Unify Blog

Expert commentary, provocative opinions

Ensuring business continuity during the crisis: customer stories from the trenches

The ability to implement contingency plans in response to the rapid onset of the COVID pandemic is one of the keys to maintaining…

Does the remote working boom prove that Global collaboration can be just as effective as Local?

I have always believed that collaboration is driven by human engagement – supported by a healthy…

Your post-COVID workplace - planning for the New Normal

Although the immediate health crisis will pass, the imprint on our workplaces may be indelible. Recent surveys by industry analyst firms highlight this…

Lessons learned: Our employees reflect on 3 months of working-from-home

Everyone’s work-from-home experience is unique, and the lessons learned during this harrowing period are varied. We asked our own employees to offer…

7 practical ways to conquer work-from-home burnout

It’s totally normal to feel more stressed than usual working within our current pandemic situation. But if you are starting to feel like you are hitting…

This is my favorite thing about working from home!

Our in-house community of employee experts (known as our Digital Envoys) have spoken up again – this time on the topic of the favorite aspects of…

Working on your fitness: 10 ways to get healthier than ever while working from home

Your step-counter used to register thousands of steps per day, but now it is just a relatively…

8 ways to overcome feelings of working-from-home isolation

So by now, we’ve all read up on those helpful working-from-home tips – we’ve gotten into the groove of it, and we’re feeling productive. But…

My personal “working from home with the family” survival guide

A couple of months ago, working from home was an option when one of the children was sick at home, a personal appointment split the…

Forget about work-life balance – and find your work-life harmony

With more of us working from home for the foreseeable future, many people are struggling with maintaining what has been known as…

How working from home saved my career

On the 23rd of July 2018, my whole family took a serious hit as we were victims of the lethal fire that killed 102 people in Mati Athens. As…

Make Your Video Meetings Great!

The transition from face-to-face to video meetings may feel awkward for many people. Especially if you are not used to it or feel a little camera-shy. Even those who have used video…

The novice’s guide to managing "business as usual"

So, your organization has suddenly been spurred on to adopt remote working for your employees, quickly, but you, as a manager, just aren’t sure how to make sure…

8 years of remote working

A long time ago on this blog, I wrote a weekly series on flexible working and the many places you could legitimately work with the right tools. I’ve now worked remotely now…

2020 vision: Eight digital resolutions to make for the coming year

Agility, innovation, simplicity, engagement, efficiency, effectiveness, privacy, security, compliance, sustainability, and ethics.  With so many imperatives tied to Digital Transformation, it is no…

Predictions: 8 ways that humans and technology will intersect in 2020

Each year around this time, we offer food for thought in the form of predictions for the coming year. Just as we collectively…

Circuit Sprint 138: expanding customer choices

Happy New Year from the Circuit Team! From everyone at Circuit and the broader Atos family, here’s wishing you a prosperous and adventurous 2020! As our first sprint release of 2020,…

New OpenScape Enterprise V10 – reliable, secure, intuitive and efficient

We are excited to announce that OpenScape Enterprise Solution Version 10 is available. The new version delivers enhanced reliability and security, a number of usability…

Circuit Sprint 136: from Labs to Live

It’s that time of year when we reflect on the past 12 months and celebrate our favorite moments. In keeping with the tradition, we thought we would do the…

The team meeting experience – ten subtle ways that ‘virtual’ is better than being there in person

Recent studies from across the globe show that about half of organizations still have…

Circuit Sprint 134: A more powerful call stage, sharing efficiencies and more

We’re excited to bring you the details about our latest update to Circuit with Sprint 134 and its focus on call efficiency…

Circuit Sprint Update: Evolving Our Meeting Experience

Welcome to Sprint 132. With our current update, we are introducing two main improvements: New conferencing experience: Our new user experience during conferences will give you more control of…

Artificial Intelligence and Unified Collaboration: Some New Ideas

I need a "parallel mind" to help make some decisions for me. Then I can save time, increase my productivity, avoid mistakes, and have good and concise insights…

4 Learnings from a Year of Remote Working

This time last year, I started working remotely full time. I found it incredibly difficult, especially for the first couple of months – going from working in a…

