Unify Circuit

Enterprise Connect 2018 happened last week, and, as always, there were interesting trends and new topics that emerged as important for organizations to consider in their strategy and vendor choices. These topics and disruptions show how the industry is changing. First though, while hot new technologies dominated the headlines, the reality is that organizations have to deal with the reality of their requirements and their current implementations. Brent Kelly and I did the Cisco/Microsoft comparison session (as we have for the last five years).

Unify has introduced a new offering, designed to provide cloud-based communication and collaboration to a digital workspace. This new offering, OpenScape Cloud, is a flexible, personalized solution, made to enable effective collaboration and increase productivity by combining enterprise-grade voice with collaboration tools.

While it's true you don't get a second chance to make a first impression, some things are better the second time around. I'm not alone in feeling that way, and following Unify's recent analyst/consultant conference, that ground has been ably covered by fellow UC Experts Blair Pleasant and Phil Edholm.

I spent a few days last week at the Unify Analyst and Consultant Summit. This was an interesting event as the last Unify event like this was in late 2014 and this event reflected the changes in the company over the last 15 months. It was a great opportunity to evaluate the progress and outlook for Unify in the Unified Communications and Collaboration space as well as for the company overall.

Unify has recently expanded the availability of Circuit, its mobile collaboration and communication platform, with a new range of pricing packages. This will allow more businesses of varying sizes and needs to access the various tools and technology Unify offers, which can help improve their teamwork and streamline communication.

Waves of disruption seem to be the norm in the UC space these days, and we touched on some during our last podcast. For a while now, the UC vendors have been emphasizing collaboration, to the point where UC&C has become the moniker of choice. While the technology keeps maturing, adoption has lagged expectations, largely because the value proposition is so hard to pin down.

What a week in Orlando! Enterprise Connect is THE event for unified communications and collaboration - it's the place to be if you're even remotely related to this market segment. Like most industry analysts, I was busy running from one vendor meeting to another, in between presenting and moderating sessions. While I didn't get to spend as much time on the show floor as I would have liked, and I certainly didn't get to attend many sessions, I packed a month of meetings into three days.

On many unified communications projects there is a gap in understanding between the senior leaders and the IT staff who are making technical decisions. This can result in a large "blind spot" that dooms projects to fail or deliver underwhelming benefits.

blind spot
noun
2 : an area in which one fails to exercise judgment or discrimination