Unify's Circuit Enables a New Way of Working

Circuit, the new UC platform from the company formerly known as Siemens, is certainly different and could bring a shift to the way people work.

Zeus Zerravala

October 30, 2014

1 Min Read
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Today Unify, the company formerly known as Siemens Enterprise, finally took the covers off the product it has been developing under the code name of Project Ansible. The application, now known as Circuit, is the culmination of two years of intense research and development, and it promises to change the way people work. We in the analyst community had the opportunity try out Circuit at Unify's annual Global Analyst Summit last week in Phoenix.

I first downloaded Circuit to my iPhone rather than my Macbook, as I believe the value of a UC client is measured by its usability on a mobile device. No disrespect meant to all the vendors that have put work into developing rich desktop clients but it's been my belief that mobile UC provides much greater bang for the buck.

Having non-unified communications tools is awkward on a desktop but isn't the end of the world. However, on a mobile device it's extremely time consuming to continually be switching between applications, so a robust mobile UC client can provide tremendous value.

On the surface, Circuit looks like many of the other mobile UC clients. Unify touts the application as a "single pane of glass," which is one of the most over-used terms in our industry today. However, Circuit does live up to the promise of a single pane of glass as it brings together not only communications applications such as voice and video but also text messaging, screen sharing and even content sharing.

While the unified client is nice, I don't believe that's the true differentiator for Circuit. 

Read the rest of the article on No Jitter.

About the Author(s)

Zeus Zerravala

Founder & Principal Analyst, ZK Research

At ZK Research, Zeus Kerravala provides provides research and advice to IT and network managers, vendors of IT hardware, software and services, and the financial community looking to invest in the companies that he covers. Prior to ZK Research, Zeus Kerravala spent 10 years as an analyst at Yankee Group. He joined Yankee Group in March of 2001 as a Director and left Yankee Group as a Senior Vice President and Distinguished Research Fellow, the firm's most senior research analyst. Before Yankee Group, Kerravala served in a number of technical roles including a senior technical position at Greenwich Technology Partners (GTP). Prior to GTP, Kerravala had numerous internal IT positions including VP of IT and Deputy CIO of Ferris, Baker Watts and Senior Project Manager at Alex, Brown and Sons, Inc.

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