Unified Communications Featured Article

New Fuze Patent Streamlines Contact Information

By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC

Big data and UC have been among the two most talked about trends in business communications in recent years. And Fuze’s recently granted patent brings these two important things together in an interesting new way.

The method described in U.S. patent 9,819,768 streamlines the management of contact information on clients’ devices. “The patented approach includes comparing a contact in a device’s address book with the contact in a server’s address book,” Fuze explains. “If there is only one matching contact on the server, Fuze technology merges any differing data and sends the updated data back to the device. If there are multiple matching contacts on the server, it selects the matching contact having the highest confidence value and sends that contact’s data to the device.”

A provider of cloud-based unified communications solutions, Boston-based Fuze delivers business collaboration, communications, and conferencing services. It has offices in Amsterdam, Aveiro (Portugal), Copenhagen, London, Madrid, Munich, New York, Ottawa, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, and Zurich.

In its 2017 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Gartner named Fuze an industry visionary, along with BroadSoft (News - Alert) and Mitel. Leaders in that Magic Quadrant include RingCentral, 8x8, Orange Business Services, Verizon, BT, and West. Challengers are Microsoft, Google, and AT&T (News - Alert). And niche players are NTT Group, Masergy, and Star2Star.

Gartner in the report notes that Fuze’s revenue is expanding the 40 percent, with particularly strong growth outside North America. It also notes the intuitive customer experience the company delivers, in recent investment resources, and the expansion of its solution portfolio. However, it cautions that Fuze deployments are often complex; its Asia Pacific business is still maturing; its brand awareness is low; and some customers report low satisfaction related to customer service, installation, and project management.