Enterprise CommunicationsUnify

Update on Unify from Atos Analyst Event

by Dave Michels

I attended the Atos Global Analyst event in Boston.

Things are going well for Unify. They had a turbulent time a few years back that either culminated or accelerated with its acquisition by Atos. I think it’s fair to say that Atos had no idea what to do with Unify, but that appears to be in the rear view mirror now. Unify is a proud and important part of the Atos solution, although sometimes Atos forgets that.

Unify had several years of declines (by any measure – headcount, revenue, market share, etc.), but the employees are walking tall this year (both the Atos and Unify teams). The numbers are improving – and they even saw some growth in North America. They have made significant changes to their global sales team, and they are getting notable traction with Atos North America (formerly Xerox BPO).

Unify is a unique combination of characteristics:

  • It has a legacy of telecom/PBX functionality (and installed base) under its belt.
  • It was one of the first to commit to workstream collaboration (Unify introduced Project Ansible (what became Circuit) in 2013, the same year that Slack launched).
  • It has a nice blend of mid-market and large enterprise accounts.
  • It’s really the only European UC company that’s still based in Europe.
  • It’s also kind of a hybrid company itself, and I’m not talking about cloud and premises. Unify is both a standalone OEM that has its own distributors and resellers, and it’s part of Atos which is an enterprise SI or channel partner itself.

Here’s my video recap from the event.