Unify Square

Unify Square Inc.
Private
Industry Software development
Managed Services
IT Consulting
Founded Bellevue, Washington (2008 (2008))
Founder
  • Sonu Aggarwal
Headquarters Bellevue, Washington, United States
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
  • John Case (CEO)
Number of employees
 125 (2017)
Website www.unifysquare.com

Unify Square is a privately held American technology solution company developing software for managing Microsoft products Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business. The company was founded in 2008 and has its headquarters in Bellevue, Washington.

History

Unify Square was founded in 2008 in Bellevue, Washington.[1] Sonu Aggarwal, the company's founder, received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.[2] While at MIT, he developed algorithms for computer networks. He later used that knowledge while working for Microsoft as a developer of Live Communications Server and Office Communications Server.[3] Even before joining Microsoft, Aggarwal had co-founded Flash Communications, a communications company which was bought by Microsoft in 1998.[4]

From 2008- 2015, Unify Square offered Unified Communication (UC) solutions for Microsoft Lync 2010 and 2013. As of May 2015, when Microsoft announced its transition from Lync to Skype for Business, Unify Square also announced Skype for Business certified solutions. Unify Square was named a Microsoft IT Pro Tools provider in the same timeframe. In late 2016 Unify Square was named a launch partner for the new Microsoft Skype Operations Framework.

A funding round in February 2015, gathered $8.2 million; the round was led by Microsoft, also attracted investment by executives from IBM, Yahoo and Ariba, Facebook, Oracle, and Isilon.[3][5][6][7] In a second series of seed funding the company raised $4 million, bringing its total seed funding $12.2 million and $26.2 million overall.[1][7] By August 2015, the company had reached 100 employees, 30 of those based in Bellevue and the remainder distributed between offices in Germany, India, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom..[4]

Products and services

Unify Square provides software and cloud managed services that help enterprises succeed with Unified Communications applications such as Lync and Skype for Business[4][5]

During the period from 2010 through 2015, Unify Square offered 4 different stand-alone software applications targeting Microsoft Lync. PowerProv offered end-to-end provisioning for Lync and Skype for Business.[8][9] When a new employee joins or leaves, or requires a change within a corporate environment, the PowerProv software automatically creates accounts and sets security settings. These functions reduce manually performed tasks as well as errors.[8][9] PowerMon was a synthetic transaction monitoring application, that performed fault detection in a business' unified communications systems and automatically sent alerts when the system wasn’t performing properly.[10] PowerView software provided analytics in usage, conferencing and adoption analytics, while PowerSat facilitated end-user satisfaction surveys.[11][12][13][14]

As of December 2015, all of the above one-off applications were significantly enhanced, ported to Microsoft Azure as full SaaS cloud services and merged into a single software offering called PowerSuite. The new PowerSuite offers 13 different unique solutions (applications) representing 6 different categories of monitoring functionality.

In addition to software, Unify Square also provides consulting and remote managed services to help companies deploy and manage Skype for Business. In the consulting category their main offerings are UC RightTrack, which helps assess and plan operations for a smooth transition to Skype for Business or to help improve legacy Lync performance.[15] STA (Site Transformation Accelerator) which assists large enterprises in their transformation to Skype for Business modern voice and helps to avoid risks typically associated with large scale implementation. Office 365 Cloud Transformation Service is designed specifically to help companies whose end point is to move enterprise voice to the cloud with Skype for Business Online.

From 2011 through 2017 Unify Square offered a remote managed service called PowerAssurance. PowerAssurance was a 24 x 7 x 365 cloud managed service for proactively supporting Lync/Skype for Business. In June 2017, Unify Square made an additional change to its overall software and services packaging and merged PowerAssurance into the PowerSuite family.

Unify Square customers include Fortune 500 companies such as such as Microsoft, Deloitte, Exxon Mobile and Shell as well as overseas companies Nestle, Deutsche Telekom and Unilever.[3][10][16] Microsoft is also a business partner, with Unify Square helping the development of monitoring, analytical and management tools for Skype for Business Server 2015.[3][17][18]

References

  1. 1 2 Loeb, Steven (August 11, 2015). "Enterprise communication platform Unify Square raises $4M". vator news. Retrieved September 1, 2015.
  2. ↑ Springer, Richard (March 27, 2015). "Business Briefs: Highfive Raises $32 Million in Funding". India West. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Hanley Frank, Blair (February 25, 2015). "Unify Square raises $8.2M, partners with Microsoft to boost tools for Lync". GeekWire. Retrieved September 1, 2015.
  4. 1 2 3 Day, Matt (August 11, 2015). "Microsoft pumps more funding into Unify Square". The Seattle Times. Retrieved September 3, 2015.
  5. 1 2 Dudley, Brier (February 25, 2015). "Microsoft invests in Bellevue’s Unify Square". The Seattle Times. Retrieved September 1, 2015.
  6. ↑ Romano, Benjamin (August 14, 2015). "Seattle Roundup: Spoken Communications, Unify Square, & More". xconomy.com. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  7. 1 2 Heles, Thierry (August 13, 2015). "Unify Square calls Stanford for series B extension". Globaluniversityventuring.com. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  8. 1 2 Talbot, Chris (May 6, 2015). "Unify Square removes tedious manual Skype management with PowerProv tool". FierceEnterpriseCommunications. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  9. 1 2 Pleasant, Blair (August 17, 2015). "Update on Industry News – Summer Edition". Unified Communications Strategies. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  10. 1 2 "Deutsche Telekom picks Unify Square for UCC monitoring". telecompaper.com. February 25, 2015. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  11. ↑ Stein, Dave (September 17, 2014). "UC Analytics: What is it? Do We Need it? Is it Ready for Prime Time?". nojitter.com. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  12. ↑ Schultz, Beth (May 6, 2015). "Getting a Visual on Skype for Business Call Quality". nojitter.com. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Busy signal for Microsoft Lync". Unify Square. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  14. ↑ "Customize presence settings for Microsoft Lync". Unify Square. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  15. ↑ Schultz, Beth (24 November 2014). "Unify Square Offers Plan for Keeping Lync on Track". No Jitter. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
  16. ↑ Williams, Joseph (January 26, 2015). "Deployment Services for Lync – What Experience Tells Us". Unified Communications Services. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  17. ↑ Mackie, Kurt (May 5, 2015). "Microsoft Releases Skype for Business Server 2015". Redmond Magazine. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  18. ↑ Finneran, Michael (May 4, 2015). "ITPro Tools in Skype for Business To Ensure a Stellar Experience". Unified Communication Strategies. Retrieved September 3, 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.