The Leading Managed Services Provider of Business Class Communications Services: Unified Office Inc.

Ray Pasquale, CEO and Founder of Unified Office, saw an opportunity to reinvent the Voice over IP (VoIP) communications market to help business deal with today’s real-time impatient culture. He also wanted to help them leverage their voice communications in ways that would generate increased revenues and profits for them. Lots of VoIP/UC companies came into being in the early 2000s by disrupting the pricing of the legacy PBX voice market but provided little to no differentiation or response to ever-changing market forces.

There was also an inherent lack of quality and reliability largely because the Internet was and is
still not built for real-time applications like voice communications. The founder wanted to reinvent this market much in the same way Steve Jobs reinvented the music player market back in 2001 with the introduction of the iPod and, of course, later the iPhone. Ray and his company are relentless innovators that never stand still. The company always listens to its partners and customers and responds to their unique needs.

Q&A with Ray Pasquale, CEO and Founder of Unified Office

What challenges did you face in your initial years?

The challenges were many but one of the biggest challenges was attempting to enter a legacy market and convince investors and customers that what we are offering is uniquely different from all the other products and services out there. It takes time, money, willingness to adapt quickly, and sheer perseverance to succeed.

To turn every challenge into success, we are constantly looking for ways to innovate and are never satisfied with what we built yesterday. We are always looking ahead to identify those things that will make a material difference in the lives of our customers. That’s what it takes to build any successful company today.

What was the triggering factor for your company?

As I stated earlier there has been very little innovation in business voice communications over the last several years. Meanwhile, the world has changed, real-time delivery of products from Amazon, ubiquitous adoption of smartphones, social networking. All of these things have conspired together to completely reshape the business landscape and consumer expectations.

Also, I was raised by my parents at a very early age to contribute something that would change the world. I have been a part of some very successful companies with entrepreneurs who helped me along the way and who remain some of my best friends (and investors) to this day.

What makes you different and what is the reason your customers come back to you?

Being able to pivot and adapt to changing customer and market forces is key. It is important to make sure that everything you do is centered around your customer and that you are constantly creating value for them. Never settle.

What are the services that you offer?

Unified Office is a leading managed services provider offering reliable, hybrid, cloud-based business communications services, IoT services, unified communications, and intelligent analytics to Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs). Our Total Connect Now^SM service architecture was purpose-built from the ground up to deliver the highest quality of experience and availability, leveraging the latest in extensible business VoIP communications technology and cloud-based infrastructure to enhance SMB workforce productivity.

This unique architecture is the result of the team’s collective decades of experience in both the telecommunications service provider and large enterprise data networking industries. Our executive team has designed protocols, built scalable products, integrated, deployed and supported carrier-grade equipment into many of the largest converged networks around the world. Quality, dependability, innovation, service and support are core to our values.

Over the last 7 or 8 years, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions have generally been marketed to and purchased by large enterprises. There are hundreds of IoT solutions for countless use cases including remote asset tracking, factory automation, fleet services, energy/utility management, parking management, facilities management, smart vehicle enablement, and many others. We saw the opportunity to bring these types of services to the small and medium size business marketplace and that is what we are doing.

What are the five factors you followed that has aided your company?

• Hire the right people
• Love your customers
• Love your resellers and partners
• Have great investors
• Be a relentless innovator

What are your plans for the future?

We have plans to provide additional Internet of Things services, new Big Data services such as Sentiment Analysis and much more. Looking ahead I see us continuing to evolve and transform the communications marketplace, relentlessly innovating and helping businesses adapt to the speed of market changes that are occurring at a pace that is historically unprecedented.

Introducing the Leading Man

Ray Pasquale, CEO and Founder:

Ray has more than 20 years of experience as an entrepreneurial technology professional. He has extensive sales and customer engineering experience along with proven management team leadership in dynamic, emerging technology companies. Ray was a founding member of Sonus’ services organization, recruiting many of its most senior members. From 1996 until 1999 Ray was a key technical leader and sales consultant for Cascade Communications’ worldwide sales organization.

He has many years of experience working with big infrastructure equipment providers who sold to communications service providers such as, Level 3, ATT, Sprint, etc.

"Unified Office is a leading managed services provider offering reliable, hybrid, cloud-based business communications services, IoT services, unified communications, and intelligent analytics to Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs).”