Circuit Sprint update: Go with the flow

“It all starts with a conversation” has been our motto since we launched Circuit a few years ago and it still guides our evolution and development, as you can…

Atos Bulgaria: Great Place To Work

Тhe Global Business Services Center in Sofia, Bulgaria was certified successfully by the Great Place to Work Certification® Program. The office is located in the heart of the capital and the…

Vacation relaxation: Reduce your out-of-office stress level with Circuit

It’s summer season in large parts of the Northern hemisphere, but no time to rest for Circuit: Welcome to Sprint 128! Unlimited snooze…

Introducing the collaborative Internet of Things with Circuit

We created Circuit to enable communication and collaboration between people. With the advent and fast-paced evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and chatbots, we…

Circuit Collaboration Ecosystem Continues to Grow

We’re excited to announce what’s new to Circuit with Sprint 126, and its emphasis on more ecosystem options for users. Let’s begin with updates supporting our strategic partnership with Google. With…

The new OpenScape Business V2R7 - ensures business continuity and growth

Our latest software release OpenScape Business V2R7, which is our All-In-One Telephony and UC solution targeting small and medium businesses towards our…

Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills: What’s Better to Enable Tomorrow’s Team Success?

Is your organization’s hiring criteria and training curriculum oriented toward hard skills and qualifications like project management, programming, technical certifications, degrees, languages…

Efficient collaboration is about reaching the right people at the right time

Efficient collaboration is about reaching the right people at the right time Welcome to Sprint 124, our first summer time sprint! With…

Circuit Analytics: In Numbers We Trust

Welcome to sprint 122! Let‘s do a quick run through what‘s news with our most recent update, with a particular focus on our new analytics capabilities. Domain administrators with either Professional or Enterprise…

Staying Focused: Avoiding distractions means better productivity

Staying focused in the office can be a Herculean task. From annoying ringtones and message notifications to loud (and sometimes far too personal) conversations among co-workers, the list…

Three Big Reasons to Consider Hybrid Infrastructure for Business Communications

This article was originally published on digitaltransformation.frost.com For years, it seemed that the key focus of IT and telecom decision makers was on moving communications…

Getting you hooked with Circuit and Webhooks

Circuit Sprint 120 Getting you hooked with Circuit and Webhooks Welcome to Sprint 120! With our most current update, we are releasing a few Circuit Labs capabilities, namely multiple…

Unified Communication and Collaboration Mean Choice, Not The End of Voice

The Times of London with the thought leaders from Raconteur recently published a feature article about the future of voice. For a deeper…

Strong Customer Satisfaction as we deploy the 1000th Circuit Meeting Room with Siemens

We recently celebrated the 1000th Circuit Meeting Room deployment with Siemens AG, and were pleased to receive positive feedback about…

Work From Home: Bits, Bricks and Behaviours

This article is featured in the e-book "Everything you need to know about working from home" by Remote-how. Download the e-book here.  Productive and enjoyable work environments are always a…

Cowork2019: We want to make the world a better place

With our Circuit partner BVG Communication Technologies, we were happy to be part of Cowork 2019, the annual conference and BarCamp organized by the German…

Make Your Meetings More Productive

Here Are Twenty ‘Rapid-Fire’ Tips It seems that making group meeting time more productive has always been a priority. Even today, with the latest tools and technologies, we sometimes struggle to make…

Circuit is coming to Apple CarPlay

Circuit Sprint 118 Coming soon: Circuit for Apple CarPlay Sprint posts are usually not the place to share news about our iOS app, as backend and app updates follow their own…

Interview with Andreas Rieger, Head of Video Collaboration at Siemens AG

During our 1000th Circuit Meeting Room deployment celebration with Siemens AG we spent time with Andreas Rieger, Head of Video Collaboration at Siemens…

Happiness as a Business Model for Success

Many businesses and organisations are facing digital disruptions and need to transform their way of working in order to remain successful. Often the focus is on implementing new technologies,…

More Meaningful Meetings with Digital Transformation

In an increasingly digital, social and mobile workplace, how we work, collaborate and contribute continues to undergo significant change. This transformation comes, in part, from the communication IT landscape shift from…

