position more quickly with shareholders like In�exion on board.

CBM: NOTHING EVER SEEMS TO STAND STILL FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME AT UKFAST AND YOU ARE PARTICULARLY PROUD OF YOUR STAFF. COULD YOU SINGLE OUT ANY TEAM ACHIEVEMENT(S) HERE IN RECENT TIMES THAT STAND OUT FOR YOU?LJ: I’m especially proud of the team run by (MD and co-founder) Gail Jones. Gail

Manchester based communications provider UKFast has rapidly grown to become a northern powerhouse within the sector and Ian Hunter talks to their CEO and Founder Lawrence Jones about some of the many recent developments at the firm

oversees the R&D and DevOps capability, which is expanding and delivering more API control for our customers to provide instant access and instant capability. �ey’re also working on new products and features that enable our clients to do things their competitors can’t do.

When your business is fundamentally underpinned by innovation you’ve got to expand that area and put signi�cant resource into that. We’re just beginning to see the fruits of our investment in R&D.

�e commercial �nance team, which is one of the newest teams within UKFast, is really coming into its own

and shedding new light on the nuisances and the exciting opportunities within our business, helping us make even more informed decisions.

CBM: TOWARDS THE END OF 2018 UKFAST ANNOUNCED THE NEW DATA CENTRE, MANOC 9, SPECIFICALLY TARGETING THE PUBLIC SECTOR. WHY THIS SECTOR AND HOW ARE YOU MANAGING TO ACHIEVE SUCH SUCCESS IN A MARKET WITH HIGHLY CONSTRAINED BUDGET?LJ: It makes sense to encourage British government to use British cloud, hosted in the UK.

Acquiring Secure-IA gave us a key into the public sector and a deep understanding of doing business there, which is

very di�erent from the sectors we dealt with before. We now have the technology and the capability to make a massive di�erence to the public sector.

In terms of saving the public sector money, look at our entrance to Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) for example. We’re providing cloud, connected directly to the new network for people to consume. �at saves organisations so much money in terms of setup costs because they bypass the need to connect themselves physically to HSCN. Our investment in the infrastructure and connectivity, shared across the hosted services that has enabled us to be successful and help our customers reduce their costs.

CBM: WHAT DO YOU PUT DOWN THE FAST START AND INITIAL SUCCESS OF YOUR CLEARCLOUD DOWN TO?LJ: Businesses use di�erent services for di�erent needs and they don’t want to put all their eggs in one basket.

We are able to support our brilliant customer base full of clients who are interested in a multi-cloud strategy, using some of our eCloud and some services from Azure or AWS. When you’ve got a great technical o�ering that’s underpinned with world-class service available 24 hours a day, you have a great combination that people are interested in accessing.

Lawrence Jones, CEO at UKFast

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