Unify, the company formerly known as Siemens Enterprise Communications, has launched a new unified communications (UC) licencing program that promises to cut bundled UC purchase cost by as much as 40 per cent for enterprise organizations.
The introduction of the new Enterprise Licencing program is part of the company’s rebranding strategy aimed at taking advantage of the lucrative hosted unified communications market and the growing adoption of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) practices in large corporations. In October this year, Siemens announced that it was changing its name to Unify.
Frederic Simard, vice-president for pricing and portfolio commercialization at Unfiy, said the company is introducing a new UC licencing program because its previous licencing practices had rendered the company “less competitive and less visible.”
“We were selling software on a piece meal basis while the competition was selling bundled options,” he said in an interview. “…Prices for our a la carte products will remain the same but with this new program, customers will see a significant reduction of up to 40 per cent on our bundled offerings.”
For example, he said, a typical Siemen’s a la carte offering on voice plus UC was priced at around $600/per user. On the other hand, Siemen’s competitors were selling bundled alternatives at the $300 range.
Simard said Unify’s bundled products will now be sold at starting at the $300/user range as well.
“This is part catching up with and part leap frogging the competition,” he said.
The licencing program will provide customers with a selection of relevant, user-centric packages with no hidden cost and provide enough flexibility to accommodate changing business needs, according to statement from Unify.
The licence program also includes maintenance services, on-call customer support and automatic access to all OpenScape portfolio upgrades.
Enterprise Licencing includes Unify’s OpenScape contact centre solutions. OpenScape Enterprise bundles range from a foundation voice communication solutions to a complete advanced collaboration offering for office and virtual workers.
Among the features and benefits of Enterprise Licencing are:
Guaranteed fixed UC licence price for three years
New discount tiers
Deferred payment plans
The three year guarantee on licence price means that even if customers decide to add more users, they will be charged based on the original contract pricing as long as the new deployment is within the three-year period.
Customer also do not need to pay a lump sum, they can spread out their payments throughout the three-year period.