Better multitasking with Circuit chat

Circuit Sprint 116 With our current sprint, we are implementing a few enhancements to our conversation model, and take another exciting technical integration step in the context of our broader strategic alliance…

Ending Urban Gridlock: “Anywhere Working” Can Serve A Higher Civic Purpose

Most large North American urban areas, with populations in the millions, endure traffic gridlock problems along with over-stressed public transit systems. Simply getting around…

Erste Eindrücke von Lutz Herrmann, dem neuen CEO von Unify in Deutschland

Interne Talente zu fördern ist bei Atos Teil der Geschäftsphilosophie: Wir streben danach, das Potenzial von eigenen Talenten zu erkennen, zu entwickeln…

First Thoughts from Lutz Herrmann, Unify’s New Leader in Germany

“Internal First” is a commonly heard mantra within Atos.  This is our business philosophy of recognising, developing and promoting home-grown talent into new opportunities, and…

Solving a business dilemma: OpenScape Business telephony integrates with Circuit team collaboration

For most of us, work is changing: We are more mobile than ever before, we work from home or rent coworking space,…

Making 5.555.555 users more productive with Circuit

Circuit Sprint 114 5.555.555. We passed this milestone last December and it‘s the total number of users of our market-leading OpenScape Business telephony platform. If you are one of them, our…

Zooming in on our developer community

Circuit Sprint 112 Welcome to our first sprint release in the new year! With our current sprint, we put a particular focus on developers and on further enhancing our meeting experience.…

Five Ways the Future of Work Will Surprise You

It has been said that as a species, we humans first shape our technologies, and then our technologies shape us. It seems no more so than…

A New Opportunity for Small and Medium Business

Greetings to our customers and partners from the OpenScape Business Solutions team! We want to let you know about the new OpenScape Business Software Release V2R6. The new…

Now and What's Coming - Virtual Get Together of our Technology Partners

“Now and what's coming” - under this banner, 44 Unify technology partners met for a virtual meeting on Tuesday, November 27th. After…

Too busy to get anything done? Digital workplace tools can help - Part 2

In part one of this blog post, we described the detrimental effects of being habitually busy, pseudo…

The Way We Work 2018: Topics Worthy of Discussion Series

Unify Experts Panel Discussion - Part 2 For our final installment in the Topics Worthy of Discussion series, we’ve invited four of our esteemed Unify…

Too busy to get anything done? Digital workplace tools can help - Part 1

Our working lives are packed full of opportunities to demonstrate how busy we are. The conference calls…

The Way We Work 2018: Topics Worthy of Discussion Series

Unify Experts Panel Discussion - Part 1 For our final installment in the Topics Worthy of Discussion series, we’ve invited four of our esteemed Unify…

Chatbot versus voicebot conversations – which customer experience would be better?

We sometimes take for granted that talking is a more natural communication construct compared to text. In fact, if we turn it around,…

Boas festas: Circuit is now available in Portuguese (and more product news)

Circuit Sprint 110 Note: Our new features are available for our customers in the Americas, where we updated our local system this…

Answering the question: Does the desk phone have relevance in today's communication ecosystem?

The ecosystem of tools we use to communicate and collaborate plays a meaningful role in the success of how we…

Circuit + Zapier: Integrate your business workflows with team collaboration

We built Circuit to make you more efficient as a team, with strong voice, video, screen sharing, file sharing and messaging capabilities. With our new Zapier support,…

Did you get my message?

Circuit Sprint 108 As a Circuit user, staying on top of new and important messages and topics is getting less and less of an issue for you, as we are constantly working to enhance…

Widen your scope and increase your focus

Circuit Sprint 106 With Circuit, it‘s not as paradoxical as it sounds! Let‘s walk through the new features and enhancements coming with our current Sprint 106 to see why.…

The Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Enterprise Communications

The thought of software robots and artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace may make some knowledge workers nervous.  But instead of seeing a threat of being “replaced”, workers…

The Way We Work 2018: Topics Worthy of Discussion Series

Guest blog with Atos Distinguished Expert Marianne Hewlett As part of our ongoing thought leadership research into the way we work, we caught up with…

The Way We Work 2018: Topics Worthy of Discussion Series

Guest blog with Unify Expert Lisa Campbell As part of our ongoing thought leadership research into the way we work, we caught up with Lisa…

Growing the Atos LGBT+ community with blueKiwi and Circuit collaboration

We have a very active and increasingly visible LGBT+ and Friends community at Atos. As one of the community leaders, Julia Atwater recently shared a…

More video, more sharing, better filters for your team

Welcome to sprint 4 after our recent 100 sprints anniversary! For sprint 104, one particular focus area for us has been the video, screensharing and messaging…

Are your project teams still using email?

