About Siemens

Founded in 1847 as a telegraph company, Siemens has gone through many transformations in communications. The German conglomerate, which has been public since 1897, established Siemens Communications Systems in 1978 to focus on information and communication technology (ICT). In late 1998, the communications division was refocused on developing Internet-based network technologies. To aid with the development, Siemens acquired American companies Castle Networks Inc and Argon Networks Inc. In 2006, Siemens Communications split into two divisions, one of which merged with Nokia. The other became Siemens Enterprise Communications and aimed to develop end-to-end communications solutions. Seven years later, Siemens Enterprise Communications was re-branded as Unify. In 2015, two years after the re-branding, Unify was purchased by Atos, an IT services company. Although Unify retains its Siemens heritage in its name and technology, the company is no longer affiliated with Siemens.

Unify is focused on unified collaboration and communication software. Circuit, an application released by Unify in 2014, enables business collaboration through a virtual conference room. As an application, Circuit can be installed on any device and works on laptops, tablets and mobile phones. The service also provides content storage with a contextual search. Circuit works in tandem with other Unify services such as OpenScape, an enterprise VoIP solution. OpenScape can support from 100 to 500,000 users with product derivations such as OpenScape UC, OpenScape Enterprise Express and OpenScape 4000. A selection of different desk phones and wireless phones are also sold under the OpenScape name. Unify also has services for contact centers, known as OpenScape Contact Center Agile and Enterprise. These services allow contact centers to route customer inquiries, manage calling records, adjust agent workflow and manage campaign strategies. For those that do not have a physical contact center, there is the OpenScape Cloud Contact Center, which integrates with multiple CRM options.

Although Unify has only been a separate company since 2013, it has already started to collect awards for leadership and excellence. In late 2013, Unify received the Frost and Sullivan Market Leadership Award, which is presented to the company that captures the largest market share within its industry. More recently, a Bulgarian Unify Shared Services Center won the Shared Service Center of the Year Award. To win the award, Unify defeated teams from powerhouses like Coca-Cola, Cargill, and AIG. Unify continues to expand its reach. In early 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense added Unify to its approved products.

About Salesforce High Velocity Sales

In 2016, the cloud-based CRM software Salesforce launched Salesforce Lightning, a completely revamped version of Salesforce that allows businesses to design their own applications and integrate them into the Salesforce Cloud App. Salesforce Lightning is the twenty-first century, public version of the component-based framework that produced the Salesforce 1 mobile app, but Lightning is reimagined so that companies can customize and optimize their CRM software to best suit their needs. Salesforce Lightning gives businesses the freedom and flexibility to revamp their user interfaces across a myriad of devices, including desktop, tablet, and smartphone.

Salesforce Lightning has several elements that let businesses create, manage, and customize their own interface. Salesforce Lightning Component Framework provides a user interface framework for developing flexible web applications for all devices. More specifically, the Lightning Component Framework provides discreet components directly “out of the box,” which gives businesses accessible components that are immediately available to be customized and developed for their own needs. In addition, the Lightning Component Framework uses event-driven architecture, which means that each component can be ascribed to any application event. This framework allows components to be used discretely from each other, or work with each other, depending on the specific needs of each business. The Lightning Design System can bring together standard and customizable components together seamlessly, which allows variable components to work together effortlessly. Using components to build apps facilitates parallel design work, promotes faster development, and augments efficiency. Salesforce Lightning is always connected to the server, but only calls the server when necessary, which maximizes the program’s efficiency and diminishes lag time.

Salesforce Lightning App Builder offers developer tools and design resources which allow companies to build more sophisticated apps easily. Components are available from a drag and drop library, which means that companies can build on a strong architecture instead of having to build individual components from scratch. In addition, the Lightning App Builder allows the apps to be built visually, making App Builder user-friendly and more manageable.

Other key elements of Salesforce Lightning include easily customizable dashboards, opportunity boards, activity feeds, device flexibility, and app scalability. With customizable dashboards, businesses and customers can manage their own visual profile and add the right amount of columns and details, while activity feeds allow for real-time data visibility. Salesforce Lightning’s device flexibility makes it clearly visible and understandable across all devices, intuitively working across a variety of device operating systems. Also, the apps produced individually by businesses can be sold on the AppExchange, which allows business to exchange and collaborate with others in their field.