“There has to be the vision to invent a new market category or to significantly improve an existing one. You have to create something that really matters,” says Ray Pasquale, CEO and Founder of Unified Office, Inc.
Through this edition entitled, Inspiring Business Leaders Making a Difference, we at Insights Success are on a journey to find significant personalities who strive ceaselessly to make a positive impact on the world.
This is the story of Ray Pasquale and his journey that exemplifies passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Ray has over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. He has held senior executive positions at Cascade Communications, Ascend Communications, Lucent Technologies, and Sonus Networks, to name a few.
When asked about how he defines himself as an entrepreneur, Ray states, “I try to tread the delicate balance between demonstrating commitment to purpose and a willingness to pivot when necessary. I have learned over the years that it is very important to relentlessly focus on execution and to be willing to listen to your customers and your employees.”
Talking about his source of inspiration, Ray says, “I have always been inspired by Steve Jobs and the way he transformed the music player market back in 2001 with the introduction of the iPod and later the iPhone. We at Unified Office are also transforming the VoIP and UC market in much the same way.”
A Benchmark of Quality
Unified Office is a highly innovative managed services provider offering reliable, hybrid cloud-based business communications services, IoT services, and real-time data analytics.
Ray started the company because he saw a shift in work habits with companies becoming increasingly virtual. Geographic distance had to become irrelevant. The only way to accomplish this was to first make Voice over the Internet (VoIP) work reliably without the need for expensive legacy techniques like T1 or MPLS circuits. Once Unified Office achieved this, it was time to make their VoIP service go to work for small and medium-sized businesses.
Unified Office’s unique service architecture is the result of the team’s collective 150 years of experience in both the telecommunications service provider and large enterprise data networking industries. “Our executive team has designed protocols, developed scalable products, and integrated, deployed, and supported carrier-grade equipment in many of the largest converged networks around the world,” adds Ray.
Unified Office’s service and product offerings are constantly evolving in order to provide unmatched quality, reliability and innovations in a highly configurable platform that caters to a multitude of different vertical markets.
Unified Office helps improve operational excellence through its Internet of things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, and Real-Time Data Analytics services. And, the company offers all of this within the context of a 24/7 managed service that allows customers to focus on running their business.
Talking about the work culture at Unified Office, Ray states, “We pride ourselves in providing a safe and nourishing work environment that values and welcomes open communication and close collaboration across teams, encourages employees to think outside of the box, fosters creativity and new ideas, and empowers our employees to make their own decisions. We strive to appreciate our employees’ uniqueness, diversity, and individual skills, and to encourage personal growth.”
Changing the Ordinary
Explaining how Unified Office revolutionised the telecom market, Ray states, “Many VoIP/UC companies came into being in the early 2000s largely by disrupting the pricing of the legacy PBX phone market with little to no innovation. This came primarily from centralizing a PBX in the cloud that would handle hundreds of subscribers independent of location via a VoIP desk phone. There was an inherent lack of quality and reliability because the Internet was not built for real-time applications like voice communications.”
“Unified Office—through our hybrid cloud, managed, voice-business communications services and products delivered to small and medium sized businesses—disrupted this market paradigm. We invented our patented Highest Quality Routing Protocol™ (HQRP™) over this “Over The Top” (OTT) transmission technology that calculates in real-time thousands of diverse paths through its network of servers across the country, creating paths for the reliable and flawless transmission of voice and data over the Internet.”
Towards New Horizons
Asking Ray what advice he would give to aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders, he offered, “We live in a real-time, hyper-connected, push-button world today, which is evident in the ubiquitous adoption of smart phones, on demand taxi and rideshare services, near real-time product delivery and ever-increasing broadband speeds. People expect an immediate response when shopping for things. It is really important to help your customers navigate and adapt to this fast-changing world.”
As for Unified Office’s ambitions for the near future, the company will continue to evolve and transform the communications marketplace helping businesses of all types adapt to the speed of market changes that occur at a pace that is historically unprecedented.
Ray Pasquale, CEO and Founder, Unified Office, Inc.
