Atos SE company
Unify
|
Founded
| 1 October 2008
; 15 years ago
(
2008-10-01
)
(
Berlin
,
Germany
)
|
---|
Headquarters
| Munich
, Germany
|
---|
Area served
| Worldwide
|
---|
Products
| Unified Communications and Collaboration, Voice,
contact center
, Small and Medium businesses, Devices and clients, Network infrastructure and security, Cloud Computing
|
---|
Services
| Business services
,
financing
,
project engineering
and
construction
|
---|
Parent
| |
---|
Website
| www
.unify
.com
/us
/
|
---|
Unify
is a
Mitel
company
[1]
headquartered in
Munich, Germany
and is present in over 100 countries.
[2]
It provides software-based enterprise
unified communications
including voice, Web collaboration, video conferencing and contact center, networking product and services.
Known as
Siemens Enterprise Communications
(SEN) until January 21, 2016, it was a joint venture between
The Gores Group
and
Siemens
.
[3]
Originally announced July 29, 2008, SEN started operating in 2013, with Gores having a 51% stake, while Siemens had 49%.
In October 2023, Mitel completed the purchase of the company.
[4]
History
[
edit
]
Background: Heritage (1847?2006)
[
edit
]
Siemens Communications traces its origins to
Siemens & Halske
(German legal name:
Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske
)
founded by
Werner von Siemens
on 12 October 1847. Siemens' first invention was the pointer telegraph.
[5]
In the latter half of the 19th century, the company built long-distance telegraph lines, encompassing major projects in
Germany
and
Russia
, and the monumental
Indo-European telegraph
line stretching over 11,000 km from
London
to
Calcutta
.
[6]
In 1897, Siemens & Halske went public.
During the first half of the 20th century, the company undertook a series of mergers and spin-offs, leading to the formation of three separate companies. The original company, Siemens & Halske, focused on communications engineering.
Siemens-Schuckertwerke
was founded in 1903 to develop electric power engineering. Finally, in 1932,
Siemens-Reiniger-Werke
was founded to specialize in electro-medical equipment.
[7]
In 1966, through a major restructuring process, these main companies merged to form
Siemens
.
[8]
In the late 1970s, Siemens focused on
information and communications technology
(ICT). In 1978, it established Siemens Communication Systems, which, in 1985, was reorganized into two divisions: Siemens Communication Systems for public network products, and Siemens Information Systems for PBX and computer-related products.
[9]
[10]
Entering the
globalization
era of the 1990s, these two divisions made acquisitions. In 1989, the PBX division initiated a structured purchase of
ROLM
from
IBM
, renaming it ROLM Systems, and completed the purchase in 1992 as Siemens-ROLM Communications.
[11]
The same year, the company acquired a 40% stake in
GEC Plessey Telecommunications
(GPT) which evolved into the UK operations of the current company. In 1991, the carrier networks division acquired Stromberg-Carlson from The Plessey Company plc.
[9]
In 1996, the
PBX
businesses of
Mercury Communications
, a subsidiary of UK-based
Cable & Wireless
were also acquired.
In late 1998, Siemens undertook a major restructuring into four main divisions: power generation, industry, rail systems, and information and communications (ICN).
[12]
As part of the ICN Division, Siemens Information & Communication Networks (SICN) ? later to be commonly known as
Siemens Communications
(Siemens COM) ? became Siemens's biggest business unit.
[13]
Its focus was to
Internet
-based network technologies, as it was predicted that global data traffic volume would surpass voice telephony traffic in the early part of the 21st century. In addition, Siemens COM placed greater emphasis on the US market, dominated at the time by
Nortel
,
Lucent
, and the emerging
Cisco
; to that end, the company made two American acquisitions, Castle Networks and Argon Networks in 1999.
In March, 2002, Siemens Communications was divided into two major business units - one for public mobile networks and fixed networks; and the other for enterprise networks.
Siemens Enterprise Communications (2006?2013)
[
edit
]
The evolution of Siemens Enterprise Communications began in June, 2006, when Siemens divided Siemens COM into two pieces.
On June 19, 2006, the carrier networks business was merged with
Nokia
's Network Business Group to form a new joint venture,
Nokia Siemens Networks
. On October 1, 2006, Siemens Enterprise Communications was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens. Since then, the business focused on unified communications.
In late July 2008, Siemens announced a joint venture with American private equity company The Gores Group (headed by
Alec Gores
), integrating two Gores Group businesses,
Enterasys Networks
and SER Solutions.
[14]
Enterasys operated as a subsidiary of Siemens Enterprise Communications until 12 September 2013, when
Extreme Networks
, announced that an agreement to purchase Enterasys in an all-cash transaction valued at US$180 million.
[15]
Unify (2013?present)
[
edit
]
In October 2013, Siemens Enterprise Communications was rebranded to Unify.
In November 2015 it was announced that IT services company
Atos
would purchase Unify from
The Gores Group
/Siemens for 340 million euro.
[16]
The acquisition was completed in January 2016.
[17]
In January 2023, Atos announced it entered into exclusive negotiations with
Mitel
for the sale of its Unified Communications & Collaboration business (Unify).
[18]
Products and services
[
edit
]
Unify is a communications provider that develops, deploys, and manages
unified communications
, network infrastructure and security and managed and professional services for large enterprises and
small and medium enterprises
, both directly and via partners.
Its primary product brands are OpenScape (unified communications applications), HiPath (converged enterprise communications) and Circuit (
SaaS
Team Communication). The company announced OpenScape with
Microsoft
in 2003.
[19]
[20]
Unify demonstrated
SIP
and
service-oriented architecture
with OpenScape. The company’s services cover
managed services
,
professional services
, and maintenance and support services.
OpenScape scored in the Leaders Quadrant in Gartner's Magic Quadrant surveys for both voice and UC. OpenScape UC received the top rating in Enterprise Connect's UC RFP session in 2012 and 2013.
[21]
On 28 October 2014 Unify launched a
SaaS
Team Communication product called
Circuit
which was previously codenamed Project Ansible.
[22]
[23]
Due to agreement between the new owner Atos and former owner, from 2016 Circuit was further developed on-the-go and in 2017 launched as a unified communication and collaboration platform for the whole Siemens.
[24]
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
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Divisions and
subsidiaries
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Joint ventures &
investments
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Predecessors
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Products
,
services &
projects
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People
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Places
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Other
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- 1
Now integrated into other Siemens divisions or business groupings
- 2
Sold
|