It’s official! Comms Dealer No.1! The most requested & highest circulation magazine for the UK voice & data partner community VOL 16 ISSUE 12 MAY 2012
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RETHINK opportunity. Rethink business commu- nications! That’s the key message at this summer’s Margin in Voice & Data 2012 event to be staged at The Marriott St Pierre Hotel in Chepstow on June 14th. Aimed at voice and data resellers addressing the SMB
In this issue Industry News:
Catch up with events FCS Update:
Non geographic reforms Cisco Partner Summit:
sector, MiVaD is an exclusive event designed to help channel partners meet the changing demands of the business communications sector. Margin in Voice and Data is YOUR opportunity to get a real understanding of emerging opportunities in
business communications which increasingly rely on managed services, hosting, security and virtualisation solutions. Don’t miss out! Register now at
www.margin-in-voice-data.com Margin in Voice and Data preview – pages 64 & 66
3-19 20 21
New programmes launched News Interview:
24
Alcatel-Lucent talks strategy Business Interview:
Next Gen contact centres Business Profile:
Gardner’s field of dreams Business Matters:
Comms sector in review Special Report:
Call recording in focus
COMMS DEALER SALES AWARDS FINALISTS ANNOUNCED – P42
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O2’s joined up Ethernet deal Interview:
30 SPECIAL REPORT 34 40 52
Vodafone tabled an offer of 38p per share, valuing the group’s equity at just over £1bn. Late last month the deal won the backing of the CWW board and a number of large sharehold- ers, but the biggest shareholder, Orbis, declined to back the bid. Overlap between the two
business’ networks in the UK and worldwide should lead to significant opportunities to extract synergies, according to Marcus Allchurch, Telecoms M&A Specialist at BDO. “It may give Vodafone an edge in the market for unified communications as it can pack- age up services in a focused and efficient way,” he commented. Philip Carse, a Telecoms Analyst at industry watcher IS Research, noted: “Though the offer is only 3.1x EBITDA, integration and other costs mean that it will take four years before
Vodafone’s £1bn bid wins over telco giant
VODAFONE has agreed a £1bn takeover offer for Cable&Wireless Worldwide (CWW) in a deal that will see the carrier double the size of its corporate telecoms business and become the UK’s second biggest network operator behind BT.
the deal becomes more accretive to Vodafone in earnings and free cash flow terms compared with a share buyback. “IS Research believes that the deal lacks a compelling stra- tegic merit, entails significant risk for Vodafone and is cer- tainly not cheap given the inte- gration costs involved.” Allchurch believes that the cash offer is on-strategy for
Vodafone, focusing on building its enterprise facing capabilities while extracting UK and global synergies from CWW’s network and peering status.
Allchurch said: “CWW’s lev-
els of IP traffic and its peering status should provide significant cost synergies, and it is capable of handling part of Vodafone’s international traffic which points to improved margins.”
EDUCATION is key to growth according to network operator Virtual1 which launched a new training- centric Accreditation Programme last month at the Investec Spring
Derby, Epsom. The programme provides focused sales and product training via group seminar sessions, exclusive training days and technology masterclasses. Tom O’Hagan, MD, said: “We wanted to create an Accreditation Programme that would allow us to continue to treat partners as individuals, and that would give them the support they needed, when they needed it most.” Pictured: Virtual1’s guests were in good cheer following the launch.
Cisco builds new model
CISCO has consolidated its 47 services channel programmes and also launched a new global channel scheme targeting mid- sized customers. A key feature of the new
Cisco Services Partner Program is that it provides access to the firm’s smart services portfolio. Services now account for up to 50% of the average Cisco channel partners’ business, up from 20% five years ago. Nick Earle, Senior Vice
President for Worldwide Serv- ices Sales and Channel, com- mented: “We need to be clear, consistent and predictable in the way we approach our relation- ships with channel partners.” Full story on page 21
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