CCOOMMMMSS N NEEWWSS
Microsoft backtracks on
internal-use licencing
decision
MICROSOFT HAS BUCKLED under mounting pressure
from the partner community over the use of
licences for internal use by partners.
The vendor had proposed that the licences would
not cover everyday use from the 1st July. However,
partners would still be able to use licences for
customer demonstrations, solution and services
development and internal training.
Microsoft claimed the cost of providing such
a benefi t for partners was simply too costly to
continue. Under mounting pressure from partners,
and with the Inspire partner event due to kick off,
Microsoft has decided to scrap the plans.
Gavriella Schuster (pictured), Corporate Vice
President, One Commercial Partner announced the
U-turn in a blog post.
“Given your feedback, we have made the
decision to roll back all planned changes
related to internal use rights and competency
timelines that were announced earlier this month.
This means you will experience no material
changes this coming fi scal year, and you will not be
subject to reduced IUR licenses or increased costs
related to those licenses next July as previously
announced.”
BYTES...
XANVIEW
Mayfl ex has formed a distribution
agreement with Xanview, a British
technology company in video
surveillance. The company was created
10 years ago as a bespoke security
solution for fi nancial institutions and
ultra high net worth (UHNW) individuals.
18%
of large enterprises still haven’t
migrated to Windows 10
VEHICLE TRACKING
Kinesis is making its cloud-based vehicle
tracking service and software more
widely available to potential partners
in the UK and overseas following the
announcement of a reseller programme.
The provider of telematics has over
20,000 customers in the UK and is
being used to track 130,000 vehicles
worldwide.
ALLIOT
Alliot has announced its membership
with the LoRa Alliance. As the industry’s
chief organisation the LoRa Alliance is
the fastest growing technology alliance,
committed to enabling large scale
deployment of Low Power Wide Area
Networks.
KCOM BIDDING WAR ENDS WITH £627M OFFER ACCEPTED
THE AUCTION PROCESS for KCOM has fi nally come to an
end with MEIF 6 Fibre, an investment fund managed by
Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (Europe),
emerging as the winning bidder with an offer of £627m.
This accepted offer is more than £100m over the
initial reported bid from Humber Bidco, a subsidiary of
Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd (USSL), who
offered £504m in April.
An auction process was launched on 7 June to
determine the outcome of the takeover.
Last Friday, 12th July, USSL made a last ditch
attempt to secure a deal with a 113 pence per share
Wavenet unveils
SD-WAN service
WAVENET’S NEW SD-WAN service provides a solution to challenges
faced by many businesses today. As organisations continue to
leverage the cloud, IT professionals are concluding that traditional
WAN’s are not suffi ciently agile to support their cloud services.
Bandwidth demands increase as businesses grow and leverage
services like Offi ce 365, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams and other Cloud
UC solutions to facilitate collaboration. Issues arise when applications
are backhauled to a Headquarters’ hub and centralised internet
breakout becomes a bottleneck. QoS is affected, calls may drop
and video conferencing unusable, as data is unable to traverse the
network in a timely manner.
Wavnet’s Silver Peak’s SD-WAN services ease network
management by steering application traffi c dynamically across the
most appropriate path, based on business intent.
Antony Black (pictured), Director of Wholesale, commented “We
can reduce the Total Cost of Ownership of the WANs by simplifying
management and provisioning while enabling intelligent use of costeffective
network transports, for example traditional broadband
or 4G/5G, delivering localised Internet break-out, while maintaining
security and enhancing application performance.”
offer, valuing KCOM at £589m. However, MEIF 6 Fibre
was the winning bidder after upped its offer to 120.3
pence per share to win the deal.
The KCOM directors have unanimously
recommended that shareholders vote in favour of the
MEIF 6 Fibre offer when the court and general meeting
are reconvened.
Adam Zoldan, Director of Knight Corporate Finance
commented, “It’s more investment in UK infrastructure,
the reason they are buying it from my understanding is
to roll out more fi bre into the ground in the UK to move
into neighbouring areas.”
6 | Comms Business Magazine | August 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/www.commsbusiness.co.uk
