At Enterprise Connect Orlando 2014, I had the chance to interview Unify's new CEO, Dean Douglas. Not surprisingly, much of our conversation centered on the product upon which Unify is staking so much of its future--Ansible. We also discussed Douglas's view of Unify's position in the North American market, and the company's need to focus on vertical markets as a key part of its go-to-market strategy.
Here are some highlights of our conversation:
The Unify Re-launch and Ansible Rollout
Douglas began by telling me that, "I think the market is relieved we're no longer Siemens."
"They're expecting a lot," he continued. "They're expecting us to really be a different company."
The key to fulfilling that expectation, he made clear, was Ansible, the product that the company teased throughout much of 2H2013, and which, Unify finally announced at Enterprise Connect, is now in trials. (See Zeus's writeup on the Unify Ansible/EC14 announcement for details.) Dean Douglas told me that about 120 people are currently piloting Ansible. He expects GA to be this October, around the anniversary of last year's announcement of the company re-brand.
Douglas insisted that Ansible is going to change the way the industry looks at communications/collaboration systems, saying it will "define its own segment," by bringing multiple modes and technologies together in a single workspace and single mode. He said Ansible converges synchronous and asynchronous communications into a "conversation that continues beyond the end of the traditional conversation."
Among other things, the fact that Ansible was built from the ground up to be a SaaS product is a key differentiator from other UC platforms, Douglas argued. "This product was designed to be a cloud product," he said.
Role of the Channel
One of the first things anyone would have noticed upon reading about Douglas's appointment as Unify's CEO is that he came to the company from Westcon, a large distributor. That suggests that the company was keen to leverage his expertise with the channel.
So I was a bit surprised that Douglas didn't really hammer this point too heavily when I brought it up in our interview. He noted that, prior to Westcon, he'd been CEO of LCC International, a technical services firm to the mobile industry, and held positions with IBM and Motorola. He said the main lesson he was bringing from Westcon to Unify was an understanding of the buyer's challenge in justifying a new system at this point in time.
And though his own experience as a channel executive might be only one of the relevant parts of his CV in coming to the Unify job, Douglas did acknowledge that distribution will be a key focus: "We're going to invest pretty heavily in building a channel organization," he said.
Vertical Focus
Ansible represents the logical extension of a realization that Siemens Enterprise Communications came to more than five years ago, and attempted to capitalize on with its debut of OpenScape. The company realized before most of its peers--and before Microsoft really made its mark in the communications business--that communications was going to be a software-based industry. Dean Douglas said Unify must complete this transition.
"We really do need to be thinking of ourselves as a software company," he said, adding that OpenScape is a "very good base to build from."
One major avenue of attack in this regard is to become more vertically focused, and tailor solutions for particular industries, Douglas said. He singled out health care, public safety, energy/utilities, and manufacturing, especially automotive, as particular targets of opportunity.
"As communications needs become much more robust, we're finding out that understanding the business is important," Douglas said.
And though he doesn't underestimate Unify's challenge in winning deals in North America, he added that they're not starting from scratch:
"A little-known secret is, we have an installed base here," he said.
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