Category: News

Gordon Murray Group builds new Windlesham HQ

Posted on November 9, 2020 by - News

Gordon Murray Group has revealed plans for an all-new global headquarters at Windlesham, Surrey.

The new technology campus will be built on a 54 acre site providing state-of-the-art facilities for world-leading automotive design, engineering and advanced vehicle development and manufacturing.

The 130,000 sq ft development, encompassing three buildings, will also see the Gordon Murray Group create more than 100 new highly skilled jobs within the next three years. Phase one is aiming to commence construction and will house a vehicle manufacturing centre, customer sales and the Gordon Murray Group heritage collection. The whole site is due to be completed by the end of 2024 with a total investment of £50 million.

The Gordon Murray Group will be working closely with Surrey Heath Borough Council to ensure that the business and the buildings are integrated into the historic site. The parkland on the existing site will be retained, preserving and enhancing its natural beauty and making it a welcoming setting for employees and visitors.

Customers continue to have high expectations of contact centres

Posted on November 6, 2020 by - News

Heightened customer expectations are here to stay and are having a huge impact on technology in contact centres according to Calabrio Director of Pre-Sales International, Ed Creasey.

Creasey said that the pandemic was  reshaping the world of work with social distancing and local restrictions now known as the “new normal”.

In contact centres, more employees were working remotely while customer expectations have risen to their highest levels since Internet connectivity and the smartphone revolution first transformed our lives.

When Calabrio interviewed over 300 contact centre professionals at the beginning of the current health emergency, 51 percent of respondents said they believe the customer service experience (CX) will impact brand loyalty even more than prior to the pandemic.

IT budgets hammered by COVID-19

Posted on November 6, 2020 by - News

People will have to learn to do “more with less” next year as COVID-19 weighs heavy on their IT budgets, according to a new report from analyst outfit Forrester.

Forrester VP and principal analyst Thomas Husson claims that end users will want to invest in technology next year to help them endure the COVID-19 crisis, but lack the budgets.

He thinks that this will put more pressure on IT suppliers.

“Companies will have to do more with less meaning they will have to make some cuts and reprioritise some of their investments. And clearly, we see what is happening is that they are more demanding than ever”, Husson said.

“Into next year they are likely to feel more frustrated because they will have to deal with lower purchasing power, and some of them will unfortunately face unemployment.

Avaya improves home office offerings

Posted on November 6, 2020 by - News

Avaya announced a redesign of its Avaya Vantage desktop device in a bid to spruce up its home office offerings.

The Avaya Vantage is an all-in-one meeting solution for the home office which includes a built-in high definition conferencing camera, wide band audio and four microphones and is designed to do away with a laptop.

Avaya also announced that it has integrated the Avaya Vantage with its Avaya Spaces collaboration app. Avaya Spaces is the cloud-based team collaboration and meeting tool that is changing how work gets done, enabling the digital workplace by bringing together distributed groups of people instantly with immersive work spaces where they can message, meet, share content, manage tasks and collaborate in the cloud.

The Avaya Vantage and Avaya Spaces are part of Avaya’s Composable Home Office Solutions strategy – which is driven by the Avaya OneCloud framework and uses the capabilities Avaya OneCloud UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS. 

Samsung announces new partner training programme

Posted on November 5, 2020 by - News

Samsung is launching its new business partner programme aimed at supporting consistent and accelerated growth for its partners.

Dubbed Samsung One, the programme uses an instant-access mobile app, which combines sales enablement assets, training, product information, news, incentives and rewards in one place.

Samsung said that its programme shows the company’s commitment to maximising partner engagement. With instant and remote access, every sales agent gets the support they need to drive engagement and sales with customers.

Joe Walsh, director of B2B at Samsung UK & Ireland said: “We are delighted to be able to introduce the Samsung One Partner Programme. There is no doubt that this year’s unpredictable events have driven a need to be more connected, collaborate seamlessly, and empower our people, wherever they are. By launching this programme, we acknowledge that mobility and on-demand learning have become more vital.

Insight has record year on year sales

Posted on November 5, 2020 by - News

US reseller Insight has reported a year on year sales increase of one per cent, up to $1.9 billion.

Insight CEO Ken Lamneck picked out the reseller’s growth in services as a highlight of the quarter.

Services sales increased 13 percent to $275 million, but still a small portion of revenue.

“The demand environment continues to be challenged but we focused on answering our clients’ most pressing IT needs while helping many to plan for investments needed to support the businesses as the economy recovers”, he said.

“During the third quarter, we saw a double-digit growth in services and cloud solutions which improved gross margins to a new third quarter record.”

Lamneck said that he’s confident that second lockdowns across Europe will not have too much of a detrimental effect on business.

CDW boss set to exit

Posted on November 5, 2020 by - News

CDW UK’s managing director Dan Laws is leaving the outfit after more than 21 years at the helm.

Making his announcement on  Twitter, Laws said that he was  transiting out of the MD role and it is not clear what he will be doing next.

Laws joined the business when it was known as Kelway, prior to its acquisition by CDW. When founder and CEO Phil Doye moved into an advisory role he took the job.

The company has been doing OK other than a bad last quarter which saw UK sales drop significantly.  Given the general mess in the world at the moment that should have been expected and not required Laws to fall on his sword.

CDW UK filed its most recent accounts in September, documenting the year ending 31 December 2019. Sales rose around 10 percent to £972.4 million.

Calligo buys Cinnte

Posted on November 4, 2020 by - News

End-to-end managed data services provider Calligo, has acquired Cinnte Technologies, a Cavan- and Dublin-based IT managed services provider, specialising in managed IT, cloud and security services.

