NEWS
COMMENT
The
borders
around the wholesale market are blurring
COLIN ANNETTE, DIRECTOR, BT WHOLESALE
A brief encounter at the cash-and-carry till used to be as far as the average wholesaler/customer relationship went. But now the borders around the wholesale market are blurring with suppliers working more collaboratively with customers in order to keep pace and pre-empt emerging demands. That’s one of the key findings of a recent market study from industry
commentators Forrester (called The Changing Face of
Telecom Wholesale, published in November last year).
Customers are becoming more open to buy-not- build decisions. Not just because of economic pressures but also because wholesalers are winning greater trust. That’s stimulating a trend towards buying in managed services (from complete network management to individual voice or broadband products) that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. As evidence of this, Forrester gives no fewer than three examples, all involving the work that BT Wholesale has been doing with its customers.
Wholesale customers are variously being driven by the need to drive growth, reduce costs and broaden portfolios. More than ever before, they need to manage technology changes, consolidate acquisitions and focus limited resources where they deliver most value. In order to accommodate this sea change in the market, wholesalers are rapidly transforming themselves from component providers to solutions providers. One tactic is to take a lead from what’s happening in the retail communications market where convergence solutions and bundled solutions are generating strong interest and meeting customer needs effectively. At BT we have recognised this by recently merging the Service Provider Group in BT Business with BT Wholesale’s Communications Service Provider Group, creating a £400 million Group supporting more than 1,000 service providers and resellers in the channel.
Wholesalers are creating packages too, bringing together individual product and service strands and adding value with a service wrap, all tailored to the needs not only of their customers but of the business and consumer end user. The Forrester report cites the fully managed white label broadband product developed by BT Wholesale as an example of this. Supplied to customers that include Vodafone UK and the Post Office, this features voice and broadband connectivity services with self-care portals, and badged with their own brand for order entry and support services.
Yealink inks partnership with Asterisk
IP firm
VOICE and videophone Yealink has forged an
interoperability partnership with Digium, the company that created and owns Asterisk. Asterisk’s open source telephony
software has become a popular plat- form for turnkey and customised VoIP solutions offered by resellers. “This agreement sees the mar- riage of our technology with a proven alternative to costly propri- etary software,” stated Yealink UK’s Head of Distribution Channels, Charles Williams. Mark Amick, Digium’s Director
of Product Management, com- mented: “The Digium and Yealink interoperability partnership extends the power and cost saving benefits of Asterisk to new users. Yealink’s commitment to SIP telephony creates exciting new opportunities for its customers and our Asterisk dealer and developer teams.” The move sees all four of
Yealink’s T2 models being compli- ance tested by Digium. Yealink’s T20P, T22P, T26P and T28P hand- sets are equipped with TI chipsets and voice engine. The Digium agreement is the
latest move in Yealink’s ambitious growth plans. The firm claims to have ‘broken open’ the business video phone market with the March launch of its VP2009 SIP model.
www.comms-dealer.com
O-bit unveils new solution
O-BIT Telecom has launched a new colocation solution, Hostwise. The service was designed for
resellers to meet growing demand from businesses for stable and reli- able server hosting solutions. Based in a purpose-built mod- ern data centre facility in High Wycombe, Bucks, Hostwise pro- vides 24/7/365 server access with big savings when compared to facil- ities in London, says O-bit. Hostwise offers a 100% uptime
SLA for power and cooling, and a 99.99% network uptime SLA. O-bit Telecom’s CEO, Dave
Breith, commented: “Increasingly, many businesses are offering their services via the Internet. Whether this is a simple e-commerce website or a more complex cloud-based
Dave Breith
service, these companies need a reliable colocation solution to keep their business running.” As well as flexibility in choice of
rack size, Hostwise customers have bandwidth options ranging from 50GB to 100GB, plus optional ‘remote hands’ technical support and optional VoIP connectivity.
20:20 in Outsourcery deal
MOBILE phone distributor 20:20 Mobile has been appointed by Outsourcery to become its exclu- sive supplier of Nokia handsets and smartphones for the business mobiles division. As part of the agreement Out-
sourcery will join the 20:20 Premier Partner Programme. James Browning, UK MD of
20:20 Mobile, said: “20:20 will work closely with Outsourcery to
enable its customers to get the most out of mobile communica- tions, including telephony services as well as direct integration with business applications such as email and hosted IT solutions.” The agreement will see 20:20
Mobile and Outsourcery working on collaborative marketing activi- ties to drive sales of Nokia products and services including email and Ovi services.
Big cuts in e-waste win Comtek Green Business of the Year award
COMTEK, a pan-European pro- vider of ICT repair services, has been named Green Business of the Year at the Fast Growth Business Awards 2010. Comtek repairs rather than
replaces faulty communications equipment, helping businesses extend the life of ICT products by as much as four times the stated lifespan, eliminating replacement costs while reducing the impact of e-waste on the environment. The company has completed
n
more than two million repairs for customers such as BT, Orange, Siemens, and IBM, and prevented 85 tonnes of toxic materials from
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16 COMMS DEALER MAY 2010
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Askar Sheibani
going to landfill during the past three years.
Comtek enjoyed a successful
2009, increasing profits by 80% and turnover by 25%, while employing
additional sales and engineering staff to bring its total number of employees to more than 100. Askar Sheibani, CEO of Comtek, commented: “ICT’s car- bon footprint continues to grow at a rapid rate. Our business is designed to buck this trend by rais- ing business awareness about the advantages of extending the life of communications products. “This award validates our ethos and will help us to go even further and educate a wider audience about the green benefits of repair.”
Got a news story? email:
sgilroy@bpl-business.com
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