The rebranded company also released more details about Project Ansible.

Channel Partners

October 15, 2013

2 Min Read
Siemens Enterprise Gives Itself a New Name

Siemens Enterprise Communications is positioning itself to better compete against Cisco and Microsoft. The company is taking aim at its rivals by giving itself a new name, taking the focus off telecom hardware and instead concentrating on UC software.

Bloomberg reported that Siemens which now goes by “Unify” expects the rebrand to make it more attractive for financial possibilities.

Were putting ourselves in a different neighborhood,” Hamid Akhavan, CEO of Unify, the former Siemens Enterprise, told Bloomberg. That neighborhood is boundless in terms of opportunities, growth opportunities, IPO opportunities, M&A opportunities.”

Siemens owns 49 percent of Unify, while Gores Group LLC owns the remaining 51 percent. The two companies formed the joint venture in what was then Siemens Enterprise in 2008. The switch to “Unify” does not change those holding amounts or Unify’s management structure, the company said on Tuesday.

Meantime, the rebrand comes as Unify continues work on its Project Ansible undertaking. The company plans to release the platform in July of next year; customer trials will start earlier in 2014, in January. Project Ansible will be sold through channel partners.

The UC platform was unveiled this past June and will complement, not replace, Siemens OpenScape. Project Ansible’s biggest draw may be its single view, which means users do not have to jump in and out of applications such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft or LinkedIn, for example. All of those programs, and more, are accessible from within Project Ansible. Further, Project Ansible turns meetings into voice and video transcripts, and will transcribe and search voice mail, email, social media content, text messages and more. Then, users can find colleagues working on similar projects.

The first version of Project Ansible will be delivered via the cloud, in a SaaS model, Unify said.

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