The purchase of Cinnte Technologies is Calligo’s eighth acquisition in three years, and follows January 2020’s acquisition of Dublin-based DC Networks and Dublin- and Cork-based Itomic Voice & Data.

Calligo’s collection of managed data services improves organisations’ productivity and profitability by making their data more available, secure and safe, it’s claimed. These services include privacy- and security-centric IT managed services; the world’s first public cloud platform to have been designed with privacy at its heart; sophisticated data privacy adherence services; and enterprise-level, ‘privacy by design’ machine learning services and tools.

Canon opens new business centre

Posted on November 4, 2020 by - News

Chris Stratford, Regional Director Of IT@Spectrum, Left, And Managing Director Rob Cavill.

Canon has opened a new business centre in the North East.

The firm has collaborated with Platinum Partner IT@Spectrum, with which it has worked with for 37 years, to open the latest centre with a brief to specialise in delivering data management solutions along with traditional print and document services. There will also be a focus on helping local business reduce costs and improve productivity with the latest technology and services.

James Pittick (left) director of business-to-business (B2B) indirect sales at Canon UK, said in late 2018 that it would add more centres to the list, and he has welcomed the latest one.

“This move is a key element of our focus on partners and highlights our firm commitment to growing our B2B channel business”, he said.

Giacom teams up with Gamma

Posted on November 4, 2020 by - News

Cloudy distie Giacom has signed an agreement with Gamma to become the first Authorised Distribution Partner for its Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Service.

Giacom’s customers have already supported SMB businesses through the rapid adoption of Microsoft Teams throughout the remote working revolution. Microsoft Teams saw one of the biggest surges in usage over the pandemic, and is now being used by more than 75 million people each day.

Direct Routing from Gamma is said to be a cost-effective, highly featured alternative to Calling Plans for Microsoft 365, allowing customers to replace any existing phone system with Microsoft Teams for all inbound and outbound calls to landlines and mobiles.

Giacom’s customers will be able to benefit from reduced costs and operational complexity by deploying Gamma’s Direct Routing service, helping them to create a fully cloud-based communication solution using Microsoft Teams and Business Voice, and unlocking the potential of these services.

Ericsson confirms Cradlepoint snatch

Posted on November 3, 2020 by - News

Ericsson has closed its acquisition of wireless edge vendor Cradlepoint as part of its attempt to take control of 5G enterprise space.

The $1.1 billion all cash acquisition was first announced in September.

Ericsson claims that its own operating margins will be negatively affected by one percent due to the acquisition, but expects Cradlepoint to contribute to its cash flow by 2022.

The Swedish telco claims the acquisition will enable it to create new revenue streams for its enterprise customers through supporting 5G services.

Ericsson claims its international footprint will help speed up Cradlepoint’s own expansion into new regions.

Enterprises spend more on clouds

Posted on November 3, 2020 by - News

Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services in the third quarter of this year increased by 33 percent to $33 billion

Figures from Synergy Research Group showed that the year-on-year growth rate for Q3 was higher than the 32 per cent growth seen in the previous quarter. T

Amazon and Microsoft accounted for over half of the global market, with Amazon’s market share staying at around 33 percent, while Microsoft’s share was over 18 percent.

Google, Alibaba and Tencent were growing quicker than the overall market and are increasing market share . Together they account for 17 percent of the market.

The other cloud providers in the top ten rankings include IBM, Salesforce, Oracle, NTT and SAP. 

Wipro sets up AWS cloud arm

Posted on November 3, 2020 by - News

Wipro has launched a dedicated Wipro AWS Business Group (WABG).

As the name suggests the unit will help customers fast-track their AWS cloudy plans.

WABG will help organisations worldwide drive business acceleration, enhance customer experience, and leverage connected insights. This strategic move reflects the commitment of both Wipro and AWS to foster the success of their shared business as well as their passion to “continually innovate for enterprises” – whatever that means.

The launch was inspired by recent collaborations between Wipro and AWS, including the implementation of cloud solutions for Wabtec, a supplier of critical components, locomotives, services, signaling, and logistics systems and services for the global rail industry. 

Microsoft, c3.ai and Adobe take on Salesforce

Posted on November 2, 2020 by - News

Microsoft campusMicrosoft and Adobe are launching a new platform to take on the market dominance of Salesforce.

C3 AI CRM is powered by the core functionality of Dynamics 365 and is combined with Adobe’s real-time customer profiles and journey management, as well as c3.ai’s industry-specific AI capabilities.

The AI-driven CRM platform is, it’s claimed, purpose-built for specific industries and uses data from any source to produce meaningful business insights. The collective claims that conventional CRM is not sufficient for the modern age, given that AI can’t be used to analyse much of the data because they weren’t built with the appropriate architectures.

Cyber security providers benefit from EU and local regulations

Posted on November 2, 2020 by - News

Enterprises in the UK are looking to cyber security providers to help them comply with European Union and local regulations, and protect data as employees work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report published today by Information Services Group (ISG).

The 2020 ISG Provider Lens Cyber Security – Solutions & Services Report, for the UK finds enterprises in the country counting on cyber security providers to help them comply with UK privacy and cyber security rules passed as the country separates from the European Union. At the same time, U.K. companies must continue to comply with E.U. data privacy regulations because of the country’s economic connections to continental Europe.

Jan Erik Aase, director and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research said that UK enterprises are prioritising cyber security as most business processes have gone digital.