Here’s five reasons to try team collaboration tools Companies still have an ambivalent attitude to email. On the one hand, we are annoyed by endless email chains, irrelevant distribution…

Working Out Loud is social collaboration in the truest sense of the word

Interview with Thomas Schlebach, Presales Consultant at BVG Communication Technologies Interviewer: Philipp Bohn, VP Circuit at Unify and CEO of…

The Way We Work 2018: Topics Worthy of Discussion Series

Guest blog with Industry Analyst Dave Michels As part of our ongoing thought leadership research into the way we work, we caught up with Dave…

Tim Banting shares unique insights on The Way We Work in 2018 – part 2

The Way We Work 2018 – Topics Worthy of Discussion Series. Guest blog with Tim Banting –…

June update: It‘s sometimes OK to take shortcuts!

Keyboard shortcuts: We‘re never taking shortcuts developing Circuit, but we are introducing a nice little feature that many of you have been requesting from us. We hear you…

Expert analyst shares unique insights on The Way We Work in 2018… and beyond

The Way We Work 2018 – Topics Worthy of Discussion Series. Guest blog with Tim Banting – Part One…

It’s the first to communicate that wins the war: 10 ways defense CIOs can use UC

Posted on: April 16, 2018 by Paul Bender How to maintain continuity of communications in event of an emergency…

May update: Efficient collaboration

For Circuit, agile development means monthly releases based on customer and user feedback. With our most recent update over the past weekend, we added a few technical and design capabilities to make your collaboration…

Ready for military action: How UC is changing the landscape for defense communications

Posted on: May 10, 2018 by Paul Bender At the heart of any successful military organization is the imperative to improve decision-making, both…

April update: Sharing is caring

With our current update, we wanted to make it easier for you to share content with your colleagues, and keep on top of your most important messages: iPad multitasking: Our iPad app…

The new OpenScape Business Release – 100% Channel focused

Sneak Preview of our Upcoming New Software Release and its improvements 2017 was a successful year for Unify´s All-In-One Voice & UC Solution for SMB OpenScape Business, and…

TWWW18: The evolution of remote working (infographic)

At Unify, we have pioneered research and thought leadership that sheds light on the way we work. New Unify research finds that flexible work lifestyles are not an ‘all…

Satisfying defense information needs with unified communications

Posted on: March 28, 2018 by Paul Bender “In the high-stakes fast-moving environment of defense there can be no more efficient and quicker model for keeping defense personnel connected” The application of…

March update: We‘re making it easier to connect!

One key ambition with our March update was to make it easier for you to stay in touch with your colleagues on Circuit. Specifically, we have heard your…

The Evolution of Remote Working: Balance, Integration, Harmony

New research finds that flexible work lifestyles are not an ‘all or nothing’ affair At Unify, we have pioneered research and thought leadership that sheds light…

Bits+bricks+behavior = The future of work

Bits, bricks and behavior: I first heard about the “New Work triad” during a speech that Markus Albers, a consultant and influencer in this space, gave at the Factory. The Factory…

Can fewer meetings lead to better collaboration?

