Westcon and iHub Bring Hosted IP Services to Reseller Community

London 10th April 2008: iHub, the hosted communications provider, and Westcon Group, the leading value-added distributor of convergence, security and mobility solutions, announced that Westcon will be offering 4SureConnections, a hosted telecommunications solution. 4SureConnections is a white label platform solution enabling Westcon resellers to provide hosted services—helping increase their overall value proposition to end-users and allowing them to benefit from predictable annuity revenues.

4SureConnections, which will be available through a dedicated Westcon program to be unveiled next month, is a highly scaleable hosted IP service tailored for SMEs, providing access to carrier grade and corporate functionality at a lesser cost than traditional PBX solutions. Gartner research forecasts the market for hosted solutions will increase within the SME sector, estimating that currently only 4% of the UK SME market has hosted IP in place.

Through its Westcon Security practice, Westcon has significant expertise in delivering managed services in areas such as anti-virus protection and email scanning. By offering iHub solutions, Westcon is able to scale its ability to deliver managed services to the data and voice-oriented reseller community. The iHub powered solution provides the flexibility and advanced features of IP with the scaleable and robust features of traditional fixed line telephony. The 4SureConnections platform supports multimedia conferencing, collaboration, remote access, Outlook integration and disaster recovery.

Simon Thompson, European Services Director of Westcon UK, commented: “As opportunities in managed services continue to grow, we are exploring ways that our reseller community can capitalize on this trend. Our relationship with iHub helps us deliver revenue building capabilities to our voice and data-oriented customer base while providing them with a diversified portfolio of offerings to their customers.”

Mike Webb, CEO, iHub said: “The iHub platform allows fixed telephony to be hosted in much the same way as mobile telephony is today. It allows businesses to drive greater efficiency through an improved way of working and collaboration. IP is transforming business communication and iHub is uniquely placed in the UK to provide its partners with a robust carrier grade solution. Westcon’s reseller community will be the first to offer hosted IP communications from iHub, helping them retain control of their relationships with their customers.” 

Peter Newcombe president, EMEACarrier Networks, Nortel adds: “Hosted IP services are coming of age and this is illustrated by the launch of 4SureConnections. iHub joins a host of national and international carriers who have selected Nortel's Communication Server 2000 IP multimedia switch to be at the heart of their platform.  The Communication Server 2000 ensures the delivery of a robust and scaleable service to end users, ultimately providing a highly reliable and highly secure environment.”

4SureConnections overview:

• IP hosted service allows for end user to be contacted on their office extension remotely
• Advanced features include presence, attendant console, multimedia conferencing, collaboration, home worker, call centre, call recording, one number find me follow me, integration, conferencing and disaster recovery
• Nortel Communication Server 2000 switch ensures high level of service availability and reliability
• End users only pay for functions they subscribe to enabling them to access new technology and large company features at a fraction of the cost, reducing equipment obsolescence and depreciation
• No on site PBX reduces time and costs for implementation. Once in service, all management functions are web based, making moves and changes easy and reducing internal IT requirement and training costs
• PC based use interface with easy to understand icons and graphics

-ENDS-

About iHub
iHub is a carrier grade business communication service provider for SME’s specialising in branded and white label hosted IP telephony for the reseller community. Headquartered in the UK, iHub is a vendor partner of Westcon and powers the 4SureConnections hosted IP service which is available to the Westcon reseller community. iHub technology partners include Nortel, Verizon, BT Wholesale, and Cisco.  Further information about iHub is available at www.ihub.co.uk.

About Westcon Group
Westcon Group, Inc. is the leading specialty distributor in networking, security, mobility and convergence for leading technology vendors, including Cisco, Nortel, Avaya and Polycom. Through its Westcon, Comstor and Voda One business practices, Westcon Group sells products and services to resellers, systems integrators and service providers. Westcon Group has particular expertise in the convergence of voice, data and video applications and technologies, including voice-over Internet protocol, or VoIP, security for networking and communications systems, remote access, Internet and e-business, virtual private networks, videoconferencing and wireless connectivity. For more information, visit www.westcongroup.com.

About Nortel
Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel’s technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.