Unify Square Touts Revamped ‘Skype for Business’ Managed Service

A month after releasing a substantially overhauled version of their Skype for Business management platform, officials at software vendor Unify Square were as certain as ever that the year spent reworking the solution was time well spent.

PowerAssurance is a remote managed service offering built around the company’s upgraded PowerSuite automated, end-to-end infrastructure monitoring and reporting platform.

The PowerSuite software can be purchased a-la-carte for use by in-house IT staff or third-party managed services providers (MSPs).

When combined with NOC monitoring by Unify Square’s service delivery team, the PowerAssurance solution is designed to minimize downtime and dramatically reduce the number of dedicated IT staff required to manage Skype for Business.

During beta testing and early service rollouts of PowerAssurance, headcount required to manage the enterprise collaboration technology was reduced by an average of 88 percent.

“We now have the industry’s most comprehensive managed service solution for Skype for Business,” said Scott Gode, vice president of product marketing for Unify Square. “Now, IT teams can spend less time managing and trouble-shooting Skype for Business, freeing them up for other IT needs.”

The PowerAssurance offering includes remote automated oversight of service availability, infrastructure support, end user support, provisioning, service management, reporting, architecture and operations planning, and management of gateway and endpoint devices.

Clients can subscribe to one of three managed services options. The top tier, Smart Services Plus, includes device provisioning and management, remote provisioning and policy compliance management, and Skype for Business phone number management.

All but a few of Unify Square’s customers are companies of 10,000 seats and above, Gode said.

PowerAssurance is aimed at relieving the enterprise customer’s in house IT staff from the burden of deploying, monitoring and troubleshooting Skype for Business, and reducing the operational cost, estimated by one Nemertes report at $266 per endpoint or license.

Instead of just monitoring and reporting, the PowerSuite platform proactively audits system health and availability, which Unify Square officials say results in fewer outages and increased productivity.

The technology also has an algorithm-based customer satisfaction measurement feature that selects the perfect moment based on keyboard activity – and flashes a single question asking the user to rate their Skype for Business experience.

“Our brains, not just brawn approach allows us to provide economies of scale that reduce our client’s costs, increase their productivity and free up valuable engineering resources,” Unify Square CEO Sonu Aggarwal said. “Enterprise customers come to us for the truly elite expertise … offered by our PowerAssurance’s service delivery team.”

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