NEWS
Nimans aims to demystify the networks
Gamma sets hosted mark
GAMMA Telecom has reached a hosted telephony milestone bagging its 10,000th order for FeaturePlus, the company’s service for small offices or branch offices. Since its launch in 2006
Mark Curtis-Wood
NIMANS has appointed Mark Curtis-Wood as Head of Networks and top of his job list is to demys- tify high speed networks. Curtis-Wood stated: “What we
are finding on the front line is the need to simplify things for resell- ers. The industry is often guilty of talking in a foreign language. This is holding back some resellers by creating a fog of confusion. “Our job is to remove the obsta- cles and challenges on the technical side. This will allow resellers to pass on their knowledge to end users who are the ones ultimately going to decide to buy or not. We need to strip things down and talk in a straightforward language.” Curtis-Wood advises resellers to identify the services that their cus- tomers take from other providers and win more spend by becoming a sole provider. “Look at where the technology can be used to deliver all the services on a single plat- form,” he added.
FeaturePlus has provided connec- tivity and call handling to thou- sands of businesses through the channel, with the most recent release, FeaturePlus Premium, cen- tred around the latest SIP-enabled handsets from Cisco. James Bushell, Senior Product
Manager at Gamma Telecom, said: “Channel partners are starting to demonstrate, with vigour, the vari- ous ways of making a success of hosted telephony. “We are seeing sales focusing on calls and subscription bundles, with four to five handsets on average, packages put to together to look and feel like a PBX sale, and more recently propositions that leverage the Cisco brand of the FeaturePlus Premium offering.” John Ledgister from Gamma
reseller Sky Blue Telecom com- mented: “The numbering flexibili- ty, ease of installation and value over traditional systems have allowed us to deliver this hosted solution into a variety of markets including the travel industry, wholesale manufac- turing and temporary sites.”
James Bushell
“Partners are starting to demonstrate the various ways of making a success of hosted telephony”
When Gamma released
FeaturePlus Premium in June this year it also introduced a promo- tional broadband offer designed to help channel partners bundle dedicated access along with the hosted service, simplifying the cus- tomer proposition and improving the support resellers can provide based on an end-to-end telephony solution purchased from Gamma.
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Reseller helps Kenya village
WHEN Eric Toll, the MD of 123Telecom, booked a fortnight holiday in Kenya he did not expect it to be the start of a big charity push in aid of a village he visited with no electricity, mains water and no sewage system. Toll commented: “Among this
chaos were hundreds of children dressed in rags but with the biggest smiles on their faces. They wanted to touch, hug and cling on to us. “It was such a humbling expe- rience to see how happy they all were despite having nothing. We couldn’t walk away and pretend we had never seen this.” Toll is aiming to raise £2,500 to bring mains water into the village, and also to provide a water tower and a much needed storage tank. “This is a modest amount to raise for the difference it makes,” he said.
Eric Toll
He is also on a mission to raise £40,000 to build a safe house for children in Meru (170 miles north of Nairobi).
The money is being routed
through the registered charity Harambee for Kenya and through the use of the Just Giving website. 123Telecom, an O-bit Telecom
partner, is covering many costs for the charity, including telecoms, web hosting and postage for fund- raising mail shots.
ADMIRAL Group has sold its copier division to the Danwood Group, an independent supplier of office printing equipment and document management solutions. The sale enables Admiral to focus on develop- ing markets in telephony, IT and videoconferencing. David Stanton, MD of Admiral IT, commented: “The sale of our copier business enables the group to focus solely on its core strengths.” Under the terms of the agreement, Admiral copier sales and service teams will transfer to Danwood, which has a turnover in excess of £195m per annum and employs over 1,200 staff nationwide, including 300 engineers looking after 74,000 machines in the field.
Orr quits Servassure in bid for new challenge
AFTER three years with Servassure Peter Orr left the business at the end of September citing personal reasons for his departure. Orr held a number of senior
COMPANY Communications has opted for the ebillz billing platform, becoming Shaftesbury Systems’ 500th ebillz customer. The Weston- Super-Mare based reseller is enjoying growth in its monthly billing revenue for calls, fixed lines and calls as well as mobile and PBX billing. The firm has also branched out into the GPRS m2m data sim cards market. David Mitchell, MD of Company Communications, said: “The bills are going out with a two day turnaround and vital support is provided by Shaftesbury in real-time via remote access to our systems.” Pictured left-right: Yasin Qadir, Shaftesbury’s Sales Manager, celebrates the milestone deal with David Mitchell.
sales roles, most recently as Sales Director for Servassure where he helped stabilise relationships after the administration of ATC and its acquisition by Daisy group. He said: “I very much enjoyed my time with Servassure, especially during the period with Daisy, how- ever it is time for me to move on and I’m looking forward to a fresh challenge in the telecom sector.” Steven Walsh-Hill, Servassure MD, said: “Peter worked hard to
Distie set for Avaya drive
Peter Orr
stabilise our customer relation- ships following the ATC admin- istration and has signed a num- ber of large customers including our recent partnership agreements with Samsung and Micro-P. Peter is respected in the industry and I wish him well for the future.”
TDAZLAN has launched a partner recruitment initiative to sign up new dealers to the Avaya channel. In August, TDAzlan (the enter- prise division of Computer 2000 and an incumbent Nortel distribu- tor) signed an extended contract to distribute the full range of Avaya UC and collaboration solutions. Graham Bunting, TDAzlan
Avaya Team Leader, commented: “As an enterprise class, value-added distributor we have significant skills available to help dealers develop an Avaya practice, widen their port- folio, increase their revenue, and expand their profitable services based income.” See page 20 for the full story
14 COMMS DEALER OCTOBER 2010 Considering mobile? Turn to page’s 44 and 45 to find out why choose Abzorbplus+ Mobile.
www.comms-dealer.com
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