Three new ways to foster collaboration without more meetings. A colleague shared a recent study with me. It said that most employees feel that many meetings they attend are…

Podcast: Unify’s Top Predictions for 2018

Is this one of those tipping points where new trends come to the fore -- having a significant and increasing impact on how we interact, work and play? Beyond the continuing…

5 Lessons in Customer Experience

Apple’s recent controversy on the deliberate slowing down of its iPhones got me thinking on how even the most successful companies tend to falter when managing customer experience (CX). There are plenty…

WHAT’S NEXT: Our Predictions for 2018

Most. likely, we all think the phrase “inflection point” is now a tired and overused business cliché. However, we may well be at one of those defining tipping points…

Spectre and Meltdown Recommended Actions for Unify Products and Servers

Unify products operate as closed systems, where only approved software is active. This dramatically reduces the risk of the Spectre & Meltdown vulnerabilities to a…

Effective Digital Transformations for Government

We spend a lot of time discussing digital transformation at Atos. For the other half of the world, Public Sector, McKinsey has recently published some analysis that I think you’ll find interesting.…

10 reasons defense organizations need a unified communications strategy

Modern defense organizations are an ecosystem, complex environments widely dispersed, a fusion of technology, equipment and personnel. The popular view presents technology at the most cutting-edge.…

The Theory of Relativity in Action

Letters from the Home Office Volume 14 When I was a little kid I thought the theory of relativity meant how time seems to move slower or faster relative to how…

What do flexible deployment, investment protection and the hybrid cloud have in common?

Our New Way to Work research has shown that employees value flexible work terms (‘anywhere working’, flexible hours) more highly…

If you do it right the first time, you can just keep making it better

The unbroken line. The strengthening of applications through continuous improvement. The results of this careful planning can…

Circuit: An informed user perspective

Hi, I am Subha. I currently work at Unify leading our Voice of the Customer/Partner programs. I am a user of Circuit, every hour of every day. Now, here is a puzzle.…

Transformers – robots in disguise

I was asked to do a blog for Unify about transforming your infrastructure to modern collaboration, I was thinking how best to do this, when I thought about it I thought use…

Unify Your Communications To Keep Up With Your People

“Did you email that information to me or say it in chat?” “I think I said it on the conference call. Or maybe I texted it…

Funkschau Readers’ Choice Award Winners

We are excited to share that Unify has been recognized by Funkschau, Germany’s premier specialist telecoms publication, in its 2017 Product of the Year Awards. Unify products took home prizes in five…

PRODUCT REVIEW by Paula Neame: Circuit

Circuit Review 2017 If you are familiar with my blogs, then this Paula’esque style review will not be a shock. To anyone unfamiliar – welcome to the world according to Paula.…

Letters from the Home Office Vol. 13 - “Music to Work By”

I got the standing desk and so far it’s great, especially if I don’t wear shoes. Now I have nothing…

Workforce Productivity in Government: The Case for Collaboration

Government agencies need their workforces to perform smarter, faster and more productively. And that means embedding collaborative technologies deep into processes – transforming the way organizations turn knowledge…

What to consider in a Digital Education strategy

First we need to talk about learning. Education, that comes through learning, is one of the largest barriers that we have in our equalitarian world. This is based…

Workforce Productivity in Government: The Case for Teleworking

Did you know that in the District of Columbia, almost a third of federal employees commute over 180 minutes a day. I’ve certainly been there. That’s a lot…

Letters from the Home Office Vol. 12

“Tell Me When This Really Starts to Hurt, Dear.” This week I ordered a standing desk. We mentioned these in previous articles and now I have no choice. Yesterday…

You can now share Syncplicity files in Circuit conversations

We‘re happy to announce our new integration between Syncplicity, a Content Collaboration Platform, and Circuit team collaboration. We believe workflow integrations are key elements of successful digital…

“No You Hang Up First” – How To Do A Conference Call Without Making It Weird

We’ve all endured teleconferences rife with the late arrivals chime, connection drops outs, delays and echoes,…

Letters from the Home Office Vol. 11

It’s Not So Much a Trend as It Is Something that Happened a Lot. These Letters from Home Office have been focused on productivity for people working at home…

Office Productivity Is Down: What Can You Do About It?

