Unified Communications Week in Review

Let’s close out the week with some technology news highlights. Here’s what has happened with unified communications.

Sprint (News - Alert) made headlines this week as it has made plans to bring RCS services to its customers. The new service, Messaging Plus, is a cloud-based enhanced messaging service that will allow users to invite their contacts on any carrier in the United States to download it to their device and start exchanging texts, IM, group messaging and video chat with anyone else, regardless of carrier.

“Sprint is the first national wireless carrier to enable cloud-based enhanced messaging features that can be downloaded on select smartphones for consumer use with multiple carriers," proclaims the press announcement.

Siemens Enterprise (News - Alert) will ditch its current branding to become Unify, the reveal made at events in Munich and New York City recently.

"Unify is uniquely positioned to lead our customers and the industry toward the emergence of a new way to work that will transform how enterprises communicate and collaborate, where technology will amplify the collective effort of information workers, energize teams and processes, and enhance business performance," said Unify CEO Hamid Akhavan, in a statement. "Our Siemens history is rich and the connection to our heritage as market innovators remains strong. Our new brand brings to life our vision, backed by dedicated employees around the world, a strong partner community, and an unwavering commitment to help our customers and more than 45 million users find positive returns on their technology investments."

Read more about how the rebranded company will focus on IT, BYOD and other unified communications platforms from the full report.

Last but not least, Polycom announced its Polycom VVX Business Media Phone (News - Alert) portfolio is now interoperable with BroadSoft UC services.

According to the report, BroadSoft (News - Alert) UC will be available on Polycom VVX 500 and 600 in the first quarter of this year.

Yaniv Masjedi, vice president of marketing, Nextiva, says the solution offers “the best in business communication and is an excellent addition to the market with its seamless user experience, the openness of its customer platform and the mobility it allows."

That’s it for this week’s unified communications week in review. Be sure to visit the unified communications site for up to the minute news on all things UC.