A number of industry reports today are highlighting current growth in the Unified Communications (News - Alert) “UC” market and even labeling the technology as the new “buzz” for 2010.
But one analyst with an IT research firm begs to differ.
“It’s a stretch to classify Unified Communications as a “new buzzword” for 2010,” said Diane Myers, directing analyst for Service Provider VoIP & IMS at Infonetics, in an interview with TMCnet.
“In 2008, UC started to really gain traction in terms of marketing hype and vendor solution roll-outs. From a hosted UC perspective, the focus in 2009 and into 2010 is really the growing availability of hosted UC to complement either hosted e-mail solutions or hosted IP-PBX (News - Alert) services.”
According to Myers, hosted UC can be defined as, “an aggregation of hosted telephony, presence/IM, and messaging – like e-mail - with additional capabilities such as collaboration and conferencing.”
While VoIP technology undoubtedly plays an integral role in the overall UC picture, it is still “only one piece” of the puzzle, Myers said.
“In terms of hosted services, businesses may already have IP telephony and they want to take it one step further by adding integrated presence, IM and email all controlled through a single user interface. This single interface is all about providing users the ability to communicate – phone, IM, e-mail – in the most effective manner possible.”
Recently, Infonetics reported that the UC industry is projected to soar by more than 100 percent over the next four years and will top $1 billion by 2013.
According to Myers, this forecast for the worldwide hosted UC market is “in the ballpark.”
“When you consider that hosted UC is a recurring monthly charge for operators and that slightly more than $1 billion by 2013 is really only a fraction of the overall hosted business VoIP market.”
Stefania Viscusi is an assignment editor for TMCnet, covering voice and Voice over IP technologies. She also oversees production of TMCnet's e-Newsletters in the areas of Internet telephony and speech technology. To read more of Stefania's articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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