Unisys buys Unify Square to improve UC management

IT service firm Unisys has announced the acquisition of UC app security and management company Unify Square. Unisys expects the purchase to improve the services it provides to customers with a hybrid workforce.

Unisys said this week that it will pay $152.5 million in cash for Unify Square. Unisys closed the deal Thursday.

Unify Square, headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., sells PowerSuite, a cloud-based product that helps companies manage their use of Teams, Zoom, Skype for Business and Microsoft 365. The company's software allows IT to monitor application performance, track employee adoption of collaboration apps, set policies across multiple platforms, and detect policy violations and data privacy issues. It competes with UC management vendors Riverbed, Voss and Empirix.

Raul Castanon, an analyst at 451 Research, said the acquisition should help Unisys address some security, application performance and compliance issues faced by companies with remote workers.

"All of these are areas that differentiate Unify Square," he said.

Unisys, provides managed IT, systems integration and consulting services, planned to add Unify Square's offerings to its digital workplace products.

Unisys CEO Peter Altabef said in a statement that he believes the purchase will drive revenue growth, as he expects the unified communications market to grow. Unify Square CEO John Case said the companies have a shared vision for helping customers transition to a hybrid workplace.

Irwin Lazar, an analyst with Metrigy, said the acquisition will bolster Unisys' offerings while providing Unify Square with access to the Unisys customer base.

Mike Gleason is a reporter covering unified communications and collaboration tools. He previously covered communities in the MetroWest region of Massachusetts for the Milford Daily News, Walpole Times, Sharon Advocate and Medfield Press. He has also worked for newspapers in central Massachusetts and southwestern Vermont and served as a local editor for Patch. He can be found on Twitter at @MGleason_TT.