Did you ever wonder why software you use outside work is simple and user-friendly – but lots of software at work is an utter nightmare? Well we did, and came to a decision: let’s make a consumer-style app for communicating (features like in Skype or Facebook) but design it for business users.

We’ll keep the good bits, like simplicity and ease of use, but ditch the business-inappropriate bits, like silly bright colors, bouncy sound effects and wacky usernames. (My friend is an Oxford professor, but his Skype name is a variant on ‘MrBean’. He doesn’t use it for work.)

So, we proudly announce… Unison for Outlook.

Outlook is already one of the better apps to use at work – it’s effective at what it does. But we made it better. Unison for Outlook is a plugin that gives you a contact list, free/busy status, IM, calls, videochat and shared ‘walls’ – directly inside Outlook.

The user interface is simple. We didn’t throw in tons of features and buttons. It’s just a hassle-free way to talk to your colleagues, with one mouse click. Rather than reading this, though, you should just go and try it out.

So we’re back, after some time away. Here’s the tl;dr version: we tried something in 2008/09; it didn’t work; we learned some lessons; we ‘pivoted’; and now we have something new and cool.

The longer version goes like this:

We tried something new in 2008

When we launched in 2008, we were riding high on our new, fresh, unified approach to business communications. We had a client-server software system (Unison Desktop and Unison Server) that combined phone, email, IM and other things into one neat system. And we were based on Linux, which was also on a tear as people started to question whether they truly needed Windows anymore. And we offered it free (FREEEE!) which we hoped was a surefire winner.

But it did not work out

People didn’t want a new-fangled alternative, no matter how cool it was. They didn’t want to throw out their existing telecoms and email systems. They didn’t want take a chance on something different and risky. And they didn’t want another on-premise system to manage – they just wanted simplicity. So, after a while, we shelved the old Unison client-server product.

We learned some lessons from our failure

1. Challenge your assumptions aggressively
   We placed bets that were wrong and did not challenge the assumptions underlying them: we thought that on-premise servers and software would continue to be sold for some time; we thought that new features could overcome the inertia behind Microsoft Outlook; and we thought our business software’s low cost could overcome a lack of reputation. Wrong, wrong and wrong.
2. Don’t spend a long time building, before validating
   We spent a couple of years building software… that customers didn’t want.
3. Simple is always better
   Simplify the customer experience to the absolute minimum. Don’t make them think, don’t make them work, don’t give them features unless you know that 90% of users will actively use and like them.

So we pivoted and made something new and cool

We realized two important things: first, Microsoft Outlook was not going anywhere; and second, end users and not IT people were gaining control of business software. So we made Unison for Outlook, a superfantastic plugin that extends Outlook with lots of new capabilities, but is simple to use. More on that in our next post, Unison for Outlook, a superfantastic plugin. If you just want to try it, go here to download Unison.