Siemens Enterprise Communications rebrands as Unify

Siemens Enterprise Communications today announced plans to rebrand the company as Unify.

The firm, founded just five years ago, is part of the much larger Siemens AG, which was set up in Berlin, 1847.

However, with the changing face of enterprise and growth of consumerisation in the work place, the company’s CEO, Hamid Akhavan, felt a new brand was needed.

“We are proud to have had this brand and lived under this umbrella… but now we do a lot more than that,” he said.

“The Siemens brand is not speaking to that [consumerisation] and the new brand and new identity allow us to own all of that. We have something great, now we are moving to something better.”

Unify will continue to build unified communications (UC), network infrastructure and security products, but its main focus will be on its new UC platform code-named Project Ansible.

First announced in June, the platform will support voice, video text and screen sharing, working as a cloud-based SaaS across various mobile devices, as well as desktops. It will also link up with other enterprise communications services from the likes of Cisco and Avaya.

“We are challenging the status quo of what businesses should expect of enterprise communications technology so we can answer the call of  the new way to work, and help enhance our customers’ business performance,” added Akhavan.

“The expectations of the next generation of enterprise workers go beyond today’s systems. Customers, partners and carriers are excited about the possibilities they see in Project Ansible and we are moving rapidly ahead.”

Project Ansible will begin trialling with customers from January, but today Unify promised to speed up its route to market and have its first commercial version out in July 2014.