There is occasional complaint that we spend too much time focused on VoIP and not enough on hosting - perhaps this is justified, VoIP is 60% of our business now.

Howevever, we did start with hosting and what was one server called ‘ice’ which cost GBP1000 a year to colo, is now £250,000 worth of kit, costing £7000/month to colo.

Some of that kit has been running since 2002/2003, with a handful of bits since 1999, and so we have been aware of the need to replace it, and also to develop the hosting product, but we had not really found the mix of technology and finance that would allow us to do what we wanted.

The good news, however, is that in 2007, banks work on saturdays and bank managers have blackberries, and I have just had an email to confirm that they will support our plans to

(1) refresh the hosting kit we have,
(2) build out more capacity into a second london data centre
(3) and replicate our database servers, email systems and voip platform into an Edinburgh data centre.

This equates to a program of kit migration in 4 tranches over the next 12-18 months, each tranche being about 50ks worth of HP DL380 servers.

(We are also using Infortrend iSCSI disk arrays now, but those, and additional file servers to support them, are installed already (but not yet fully configured), and we’ve found that Redhat’s GFS will give us a more reliable shared file system infrastructure.

The first kit to be replaced is our DNS servers, News Servers, Ochre (mailing lists, log processing), Newred, 8 of our spam/virus scanning servers, and our internal database servers (mauve, indigo, sienna).

We will also be adding a MySQL cluster arrangement to run our core real-time database orientated systems, e.g. customer credit status, VoIP call handling, greylisting, etc.

The edinburgh phase will replicate our SIP servers, internal database servers, customer database servers, spam/virus scanning and backup file servers.

The base spec for these machines is HP DL380s with quad core 1.86Gighz processors, 3×146 gig SAS disks and 2 gig of RAM. Disk + RAM then varies according to need.

We are also looking at reworking our web hosting platform onto the Centos Linux environment, and updating that to bring it uptodate. Once we’ve got a working software image, we can then procure the kit and roll it out.

Finally, if you are interested in VoIP, we also signed the deal last week to put a second BT interconnected telecoms switch into Leeds.

cheers
peter

p.s. on Tuesday 4th Sept, 25 HP DL380s arrived… the delivery note said 970 kilos! Kudos to everyone for carrying them upstairs!

We thought it was about time we updated the reseller community on what is happening at Gradwell this summer.

We are extremely busy on a number of fronts and hence have been trying to bring a few things to conclusion before sending this out but unfortunately events are taking longer than we had hoped. Suffice to say that with the holiday period is on us and this has not happened so we are giving you a status report.

Firstly a few facts for you:

• As from September, Matt Park, who has previously been doing evening and weekend support for us, is going to go full time as our reseller support person reporting to David Stockford. The aim being to give you a single point of contact for any issues you might have.
• We currently have 13000 numbers in use with an average of 4750 extensions logged on the service.
• We have 2000 SIP Inbound and 4000 IAX Inbound trunks
• We have ported over 2600 BT numbers to date !

Call minutes last month were

• Outbound 1.3 million
• Inbound 1.9 million

We have now agreed the specification and funding for our 2nd PSTN switch to interconnect with BT and Gamma in Leeds.

We are attending the Convergence Summit at Sandown Park on 9th to 10th October – Stand 31 – if any of you can get along we would be pleased to see you.

CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS

• 999 calls – all the development work has been done and we are in the process of training our Call Handling company to make sure the correct location details are provided to BT in the event that the automatic system fails. Planned Go Live is September
• Directory Enquiries – we are in the process of setting up Call tariffs to those 118 numbers that offer flat rate call charges. Planned Go Live is September
• Centrex onsite – We are in the process of rebuilding the provisioning system as a result of the feed back from the presentation in June, with the aim to have a beta release available in September and a number of you are on our list to carry out testing with release in Q4
• Lit lamps, Call pickup etc – these features are still in beta test and we hope to release the final version in Q4

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

• Reseller Control panel – we have made numerous changes and enhancements to this including CSV download of the phone directory, allow customisation of customer access to control panel, etc.
• Reseller Customer payment options - we now have Paypal. Protx, HSBC and a generic payment faculty to add credit to your accounts.
• IAX/Asterisk - We have been carrying out load balancing/scaling trials on our IAX servers as well as stress testing on Asterisk and the latest version 1.4.10 is producing only a 1% call drop as opposed to 7% on 1.4.6 this testing will continue with a planned release in Q4
• Invoice Batching – We are implementing a new function that will batch invoices 3 times a day 8am, 1pm and 6pm this is to reduce the number of single line item invoices we produce.
• Pro-rata number rentals – we have implemented this feature so that new sign ups are charged the setup fee and the number rental based on the number of days to the end of the month divided by the number of days in that month e.g. Centrex sign up on 10th in 30 day mth = £7 x 0.67 = £4.69 plus VAT. The monthly invoice created on 1st month will be £7 for the month ahead which we feel is far easier for customers to understand.

  NB this applies to Co branded Resellers as White Label has always worked this way.

• New Website – I’m sure many of you will agree that this is an improvement on the previous version and we are now put the finishing touches to it to make it more comprehensive.
• Broadband – we are currently investigating whether we can supply a high quality broadband with a guarenteed quality of service across it.

