Unified Communications to Top $4B in Five Years

The unified communications field is becoming increasingly complex and is projected to post gains over the next five years. Industry analysts offer their perspective on what's fueling the expansion as well as who the winners are in this booming sector.

Nothing better typifies the maxim "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" better than unified communications, which connects IP phones, messaging, and other telecom technologies to create a new information exchange.

To emphasize the point, recent research points to a "steeply rising curve of adoption" that estimates the UC market will reach $4.2 billion in 2014—up from just $302 million in 2008.

Key to the rapid expansion will be large enterprises that discover, for example, the IP phones they purchased for cost savings can be connected to their e-mail systems, producing an even better result: visual voicemail.

"Companies have been buying only those component technologies that they think will deliver immediate value," ABI Research practice director Stan Schatt told Enterprise VoIPplanet.

"It’s only later they that they start tying it all together as true unified communications," he said.

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