Based on its recent research on the unified communications and collaboration (UCC) market, Frost & Sullivan presents Unify with the 2013 Brazil Frost & Sullivan Market Leadership Award for capturing the highest market share within its industry. In 2012, Unify was the market leader in the Brazilian UCC area, capturing 26.7 percent of the market share in terms of sales and growing overall by 18.3 percent. It has achieved this success mainly on the strength of its high-end product/services portfolio, compelling channel strategy, and clear understanding of end users’ needs.
OpenScape, Unify’s UC platform, is a complete stack of UC applications that includes built-in voice and conferencing services, voicemail, messaging, mobility, contact center and presence, which can be deployed either on premise or as-a-service in enterprises of all sizes. In 2013, Unify launched OpenScape Business, the small and medium business (SMB) version of its OpenScape platform, with smaller price tags and the added advantage of having all the UC applications configured on a single server. This not only saves costs, but also precious space for SMBs.
For larger, mid-market enterprise customers, Unify launched the Openscape Enterprise Express, which is scalable up to 1000 end users. This is an attractive option, as customers do not have to to pay for licenses when they are not being used.
In order to best meet customers’ demands for cloud-based services, the company is currently working with Go2neXt, a cloud-service provider, to offer hosted versions of its OpenScape platform in the country. Unify is already in partnership with a leading service provider in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico offering UC as a service.
“The company is committed to enabling its partners to achieve better results, having launched a new partner-focused channel group that creates new opportunities within specific vertical markets, including education, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, and retail,” said Frost & Sullivan Industry Manager (Enterprise Communications, Latin America), Juan Gonzalez.
Unify is placing greater emphasis on preparing its partners through training (technical and sales) and certifications to best tap new opportunities, such as software-defined networks and cloud services. Furthermore, it is expanding its partner community by including service providers and resellers specialized in specific vertical markets.
“Importantly, in 2012, the company segregated the tasks of managing channel sales and channel development, enabling greater focus to be placed on each of these complementary yet fundamentally different tasks,” noted Mr. Gonzalez. “This has enabled Unify’s partners to expand within specific vertical markets and consequently, increased its participation in the market.”
In 2013, the company launched the AmplifyTEAMS vision, a new approach aimed at achieving improved team performance through enabling technologies. AmplifyTEAMS is based on the five key concepts of fluid dialog streams, contextual-based conversations, seamless experience among devices, advanced presence settings, and integration with existing enterprise applications. This vision has the technology backing of project Ansible. With Ansible, team collaboration will get a leg up through superior integration between disparate communications solutions and social networks.
Overall, Unify’s technology offer of a comprehensive technology platform and a flexible licensing model, along with the effective implementation of a cloud-based service and a channel strategy has moved it to the top echelons of the Brazilian UCC space.
Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
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About Unify
Unify—formerly known as Siemens Enterprise Communications—is a premier communications software and services firm. Our solutions unify multiple networks, devices and applications into one easy-to-use platform that allows teams to engage in rich and meaningful conversations. The result is a transformation of how the enterprise communicates and collaborates that amplifies collective effort, energizes the business, and enhances business performance. Born out of the engineering DNA of Siemens AG, Unify builds on this heritage of product reliability, innovation, open standards and security to provide integrated communications solutions for approximately 75% of the Global 500. Unify is a joint venture of The Gores Group and Siemens AG.
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This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Unify's management. The words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "plan," "should," and "project" are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Unify does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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