Odd as it is, company’s strategy of mining consumer business for solutions it can position for the enterprise does seem to be working — at least for now.
Story by Brian Riggs, NoJitter
Google has long been an oddity in the UC space. While it has had the opportunity to develop a business communications service more comprehensive than Hangouts, it has steadfastly declined to do so. And the company could easily — with what by Google standards would amount to spare change — buy a provider of cloud-based UC services. But this appears to interest the company none at all.
Perhaps this will change if Microsoft starts showing significant success with its still very new Cloud PBX-PSTN Calling add-ons to Office 365 and Skype for Business Online. More likely it won’t change until Google Apps for Work customers start demanding native UC, rather than having to turn to partners such as Dialpad, Halloo, and the various providers offering integration via gUnify, such as Ancoris, RingCentral, and Vonage. (At least I think Vonage has a telephony-for-Google Apps service. It used to, right? Before it bought gUnify? But I’m danged if I can find reference to it on its website.)
Until then Google pursues its curious “what’s good for consumers is good for businesses” approach to business communications. And, equally curious, it seems to be working — at least with businesses going all-in on Google in the workplace.
