Unison Brings Harmony to Unified Communications
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Many businesses are trying to pull their disparate methods of
communications together to save costs, increase efficiency and improve
communications, which clearly creates an opportunity for solution
providers looking to get involved with unified communications
solutions. Even so, solution providers and their customers are still
challenged by the fact that most of the solutions available lack
important features or capabilities.
Some vendors have
attempted to integrate everything needed for unified communications,
but most have still fallen short. Most recently, Microsoft leapt into
the unified communications market with Office Communications Server, a
product that aims to combine voice, e-mail, scheduling and IM into a
single entity on a user’s desktop. While the concept is sound, OCS
still needs a great deal of integration work, is very dependent on
other Microsoft technologies and lacks an integrated VOIP (voice over
IP) PBX, leaving yet another piece of the puzzle to be solved by other
vendors.
So up stepped Unison, which took a look at
Microsoft’s (and other vendors') weaknesses in the unified
communication market and came up with what the company feels is a
better way, the Unison Server and the Unison Client.
Commercially launched in August 2008, Unison is offering a software
solution that promises to bring unified communications to businesses of
any size and at an affordable price. What’s more, the company’s
software licensing and marketing efforts are geared toward helping
partners succeed. The product is priced at $50 per seat per year. Of
course, partners will have access to bundles and can expect high
margins (as much as 50 percent) and service revenue from selling Unison
products.
