Unified Communications Market Growing and Wide OpenUnified Communications Market Growing and Wide Open

Initially, companies installed IP PBXs to reduce their voice communications costs. Now that some of those benefits are being realized, corporations are searching for new business applications to run on top of those systems, and unified communications has emerged as a prime option.Market research firm DellOro Group found that worldwide unified communications topped the $3 billion mark up six percent -- during the third quarter of 2008. New features are enticing uses to deploy these applications. Graphical corporate directories and web browsing are becoming common telephony features. Also, caller ID logs and voice mail indications are becoming more widely available in cell phones and soft phones. These advances help companies improve corporate productivity and justify application deployment.

Because of the growth, a number of vendors have been pushing into this area. Avaya is the current market leader with 22% of that market. Cisco is second with 18% followed by Nortel with 11%. In addition, Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, and Microsoft as well as a slew of startups have been vying for attention.

The growth and competition should benefit small and medium businesses. Innovation will continue in the smart phone market and even more software applications should emerge in 2009. Also as the vendors fight for market share, they will try to deliver price competitive products. The end result is businesses should find it even easier to make a case for deploying these systems in 2009.

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