Unify – Back on Track
Atos held its Global Industry Analyst conference in Boston, with a day set aside for analysts covering Unify (a standalone division of Atos), where a group of analysts got to hear specifically from Unify, followed by a day focused on the bigger Atos picture. Regarding Unify’s relationship with the mothership Atos, representatives from both Unify and Atos affirmed that Unify is central to Atos’ Digital Workplace strategy, as Unify provides the unified communications and collaboration element, including team collaboration, content management, UCaaS, meeting rooms, and more.
While the Atos sessions were interesting (I now sort of understand blockchain thanks to Atos’ Nicolas Kozakiewicz), I’ll focus on the Unify portion of the event.
Unify’s financial picture is back on track following a couple years of less-than-rosy results as the company transitioned to become part of the greater Atos organization. As Unify CEO Jon Pritchard noted, “We were back to growth for 2017 in our core business,” adding that Unify achieved its profit target, and had positive quarterly revenue trends, while the company’s North American business also picked up some steam. The company also launched OpenScape Cloud in 2017, opening up new opportunities. Pritchard stated that growth is on target for 2018 based on several factors, including new sales leadership, a vertical market focus, a revised go-to-market strategy with new sales leadership globally and across key regions, and more cloud opportunities.
A big go-to-market focus area is what Unify calls the “whitespace” in established Atos accounts that are new to Unify and where Unify has good sales opportunities. Pritchard noted that Unify is winning in these “whitespaces” thanks to the trusted relationships that Atos has with its customers.
I spoke with Pritchard about Unify’s relationship with Atos, its focus on the digital workplace, as well as its North American activities.
Go To Market
Matt Thomas, COO, Unify Sales, discussed Unify’s go to market strategy and areas where the company sees the greatest opportunities for growth. Thomas noted that the company has a laser focus on direct engagement with Atos for whitespace business, which it addresses with a high-touch team working with the Atos team. Thomas also discussed Unify’s two-tier channel business for large, mid-market, and small business customers. The company is also focusing on vertical markets, including healthcare, public sector, telco/media/utilities, financial services, and manufacturing/retail/transportation. Thomas explained that the key growth opportunities are in cloud, vertical markets, contact center, and Atos whitespace accounts.
Product Update – More on the Cloud
Throughout the day we heard about Unify’s flexible deployment options, with public and private cloud, hybrid, hosted, and premises offerings. The company made it clear that, unlike some of its competitors, it’s not moving away from its premises business, and that the bulk of its customer prefer an on-prem or hybrid cloud solution for core capabilities. Expect to see continued investment and innovation in Unify’s core platforms.
There was acknowledgement that Unify is still a bit behind in the cloud in some areas, notably contact center, but that’s expected to change shortly. We heard several times that Unify will once again focus attention on its contact center offerings, and that despite its strong heritage in contact centers, the company fell behind recently. Several execs stated that there will be a strong contact center push going forward, and that Openscape Contact Center, which is currently available onprem and in private cloud deployments, will be available in a public cloud option in the second half of the year.
Luiz Domingos, CTO, SVP Product House, discussed the Unify portfolio and roadmap (the latter was NDA). Jan Hickisch, VP Global Solution Marketing was brought in via video to discuss OpenScape Cloud, Circuit, and Circuit Meeting Room. Hickisch explained that using Unify’s CPaaS, customers can integrate third-party applications such as Salesforce into Circuit, and also make Circuit capabilities part of other applications.
In this video interview, Domingos, discusses the transition of the Unify portfolio to the digital workplace, Unify’s cloud strategy and offerings including contact center and Circuit, as well as the role of CPaaS.
Digital Workplace
While Unify represents a small part of Atos’ overall business, it’s an important part of the Atos Digital Workplace strategy. From the Atos side of the house, we heard from James McMahon, VP Head of Atos Digital Workplace. I was pleased to hear McMahon emphasize the employee experience, which is one of the areas I’ve become passionate about.
I spoke with McMahon about the Atos Digital Workplace, Digital Transformation Factory, where Unify fits within Atos’ Digital Workplace strategy, and what to expect down the road.
Summing it Up
It was good to hear about the progress Unify is making, and hopefully this trend will continue. It seems that Unify and Atos are a good fit, although I would have liked to have heard more from the Atos side about what Unify brings to the table (Note: Atos focused on its overall business as an enterprise system integrator and didn’t cover any of the companies that are part of the larger organization). There’s a lot of opportunity for Unify to leverage in terms of the Atos customer base, and for Atos to leverage Unify for its Digital Workplace strategy.
As noted, Unify is playing catch up in some areas, especially contact center and cloud contact center, and I’m hoping to hear more about the availability of its cloud offering in the near future.
