Q&A: New Unify CTO Talks Partners, Internet Of Things And More

Unify CTO On The Future

Unify, formerly known as Siemens Enterprise Communications, recently hired Stefan Ried as its new CTO of product house and head of technology strategy.

Prior to joining Unify, he was vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, where he advised leading CIOs and software vendors about cloud platforms, the Internet of Things and emerging business models.

In October, Unify unveiled a two-year project called Circuit -- a hosted collaboration platform designed to bring together a range of collaboration applications including voice, video, screen sharing, messaging and file sharing into one platform managed though a single pane of glass.

CRN spoke with Ried about how he will drive the latest technology trends in cloud, Platform-as-a-Service and the Internet of Things at Unify.

What is the next major release of Unify? Of Circuit?

Unify will soon deliver a Circuit enterprise gateway product, which bridges on-premise infrastructure such as your traditional telephony or directory services with the cloud. Partners can hook connected things, such as building automation, into this modern collaboration platform in the same way.

Unify is continuously working to innovate on both our OpenScape platform and Circuit. In the coming months you will see new releases for our OpenScape portfolio and added functionality for Circuit. Circuit specifically is a native cloud app and is constantly evolving based on our agile development approach. Circuit will also be available through local telcos and cloud providers synchronized to the same code base. The Circuit road map will address more functionality in the collaboration app itself, partner integrations, client platforms, and will introduce PaaS functionality to attract a wider developer and partner community.

What is your technology vision for Unify?

Unify has a very strong market position in the traditional communications paradigm, as well as in the new cloud-based architectures and business models. I’m looking forward to repositioning Unify in the new ecosystem of technology vendors and the emerging developer community.

The future unique vision for Unify is based on three pillars.

Pillar One

Unify merges communication and general collaboration and business transactions into one platform. Traditionally, technology vendors considered the communication between people -- voice, video, UC -- and the collaboration around documents and business transactions in different silos. Unify's platform is capable of merging this experience in the future.

Pillar Two

The reality in most enterprises are hybrid, cloud and on-premise. There are millions of phone lines in corporate- and SMB- environments operated on Unify's technology. On the other hand, the consumerization of IT brought cloud-based collaboration tools and SaaS applications into the business. We offer not only native cloud products like Circuit, but will provide compelling interoperability between both worlds and unlock our large on-premise install-base into hybrid scenarios.

Pillar Three

Circuit becomes a Collaborative Platform as a Service. Consumer-driven products like Skype never made it into businesses, as you cannot build apps around them. Imagine a simple call center with queues and dispatching of calls. Circuit already provides a state-of-the-art collaboration application out of the cloud, and will expose APIs to the emerging developer community. This allows ISVs to build add-ons and apps into the Circuit platform. You might compare this to Salesforce.com’s CRM application and its force.com platform.

What kinds of changes do you anticipate making to the product development teams?

Development teams are adopting agile methods already, which we are constantly improving. The goal is to get a startup-like agility and leverage the integration to our install base. Getting native cloud agility and integrated enterprise-grade software quality in a good balance is Unify’s compelling engineering strength.

Can Circuit support Android devices yet? Will you develop the product for Windows/Windows 10?

Yes, Circuit will support very soon Android in addition to the initially available iOS and Chrome versions. We have an Android version in our labs already running.

Circuit is available on Windows and Mac OS in the Chrome browser. We are in contact with Microsoft to make it work in Internet Explorer as soon as Microsoft supports the WebRTC protocol. Firefox is already supporting WebRTC and is on our list for Circuit as well.

Circuit is in general a cloud app, but to deliver a good video and a responsive user experience, we have to implement some native parts for each client platform. Other clients, such as BlackBerry, are on our road map and will be available based on the market demand.

What kind of market opportunity do you see for partners in IoT?

This is a huge opportunity for IoT specialists and Unify and our partners. Unify has already proven a wide integration of things like low-end radio handsets for airports or emergency organizations with its OpenScape Xpert and existing partners. Looking forward, imagine your car is experiencing some technical trouble, or there’s an accident, and you place a call. Partners can easily create a Circuit add-on displaying the data of your car to a call center agent. Both your call and the fact that the airbag has been activated, belong to one "conversation." The whole spectrum of IoT, from wearable computing down to industrial Internet, can overcome the silos by merging "Things" into the conversation context.

What kind of market opportunity do you see for partners in Platform as a Service?

Unify’s Circuit will offer PaaS capabilities for communication- and collaboration-centric applications on its own. However, we will not get into the general PaaS or IaaS business. Many cloud providers and telcos partner with us and start to operate Circuit for a local market -- complement it with already existing PaaS and IaaS offerings. Individual ISVs can also combine Yourcircuit.com with other cloud platforms of their choice based on our API set.

Was the revamped channel partner program launched in January? How does that change the partner business model?

Yes, the new Unify Partner Program was officially launched in January as planned, with a great deal of enthusiasm and support from our partners. Under the new program, Unify is helping partners drive greater revenue streams and increase customer satisfaction.

Unify has many reselling and implementing partners for the on-premise market. We offer existing partners the opportunity to extend their services into the new cloud delivery models and will attract new partners enriching our platform. Unify’s focus is to sell with and via partners -- even for public cloud products.

Why did you take this new job?

Before my exciting seven years as an analyst at Forrester Research, I spent many years at software vendors in engineering, product management and strategy roles. I believe changing roles between these perspectives from time to time tremendously enriched my background and understanding of markets and opportunities.