When a company like Unify Square announces new investment, it is not unusual.
Founded by the people who patented the original technology behind Microsoft® Lync® and guided Microsoft’s own internal deployment, Unify Square has led successful VOIP transformations in more than 150 global enterprises, including over 45 of the Global and Fortune 500. Unify Square solutions currently support the rebranded Skype for Business among 5 million seats from offices here in the Puget Sound plus Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, India and the United Kingdom.
What is special about the latest, extended B-round of funding is that the lead investor is also an elite business partner by the name of Microsoft. To date, Unify Square is the only one of Microsoft’s Unified Communications partners to receive such an investment. This is a statement writ large about what Unify Square’s comprehensive suite of solutions for unified communications ultimately represents.
Skype for Business is anticipated to become one of the top three enterprise telephony solutions by 2016. The opportunity for Microsoft to play a key role in transforming the way that employees collaborate, communicate and interact with Skype for Business is not just a tremendous vote of confidence in the company but also parallels the trend of IT consumerization. Today’s IT departments are increasingly adopting technologies for the enterprise that consumers and end-users like to use generally in order to ensure adoption and in turn, ROI.
We interviewed Unify Square founder and CEO Sonu Aggarwal about the announcement of extended funding which, in addition to Microsoft, also includes Bridge Bank, Stanford University, and other original Series B investors (former executives at Ariba, Yahoo, and IBM).
Seatle24x7: Microsoft doesn’t invest in its partners very often. Why do you think they chose to invest in Unify Square as the only one of its Unified Communications partners?
Aggarwal: Corporate communications systems, in their “old incarnation,” have been around for many decades and have remained largely unchanged with regard to technology and approach. With the advent of VOIP and its Microsoft implantation in Lync and Skype for Business, Microsoft is asking enterprises to undertake a massive transformation in the way they communicate. Adding to the complexity is the fact that Microsoft is also bringing Skype for Business into the core part of its Office365 cloud offering. As such they (MSFT) are slowly transforming themselves into a communications carrier.
Microsoft has always had success in utilizing a partner model to help achieve exponential penetration and coverage in a market space. The difference in this case is that Microsoft has realized they need additional and accelerated assistance to address a portion of the Skype for Business operations, which the product purposefully wasn’t designed to cover. In turning to Unify Square they found a partner who had intimate knowledge of the technology (as former key executives involved in its design), and who had equal intimacy with the customer challenges and needs, particularly as they relate to large-scale enterprise operations. Also, the fact that Unify Square was not “just” a consulting company and also not “just” a software company, but offered a synergistic mix of software and services to best assist in all phases of an enterprise’s transformation to a full unified communications shop, played a huge role in their investment decision.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Microsoft sees Unify Square as being uniquely positioned to help the Skype for Business partner ecosystem discover best practices and new approaches with regard to technology and go-to-market/channel options. When viewed in this manner, the Unify Square investment has an exponential ripple effect and can actually be seen as an investment in the entire Skype for Business partner ecosystem.
Seattle24x7: Unify Square has a truly global footprint. What percentage of this new investment will go into operations in Bellevue, Wa., versus other countries?
Aggarwal: Many of our current and future customers are multinational corporations, and require balanced investments worldwide in order to allow for the high levels of customer service for which Unify Square is known. Having said that, the majority of the Unify Square development team sits in our Bellevue offices, and a large focus for the new Series B investments centers on some new product offerings, which will be rolling out starting in late calendar year and beyond.
Seattle24x7: Earlier this year, you commented that most of the Fortune 500 are in some stage of Lync deployment so a couple of years from now we do see Lync being the deployed, installed communications technology of choice at most enterprises worldwide. How do things stand at this juncture?
Aggarwal: As essentially the next “version” of Lync, Skype for Business continues to offer additional functionality and higher levels of ROI to the enterprise. Perhaps the only slight shift is that the added emphasis Microsoft is placing on bringing Skype for Business into the cloud in both hybrid scenarios as well as full cloud-only scenarios begins to make the platform even more attractive to the mid-market and able to deliver even higher ROI to the enterprise.
Seattle24x7: A previous company you founded, Flash Communications, was eventually acquired by Microsoft. Is Unify Squared a potential acquisition target for Microsoft?
Aggarwal: Neither Microsoft, nor Unify Square can comment on any future investment or M&A activity. Our job at Unify Square is simply to provide the greatest possible business value to our current and future customers and, as a result, to bring the greatest possible financial value to our investors. From a Microsoft POV, we believe they see the greatest value for Unify Square at present as a neutral partner who can offer up market and technology viewpoints, which don’t necessarily completely toe the Microsoft party line. This type of unbiased and independent insights are highly valued by enterprises when making strategic decisions about new technologies. [24×7]
Visit Unify Square online.
