We’re living in the age of collaboration.
As the rise of collaboration tools has grown more significant in recent years, companies have begun to realise that collaborative systems aren’t just a useful addition to the workflow. Instead, teams are relying entirely on collaboration applications to make sure that they can achieve the highest possible levels of productivity and efficiency.
Unify, the Atos brand for communication and collaboration is one of the businesses leading the way towards immersive and enhanced software for services brands. The company offers integrated communication and collaboration solutions around the world, with customers ranging from five to 500,000 employees.
I spoke to Luiz Domingos, the CTO and SVP of UCC at the Unify/Atos brand, to talk about the latest updates to the Circuit environment – the Unify and Atos option for collaboration. Domingos has been with Unify for several years now and has also been within the communication space for over 2 decades.
Tell us About Unify/ Atos and Circuit
Unify has now been a part of the Atos network for around three years. Atos is a global leader in the digital transformation environment, which gives Unify access to disruptive technology and data it can use to transform its offerings. According to Luiz, Unify has been pushing hard on its communication and collaboration offerings recently, expanding its potential in the industry.
Unify initially started experimenting with their collaborative solution back in 2013, attempting to break away from a focus on just traditional telephony to do something new and exciting. At the time, people were talking about new ways of working, but collaboration tools were still in the inception phase. Circuit launched in 2015 to support the small to mid-sized business segment.
“We created everything required for a collaborative experience, including messaging and the conferencing solution, Circuit Meeting Room. The tool just kept growing after that to a point where people were able to access a collaboration and workplace orchestration environment in the same cloud interface.”
What Makes Circuit Unique?
More than just a collaboration solution, the Circuit application provides workplace orchestration and collaboration tools combined in a flexible space. For instance, although Unify offers cloud collaboration and endpoint solutions, they also want to make sure that companies don’t have to rip and replace their old legacy systems to tap into new technology. “We wanted to be able to interact with the legacy options that customers have so that companies can take advantage of future technology while still getting the most out of their existing investments.”
According to Luiz, Unify and Circuit can provide telephony connectors so that companies can link to their existing on-premise PBX from their cloud collaboration environment.
“You can continue using the infrastructure you have, so it’s not just rip and replace, but expansion”
What’s more, Unify is constantly looking for new ways to develop Circuit by building new connectors with things like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex. Already, the business has revealed integrations with Microsoft Office 365 and the G Suite for productivity. “We have our API CPaaS solution for Circuit too so that you can embed various aspects of the collaboration experience into your business workflow or contact centre.”
Domingos told me that with Circuit, companies could build whatever they need into their existing environments and ensure that everything just runs seamlessly in the background.
Real-time Translation Coming Soon
With their Collaboration tool, Unify and Atos wanted to build something that took advantage of their heritage in PBX, and technology. They came up with a cloud solution that’s available in any environment that suits their customer. I was keen to find out what some of the latest changes to the Circuit environment had been.
Luiz told me that the most recent work that’s being done with Circuit is happening through their partnership with Google. Unify has access to a lot of the internals and APIs that Google can offer as a partner, and they’ve migrated their public cloud offering to the GCP too. “We have our contact centre solutions now equipped with virtual agents using Dialogflow, and we have transcription integrated into the Circuit environment through the Google API, so we can record and transcribe calls to make them more searchable.”
One particularly interesting update to the Circuit platform to appear later this year is the real-time translation solution built with Google. Captioning and translation through Google APIs will soon make it easier for people in a workforce to communicate in real-time using multiple languages at once.
“Using Google’s natural language processing for transcription, and Google APIs for translation, we can connect teams wherever they are, letting them use their own languages”
Is Collaboration at the Heart of Everything Today?
Luiz noted that Team applications and collaboration tools have quickly become the centre of every communication strategy in the modern workplace. Unify is committed to supporting this collaborative future by integrating and working with other companies to create the richest possible experience for their end users. The fact that Unify has access to the Atos heritage of in-depth IT knowledge makes it easier for them to develop and innovate too.
“Even in the case of one-to-one conversations, back-end team solutions are critical. You need that underlying functionality to ensure you can access things like file sharing, video, real-time messaging, and other useful tools. Teams are at the heart of everything.”
