IT major Microsoft and networking giant Cisco lead in the global unified communications market.

Microsoft received the highest marks from medium and large businesses participating in the survey, followed by Cisco, based on unified communications buyer criteria, including service and support, technology, price-to-performance ratio (value), and other criteria.

Following collaboration tools, the 2nd most important UC capability is mobile device integration.

Smartphones, tablet computers, videophones, and audio conferencing bridges are the fast-growing devices being deployed in unified communications architectures.

By 2012, 80 percent of survey respondents plan to use video as part of their unified communications architecture.

With higher-quality video capabilities coming out and declining costs, video is becoming a viable mechanism for enhancing employee interactions and reducing travel.

Companies think of unified communications as much more than just integrating voice, e-mail, and presence/IM. Creating flexibility and improving productivity by providing employees with a set of devices that allows them to work efficiently regardless of location has become absolutely critical and a huge driver for implementing UC.

Along those lines, the strong theme threaded throughout our new survey is the importance of mobility; vendors that effectively integrate mobility into their UC solution in a simple and easy-to-use manner will be best positioned for success in this market,” said Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research.

The report features enterprise ratings of 10 unified communications vendors: Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Mitel, Shoretel, Siemens, and Verizon.

By Telecomlead.com Team
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