Vendor Unison Technologies is offering businesses a free unified communications (UC) platform and is scouting for 100 UK VARs.

Unison’s free software includes advertisements from sponsors. An advert-free version is also available at $50 (£36) per user per year, or a one-off $36,000 fee per server.

Chief marketing officer Rurik Bradbury said one Unison Server could cater for firms with between 10 and 2,000 employees. He claimed Microsoft VARs and those selling PBXs would make ideal recruits.

“For Microsoft resellers, the margin on the software sell is next to nothing,” he said.

“This is a way for resellers to get a lot more projects.”

Bradbury said installation takes 20 minutes, against half a day for a Microsoft deployment. He claimed resellers could make margin on maintenance and installation and revealed margins on paid licences ranged from 20 to 50 per cent.

“Microsoft and IBM UC solutions are ridiculously expensive,” he said. “The software industry has a very staid business model; we wanted to buck the trend.”

But Scott Fletcher, chief executive of Microsoft and Cisco reseller ANS Group, said:

“They are coming up against some huge brands in this space. People want their staff working, not looking at adverts.”