The company also acknowledged that as an engineering and technology-focused company, marketing hasn’t always been its strong point, but it’s working to do more in this area. However, this requires appropriate funding and it’s not clear that the right level of resources will be available for the marketing and branding programs that are required, especially in North America.
Atos is doing some exciting things with blockchain, IoT, AI/cognitive software, and of course, the digital workplace. Similarly, Unify has always been on the forefront of innovation, as it was one of the first (if not the first) to market with a UC product combining phone calls, voice mail, e-mail, instant messaging, and tools for web, voice and videoconferencing (OpenScape), as well as a team collaboration offering (Circuit). Hopefully Unify will continue to innovate and provide interesting new capabilities, products, and services, which Unify and Atos customers can leverage to gain competitive advantages.
Tags
Start YourCustomized Search
SOLUTION AREA
SOLUTION PROVIDERS
- 8x8 (40) Apply 8x8 filter
- Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (50) Apply Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise filter
- AT&T (44) Apply AT&T filter
- AudioCodes (49) Apply AudioCodes filter
- Avaya (397) Apply Avaya filter
- Cisco (574) Apply Cisco filter
- Dell (11) Apply Dell filter
- Five9 (54) Apply Five9 filter
- Fuze (39) Apply Fuze filter
- Genesys (100) Apply Genesys filter
- HP (98) Apply HP filter
- IBM (171) Apply IBM filter
- Jabra (9) Apply Jabra filter
- Logitech (56) Apply Logitech filter
- Lumen (4) Apply Lumen filter
- Masergy (50) Apply Masergy filter
- Microsoft (766) Apply Microsoft filter
- Mitel (233) Apply Mitel filter
- NEC (128) Apply NEC filter
- Nectar (58) Apply Nectar filter
- Polycom (95) Apply Polycom filter
- Ramp (37) Apply Ramp filter
- RingCentral (126) Apply RingCentral filter
- Sennheiser (18) Apply Sennheiser filter
- Slack (13) Apply Slack filter
- Tata Communications (59) Apply Tata Communications filter
- Unify (186) Apply Unify filter
- Vonage Business (80) Apply Vonage Business filter
- Yealink (8) Apply Yealink filter
- Zoom (21) Apply Zoom filter
- Acme Packet (24) Apply Acme Packet filter
- Allworx (2) Apply Allworx filter
- Arkadin (22) Apply Arkadin filter
- Aspect (34) Apply Aspect filter
- BT (25) Apply BT filter
- CaféX (8) Apply CaféX filter
- CallTower (14) Apply CallTower filter
- Clarity Connect (10) Apply Clarity Connect filter
- Continuant (1) Apply Continuant filter
- Damaka (4) Apply Damaka filter
- Dialogic (5) Apply Dialogic filter
- Dimension Data (44) Apply Dimension Data filter
- Empirix (11) Apply Empirix filter
- Enghouse Interactive (17) Apply Enghouse Interactive filter
- Inference Solutions (9) Apply Inference Solutions filter
- IntelePeer (27) Apply IntelePeer filter
- IR (11) Apply IR filter
- Jive (21) Apply Jive filter
- Kurmi Software (21) Apply Kurmi Software filter
- Lifesize (33) Apply Lifesize filter
- Lightware (3) Apply Lightware filter
- Mavenir (6) Apply Mavenir filter
- Modality Systems (8) Apply Modality Systems filter
- Momentum (36) Apply Momentum filter
- Netfortris (5) Apply Netfortris filter
- NetSapiens (6) Apply NetSapiens filter
- NewVoiceMedia (31) Apply NewVoiceMedia filter
- Nureva (26) Apply Nureva filter
- NUWAVE (5) Apply NUWAVE filter
- Orange (32) Apply Orange filter
- OVCC (8) Apply OVCC filter
- Panasonic (18) Apply Panasonic filter
- PanTerra Networks (9) Apply PanTerra Networks filter
- ScanSource (21) Apply ScanSource filter
- SIPPIO (3) Apply SIPPIO filter
- Snom (20) Apply Snom filter
- Star2Star (8) Apply Star2Star filter
- StarLeaf (12) Apply StarLeaf filter
- Tadiran Telecom (2) Apply Tadiran Telecom filter
- TekVizion (9) Apply TekVizion filter
- Unimax (7) Apply Unimax filter
- Verint (41) Apply Verint filter
- Voice4Net (2) Apply Voice4Net filter
- VOSS (85) Apply VOSS filter
- Voxbone (14) Apply Voxbone filter
- West (28) Apply West filter
