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.