Posted on: September 5, 2018 by Joerg Adam If your employees are like most, they work fairly long hours. But you can’t assume that just because they’re working…

Letters from the Home Office Vol. 10

Avoiding the Disabled List At some point we are going to start getting interesting data about a new category of work at home injuries. This isn’t about tripping over…

5 ingredients to make your virtual teams work

Harvard Business School teams expert Amy Edmondson explains in the book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, written by Stanley A. McChrystal, Chris…

Thanks, but I have my own tools, boss

Letters from the Home Office Volume 9 I recently read an article by Ben Parr in Mashable where he cites a survey by Unisys and IDC on mobility.…

Isolation of the remote worker

Once upon a time I would sit with a newspaper and read it through from front to back with a steaming mug of coffee and my feet up – mainly to accommodate…

The Boomerang Factors: Editing, Muting, and Crossing the Streams

Letters from the Home Office Volume 8 It’s easy to think that because we work with multiple, advanced, high-speed devices that we are also an advanced…

Workforce Productivity in Government: A Collaboration Revolution

For Public Sector agencies looking to jump on the unified communications bandwagon, bringing together voice, video, screen share, messaging and file-sharing into a single platform-agnostic application can deliver a…

Get Up, Stand Up!

Letters from the Home Office Volume 7 While the title of this article is also a great song by Bob Marley and the Wailers, I’d like to make a slightly different point here. When…

Unify Technology Partner – Great that you’re here!

Posted on: August 8, 2017 by Marlis Topp On July 18th about 44 members of 35 Technology Partners around the world gathered in Munich for UTPP17 – the get together of…

Letters from the Home Office Vol. 6

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore Maybe it’s a coincidence, but around the same time I started working from home, I also found myself doing less business travel. Some of…

Coping with silly season

Anyone that works in events will understand the joy of coordinating an audience, a venue, the production, the presenters, the entertainment, the content.. and so it goes on! Mind you – I LOVE it!…

When Mobile Gets Really Mobile

Letters from the Home Working Front Vol. 5 Most of us who work in a home office have stretched the definition and boundaries of “home office.” For example, when we have company,…

UPC2017 – that’s a wrap!

By Lori Reeder, Unify VP, Sales Performance. This year was like none other for the Unify Partner conference. UPC was more accessible than ever with live streaming of five sessions. Thomas Veit…

5 ways that call reporting is transforming contact centres

By James Emm, Director of strategic partnerships at Oak Innovation. With the launch of Evolve reporting and analytics for OpenScape Business, Oak Innovation’s James Emm explores…

Johnny, tell them what they've won!

Letters from the Home Working Front Vol. 4 One of the challenges for executives managing at-home workers is the difficulty of inspecting productivity. How do we know we are getting our…

Workforce Productivity in Government: Where to Start

Where to start Many federal agencies are now looking at home working to save money, ensure continuity of operations during regional and national emergencies, and to provide a more…

Introducing something new.

Posted on: July 13, 2017 by Mark Smith For 170 years we’ve been a leading light in driving forward the way businesses and people communicate. Today I’m excited to introduce to you the next step forward in communications…

Letters from the Home Working Front Vol. 3

We have statistics, so it must be real According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, telecommuting has increased 103% since 2005, and in 2016 twenty-three percent of employees…

Unlocking Workforce Productivity in Government

By Paul Bender, Global Public Sector Marketing With agencies tasked with delivering a modernized, streamlined and ultimately more citizen facing federal government environment, the focus on staff productivity and working practices has…

8 reasons to get excited about UPC 2017

It is almost that time, when our Senior Leadership Team assembles in Monte Carlo to meet with our Partners from around the Globe. Over recent years, the event…

Letters from the Home Working Front Vol. 2

“Reboot? I’ll Reboot ya, pal!” Most people are smarter than me, so maybe this isn’t a big deal, but I’ve had it with technology that decides to stop…

Unify Technology Partner Get Together 2017: Yes indeed … it’s another Partner Event!

Hey technology experts, integration partners and developers - we have a special event just for you! Just one week after…

Not just colleagues. Not just a work tool.

Despite the heat wave and the summer holidays approaching – there is a heavy sigh hanging in the air. Various public tragedies seem far too frequent in the…

Letters from the Home Working Front

Dear People who try to get anything done working from home. When I entered the workforce, the job market was tight. I sent out a lot of resumes, but there wasn’t…

This is NOT business as usual...

I’m back!  I know I know.. I haven’t taken virtual pen to paper and blogged for some time, but I have been busy!  There is this small event coming up called…

Riding stormy weather-together

Shaun Cadwallen - Energy & Utilities Expert at Unify Over the last several years, major storms around the world have caused extensive damage and disruption to power and energy supplies. For example, winter of…