- XO Communications (3) Apply XO Communications filter
- Yorktel (17) Apply Yorktel filter
- Zultys (2) Apply Zultys filter
- 3CX (8) Apply 3CX filter
- ADDASOUND (1) Apply ADDASOUND filter
- Aerohive (1) Apply Aerohive filter
- Aryaka (1) Apply Aryaka filter
- Asurion (22) Apply Asurion filter
- Avnet (7) Apply Avnet filter
- Bandwidth (5) Apply Bandwidth filter
- Calabrio (5) Apply Calabrio filter
- Consilium Software (13) Apply Consilium Software filter
- Drum (5) Apply Drum filter
- ESI (6) Apply ESI filter
- Esna (16) Apply Esna filter
- Exinda (2) Apply Exinda filter
- EZuce (3) Apply EZuce filter
- GUnify (6) Apply GUnify filter
- Highfive (4) Apply Highfive filter
- Huawei (47) Apply Huawei filter
- Imagicle (3) Apply Imagicle filter
- IPCortex (1) Apply IPCortex filter
- KnoahSoft (1) Apply KnoahSoft filter
- KOVA (1) Apply KOVA filter
- Logmein (9) Apply Logmein filter
- Metropolis Technologies (4) Apply Metropolis Technologies filter
- Mutare (2) Apply Mutare filter
- NextPlane (27) Apply NextPlane filter
- Ooma (16) Apply Ooma filter
- Patton (11) Apply Patton filter
- Radish Systems (1) Apply Radish Systems filter
- Radisys (3) Apply Radisys filter
- Shango (1) Apply Shango filter
- SMART (163) Apply SMART filter
- Stack8 (1) Apply Stack8 filter
- Swyx (1) Apply Swyx filter
- TrueConf (4) Apply TrueConf filter
- UJET (13) Apply UJET filter
- Voximplant (3) Apply Voximplant filter
CONTENT TYPE
- BC Expert Insights Market (43) Apply BC Expert Insights Market filter
- BC Expert Insights Objective - Vendor Neutral (42) Apply BC Expert Insights Objective - Vendor Neutral filter
- BC Expert Insights Planning (15) Apply BC Expert Insights Planning filter
- BC Expert Insights Solution (12) Apply BC Expert Insights Solution filter
- BC Expert Insights Vendor (80) Apply BC Expert Insights Vendor filter
- BC Expert Insights Vendor Solution (145) Apply BC Expert Insights Vendor Solution filter
- BC Expert Roundtable (133) Apply BC Expert Roundtable filter
- Bcs Webinar (0)
- Bcs Webinar Registration (0)
- Best Practice (38) Apply Best Practice filter
- Buyer Guide (14) Apply Buyer Guide filter
- Case Study (29) Apply Case Study filter
- Executive Interview (145) Apply Executive Interview filter
- Expert Roundtable (450) Apply Expert Roundtable filter
- Guest Contributions (35) Apply Guest Contributions filter
- Multimedia (38) Apply Multimedia filter
- News Analysis (2081) Apply News Analysis filter
- Newsfeed Article (1303) Apply Newsfeed Article filter
- Newsfeed Article (1) Apply Newsfeed Article filter
- Thought Leadership (21) Apply Thought Leadership filter
- Vendor Collateral (211) Apply Vendor Collateral filter
- Vendor Resource Best Practices (24) Apply Vendor Resource Best Practices filter
- Vendor Resource Buyers Guides (2) Apply Vendor Resource Buyers Guides filter
- Vendor Resource Multimedia Content (4) Apply Vendor Resource Multimedia Content filter
- Vendor Resource White Paper (4) Apply Vendor Resource White Paper filter
- Webinar (13) Apply Webinar filter
- Webinars (7) Apply Webinars filter
- White Paper (64) Apply White Paper filter
MORE FILTERS
INDUSTRY
- Banking And Investment (800) Apply Banking And Investment filter
- Education (446) Apply Education filter
- Energy And Utilities (487) Apply Energy And Utilities filter
- Finance (12) Apply Finance filter
- Government (675) Apply Government filter
- Healthcare (482) Apply Healthcare filter
- Hospitality (180) Apply Hospitality filter
- Insurance (100) Apply Insurance filter
- Manufacturing (704) Apply Manufacturing filter
- Media/Publishing (422) Apply Media/Publishing filter
- None (43) Apply None filter
- Professional Services (745) Apply Professional Services filter
- Retail & Distribution (798) Apply Retail & Distribution filter
- Technology (1611) Apply Technology filter
- Transportation (110) Apply Transportation filter
Comments
There are currently no comments on this article.
You must be a registered user to make comments
Add new comment