NEWS
Appointment bolsters Opal
GRAHAM Bunting has joined Opal as Head of Distribution, responsible for both dealers and distributors. The appointment sig- nals Opal’s intention to bolster its channel proposition and grow its next generation portfolio. Bunting draws on more than
25 years experience in the telecoms industry including roles at Avaya, Lucent Technologies and SDX Business Systems. His remit is to look at Opal’s channel proposition and then strengthen the company’s offering for dealers and distributors. Andy Hollingworth, Director of Wholesale, Opal, commented: “Graham has a proven track record of driving sales growth. We are confident that his experience and insight will help us to develop Opal’s partner strategy and add value to the business, and to new and existing customers.” Bunting added: “I’ll be tak- ing a leading role in developing
Inspirational stories help to raise the bar for staff
LONDON-based Modern Com- munications has come up with a novel way of inspiring staff and customers.
The convergence reseller has
recruited top journalist Victoria Schofield to co-edit an interview and debate forum on its website (www.modcomms.com). Managing Director, Adrian
Graham Bunting
Opal’s current propositions as well as creating new opportunities for partners that will grow both Opal and its partner businesses. “I’m already working close- ly with partners to identify and address challenges and capitalise on market opportunities.”
sgilroy@bpl-business.com
Barnard, explained: “Because we believe in the importance of com- munications our focus is to inter- view people who have shaped their respective futures, in all aspects of our communicative world, in poli- tics, the media, the arts, and sport. “They are men and women with integrity who do indeed ‘walk the walk, and talk the talk’. “We aim to show the world
that there is hope, and are using these personal stories to highlight how much the individual can do or achieve, often in spite of, or in the face of, significant obstacles.”
www.comms-dealer.com
Time to focus on green tax
CHANNEL technical support company ITEC is urging resellers to consider impending green taxes and offer power saving cloud-based solutions to SMB customers. “The cloud not only saves cus- tomers money and hassle, it can also help to reduce the business car- bon footprint,” commented ITEC Director Sam Dawkins. “The need to enable SMBs to meet their environmental obliga- tions is increasing. Green means cost savings for the customer and recurring revenues for the reseller.”
Dawkins claims a single small business server running 24/7/365 uses approximately £45 of electric- ity a month and can produce 3.2 tonnes of CO2 per year. Dawkins added: “Virtualisation
is growing in demand and delivery, enabling customers to have their own servers in the cloud, fully managed by a professional and dedicated team. “This by its nature is designed in a highly resilient and redundant environment, more than any SMB would consider in-house.”
DESPITE a legacy of connectivity issues, hosted VoIP is set to gain significant market share, concluded an industry round table discussion hosted by Knight Corporate Finance. The round table delegates hailed from fixed line, mobile and IT backgrounds and all had experience of selling hosted products. They held the view that hosted services would become increasingly widespread, as long as network issues were overcome. Paul Billingham, Director at Knight CF, told Comms Dealer: “The general consensus was that broadband quality rather than the hosted PBX itself caused most concerns, creating a fear factor around selling the solution.”
iemens Enterprise Communications’ IP Telephony platform for SMEs is to be rebranded ahead of its version 2.0 release. The outgoing HiPath Open Office, which was introduced two years ago, will be renamed OpenScape Office MX in order to bring it into line with Siemens’ global branding strategy for unified communications. The MX suffix refers to Medium Edition, and each appliance will support up to 150 users.
Siemens set to rebrand HiPath
S
main enhancement is around the contact centre. We’re taking formal contact centre features and functions and putting them into the HiPath OpenOffice suite as was.”
Customers currently using HiPath OpenOffice will be able to upgrade to OpenScape Office MX, and training for the new product will take ‘minutes, not hours’, Siemens says. The software boasts over 50 new features compared to its predecessor. “There are a number of small improvements to the core product,” says Leon Mangan, Sales Director, Indirect Channel at Siemens. “But the
Contact centre features will be provided through the new MyAgent application. The key benefit, according to Mangan, is that it will allow businesses that currently use simple group telephony functions to understand and improve their call handling capabilities. “This software allows them to get a better overview of how calls are being handled and enable optimal routing,” Mangan stated. “It’s about getting the right call to the right person with the minimum of fuss and time delay, and giving that customer a good, solid user experience.”
As well as contact centre features, OpenScape Office MX also features drag and
deploy swiftly and painlessly via a simple set of wizards, and offers a full unified communications suite in a simple interface.
Leon Mangan
“The key selling point is an ability to offer a multitude of applications from one box”
drop conferencing, click to call, presence and least cost mobile routing. It appears on the desktop as a simple plug- in for Microsoft Outlook, which Mangan says resellers can
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“The key selling point is an ability to offer a multitude of applications all from one box,” said Mangan. “OpenScape Office MX is suited to organisations that are service based. Those organisations that are highly mobile, have groups of employees that desire to work flexibly, that put groups of people together to form projects and disband them regularly, and any organisation that wants to take its contact centre philosophy to the next level of formality.”
Mangan confirmed that Siemens will not be selling OpenScape Office MX directly in the UK, and the product will be available to all Go Ahead! channel partners via Westcon, Nimans/Rocom, Sphinx and Datasharp distribution.
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