INDUSTRY NEWS COMMENT: TECH TURNING POINT Richard Carter
WITH one in five retail shops set to disappear over the coming years, the decline of the high street continues apace. Can anything be done to halt this terminal malaise? The Internet is being blamed for a continued shift away from traditional buying trends as cheaper prices and around-the-clock convenience proves too irresistible to ignore. Technology continues to play a front line role in shaping consumer buying habits but maybe the same technology can
be used to reverse the high street decline? I’ve used click-and-collect services on many occasions, using my tablet to check if items are in stock and then picking them up direct from a store. Integrating online and in-store shopping experiences seems to be a good way forward. However, retailers appear to be lagging behind other industries when it comes to embracing technology. According to one recent report almost 70 per cent of
retail executives were not familiar with, or fully aware of the advantages of UC. Analysts fear businesses that are too slow to adapt to technology advances or to Internet- led services will simply not be here in a few years time. Certainly the evidence on nearly every high street up and down the country paints a bleak picture. Bookmakers and discount pound shops seem to be the only areas thriving. There are attempts by some retail giants for online rivals to be taxed more to create a more even playing field. But with tablet sales set to outstrip PC sales in two years, it’s another indication of the continued acceleration of mobility as ‘instant information on the go’ continues to grow. Comet, Woolworths and Blockbuster were all victims of the high street decline. I wonder who will be next?
Richard Carter, Group Sales and Business Development Director, Nimans
Comstor ramps up VaaS sales training
DISTRIBUTOR Comstor has booted up its reseller training on Cisco’s Telepresence portfolio and has teamed up with hosted video specialists Uci2i to help resellers get to grips with new video market opportunities. Jonathan Phillips, Cisco
Telepresence-Business Dev- elopment Manager said recent changes Cisco has made to its telepresence portfolio has wid- ened product access to many more resellers, creating oppor- tunities and challenges. “At Comstor we have been running boot camps, sales train- ing, briefings and on site ‘chalk and talk’ sessions, getting right into the detail on how the tech- nology works, and crucially, how to sell it.”
Cisco has also announced a new collaboration specialisa- tion, the ECS (Express Collab- oration Specialisation) which includes elements of Video ATP Express training, and has also introduced video call control on the Business Edition 6000 as virtual software. “For many resellers this is a huge amount of new informa- tion to absorb so, in addition to the training piece, Comstor has been providing professional services around video deploy-
Jonathan Phillips
ment for an on-premise model, and now offers a hosted VaaS or Video as a Service model with partners Uci2i,” added Phillips. “In effect, this moves most of the complexity associated with deployment, not to men-
tion substantial hardware costs, to the cloud. The Uci2i plat- form is based on Cisco hard- ware and run by former Cisco and Tandberg engineers. The call plans are simple PAYG sub- scription based services.”
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