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Colt announces first franchise partner in the UK

SAS Global Communications appointed for Colt Ceano, a new portfolio of on-demand cloud services for SMEs


WEBWIRE

London - Colt, Europe’s leading information delivery platform, today announced a UK franchise agreement with SAS Global Communications (SAS), an international provider of managed network and professional services. The franchise agreement enables SAS to move into the cloud services market, offering the Colt Ceano portfolio of cloud based services to complement its existing offerings, which includes professional services, proactive network monitoring, and predictive helpdesk services.

Customers purchasing Colt services from SAS will benefit from the expertise of both companies. As part of Colt’s franchise network, SAS will have access to Colt’s dedicated account team, training programme, technical consultants and commercial experts. Colt places great emphasis on ensuring franchise partners are fully trained and supported by Colt, enabling them to expertly offer a range of solutions to their customers.

“This agreement is important to SAS and forms a key part of our business strategy for the next three years,” said Charles Davis, CEO for SAS Global Communications. “One of our goals is to develop new and distinct channels to market that will both complement existing partner relationships and enhance SAS’s overall value proposition for customers. By adding the Colt portfolio to our own, we increase the quality and diversity of managed services we are able to deliver to our customers. This builds on our strategy to move into the cloud services market and our recent acquisition of the software development company Trigger means that we have the skills and capability to take Colt Ceano to market.”

“Our new franchise channel allows us to tap into the agility, entrepreneurial spirit and local expertise of businesess like SAS,” said Carol Alexander, franchise channel director, Colt, “We have seen significantly increased demand for a range of IT managed services supported by robust voice and data connectivity from our channel partners, driven by their end customers. By offering our franchise partners the opportunity to sell these solutions under the Colt brand, it will accelerate the reach of our services in the market.”

Colt is targeting a limited number of specialist value added resellers (VARs) to join its franchise partner programme in each of its key European markets. Colt has already recruited franchise partners in France, Spain, Germany and Belgium, which has successfully extended the Colt brand across a wider network of VARs. Colt will also be able to draw upon the close customer relationships and expertise of its franchise partners in their local market to reach a broader range of end-user customers with Colt branded services.

About SAS Global Communications
SAS Global Communications is a major UK and international provider of managed network and professional services. In partnership with leading technology organisations, the company specialises in the delivery and management of unified voice, data and video communications solutions. Founded in 1989, SAS is headquartered in Horsham, West Sussex.

For more information about the SAS Group visit: www.sas.co.uk

About Colt Ceano
The Franchise agreement with SAS means that they will be selling the following Colt Ceano services in the UK market:

- IAS (Internet Access Services) Mobility to enable secure remote working
- Managed Exchange 2010 email services
- Microsoft Lync 2010 unified communications for presence, instant messaging, voice, video and online meetings
- Microsoft SharePoint 2010 to support content management and document sharing
- Soonr Workplace for the creation of virtual project workspaces accessible from anywhere
- Virtual Servers and Infrastructure to enable remote infrastructure management
- Hosted Virtual Desktop services, providing secure, centrally managed, personalised virtual desktops
- Managed Virtual Firewalls and Web Security for improved protection from potential network threats
- Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery services to safeguard valuable business-critical data

There is a single management interface for ordering and modifying all of the above services.

About Colt
Colt is the information delivery platform, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information. An established leader in delivering integrated computing and network services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers, Colt operates a 22-country, 44,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 39 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 19,000 buildings and 20 carrier neutral Colt data centres.

In 2010, the Colt Data Centre Services business was launched to deliver innovative high quality data centre solutions at a Colt or customer site. Our Innovative data centres are rapid to deploy, flexible and highly efficient. In addition to its direct sales capability, Colt has four indirect channels to market; Agent, Franchise, Distributor and Wholesale which includes Carriers, Service Providers, VARs and Voice Resellers.

Colt is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT).



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