Phone firmware – Please see below the latest versions and where to obtain them.

• Flexor 151 adapters - Version 2.21 of the firmware is now available , if you wish to allow a customer to upgrade to this release you have to update the “Firmware” field on the Camrivox provisioning database. Quick tests indicate that *1 is now working correctly.
• Grandstream GXP2000 - www.grandstream.com/firmware.html is announcing the new stable release for this phone is 1.1.4.18
• Grandstream GXP2020 - www.grandstream.com/firmware.html is announcing the new release for this phone is 1.1.4.17
• Linksys - Versions 5.1.8 (SPA941) and 5.1.10 (SPA942) have all 4 lines enabled by default - thus removing the need for a license key to be purchased.
• Siemens S450 IP – there is a beta release not yet available - additions are

  *) MoH Asterisk functionality working
  *) Ability to perform SIP transfers by using the phones menu
  *) Assign individual ringing tones to SIP accounts
  *) Dialplan rules for VOIP can be setup in the phones interface
  *) Assign unique ringtone to contacts
  *) “R” button flash hook functionality partially working

• SNOM also has made version 7 of it’s phone firmware available from it’s WIKI for download.

PRESS RELEASE

Gradwell reduces its peak VoIP rate mobile call charge by 16.6 per cent;
success in 2007 puts Gradwell on pole position

The first week of August 2007 has seen Gradwell - a leader in VoIP for SMEs - intensify its price challenge.

With these new, competitive rates it aims to consolidate its Top 3 status among the UK’s SMEs using VoIP.

“We have reduced our peak-rate mobile call charge from 12p per minute to 10p per minute. That is a fairly hefty price cut by any standard,” said Peter Gradwell, MD of Gradwell dot com.

This 16.6 per cent cut relates to customers’ calls to the UK’s Top 5 mobile service providers (Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile).

Rates to callers using 3 remain at 18p, while other mobile services attract rates of 25.5p per minute peak time, as before.

”We are offering this cut to our customers calling mobiles served by the Big 5 because we are increasingly aware that the main cost that businesses are now concerned about are mobile call costs to these operators,” he added.

“Our successes and progress with infrastructure in 2007 have allowed us to offer an altogether better and cheaper service. You could say that, so far, 2007 has proved to be an exceptionally good year all-round.”

Gradwell’s Offpeak service

Gradwell’s Offpeak service now comes in at 9p per minute (9ppm) - a reduction from 10p - while its weekend rate is now 6ppm, a reduction from 7ppm.

“Our minimum call charge is just 1.5ppm,” added Peter, “so again, we are ultra-competitive.”

”BT has been running adverts this summer about its price cuts. (For information, please see
http://www.callsave.bt.com/callmobile/index.html )

”BT’s headline rate is 5ppm for weekends - but you have to pay BT £1.50 every month for the service, and you also have to pay BT, every time you use its service, a minimum 3p call charge.

”Our pricing compared to others’ is therefore clearer, simpler and ultimately cheaper for customers,” concluded Peter.

For more details about the services Gradwell offers,
please contact:

Peter Gradwell,
Managing Director - 01225 800800 (www.gradwell.com)

Jack Ozanne,
Full-Media Solutions - 01985 841375 and 07973 770942.

NOTES:
For more information on Gradwell’s products, services, or industry liaison work, please see www.gradwell.com

Gradwell dot com is one of the leading UK internet communications service providers to UK businesses.

Since 1998 Gradwell has provided a range of email hosting, website hosting and Internet Telephony Services to more than 5,000 clients in the UK. With more than 10,000 VoIP phone lines, 6,000 websites and 12,000 internet domain names, the company had revenues in excess of £1 million for the 2006 financial year. Gradwell’s team of 16 is headquartered in Bath.

Peter Gradwell is one of the UK’s leading young internet and telecoms entrepreneurs and was recognised in the Daily Telegraph (February 2007) as one of the changing faces of IT.
<Peter Gradwell>

Peter Gradwell has sponsored the creation of www.voip.org.uk. It is a community-led VoIP forum aiming to become the UK’s main reference point for internet telephony.

For two years (April 2002-April 2004) he contributed to the work of Nominet, the think-tank for UK domain name policy. As Chairman of Nominet’s policy advisory board he was instrumental in guiding extensive debate.

He is a founding member of the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA), the UK trade body that, among other activities, lobbies OFCOM.

Additionally he holds several non-executive directorships for Internet Service companies and is pursuing a PhD at the University of Bath in digital settlement systems comprise an analysis of the use of auctions to manage and procure resources via agent computer networks, known as The Grid.

In summer 2006, Peter was elected a Fellow of the British Computer Society one of the BCS’s youngest-ever Fellows.

Ends.

We are pleased to announce that as of 1st August we have reduced our mobile phone rates as follows:

UK Mobile Network	Peak	Off Peak	Weekend
O2	10p	9p	6p
Vodaphone	10p	9p	6p
Orange	10p	9p	6p
T-Mobile	10p	9p	6p
Virgin	10p	9p	6p
3	18p	13.5p	13.5p
All Others	25.5p