Big UC News You Might Have Missed

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UC News You May Have Missed
Unified Communications

Published: June 4, 2021

Marian McHugh

Technology Reporter

Welcome back to your weekly round-up of the latest industry happenings in the wonderful world of unified comms and collaboration.

Though this week was shorter than usual, it was still a busy one for news as Zoom reported relentless growth in its most recent quarter, Maintel’s full-year revenue showed the full impact of COVID-19 on the business and global solutions provider Unisys shelled out $!52.5m for Unify Square.

Zoom’s Sales Soar

The video conferencing vendor saw sales soar by 191 percent $956.2m for its quarter ending 30 April.

CEO Eric Yuan stated that he still expects Zoom’s software and products to be in high demand as businesses start to return to the office and a hybrid working culture develops:

“Many customers I talk to are looking to create hybrid solutions as they seek to cautiously reopen some offices. Second, each industry, company and individual vary in their optimal working model. Zoom is here to help each customer calibrate their future working model in their own way”

NEC Launches New UCaaS Solution in UK

The comms provider finally made its UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT UCaaS offering available to UK channel partners, over a year since it was piloted in the US.

The solution offers fully integrated conferencing, collaboration, screen sharing, and video conferencing capabilities available from desktop or mobile devices.

UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT is now available to NEC’s UK channel partner community and customers, as well as those in Australia and certain EMEA territories. This marks the third phase of a global rollout, with remaining international partners expected to be able to avail of the solutions by the end of this year.

UK & Ireland Sales Director, Andrew Cooper, stated:

“As arguably one of the broadest cloud platforms available, UNIVERGE BLUE enables telecoms, collaboration, backup, security, webinars, file sharing, and more within a single solution. If purchased from different vendors, all these have their own costs along with the resources to maintain and integrate them. If these are consolidated and streamlined, the cost of ownership is lowered considerably”

Maintel’s Results Hampered by Pandemic

The comms specialist saw revenue for its FY20 drop 13 percent as a result of the pandemic.

The reduction in turnover for its year ending 31 December 2020 was driven by delays in implementing project work due to the pandemic and a reduced managed services support base following the loss of several legacy contracts in 2019.

CEO Ioan MacRae stated:

“As a result of the pandemic, we have understandably seen certain customers delay new orders to preserve cash flows whilst uncertainty around the macroeconomic outlook remained. Furthermore, certain project work was delayed due to difficulties with site access during the lockdowns. Inevitably this had a significant impact on both revenue and EBITDA in the period. Revenue was also affected by the full-year impact of the loss of several legacy contracts in 2019 within our channel partner network”

Otter.ai Introduces Assistant for Zoom

The transcription solution provider this week launched its new Otter Assistant, which can automatically join any Zoom meeting on a user’s behalf, recording, transcribing, and sharing meeting notes when they’re not available.

Once a user sets up their agenda, they can assign their Assistant to the meetings where they want Otter to record information and share notes automatically. They also have full control over which meetings the Assistant joins.

Unify Square Snapped Up By Unisys

Global IT solutions provider Unisys acquired monitoring and management platform Unify Square for $152.5m in cash.

The deal will allow Unisys to leverage Unify Square’s UCaaS offerings into its own portfolio of digital workplace services solutions.

Peter Altabef, chair and CEO of Unisys, stated:

The UCaaS market, in which Unify Square operates, is expected to be among the fastest-growing segments of the digital workplace services market. Unify Square’s capabilities will enable Unisys to deliver higher-value solutions to its clients that enhance their productivity and employee satisfaction.”

What are your thoughts on this week’s industry news? Get involved in the discussion on our social media channels!

 

 

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