Study: Unified communications to dominate by 2018

As organizations deal with increasing challenges and uncertainty, raising communication efficiency has become more crucial than ever. While the concept of unified communications (UC) has been around for some time, it continues to present enterprises with new opportunities for productivity improvement.

According to Manoj Menon, partner and Asia-Pacific managing director for Frost and Sullivan (Frost), UC is the integration of various tools and applications used within an enterprise and with external partners for business communications.

UC on the rise

Speaking at Frost and Sullivan's Unified Communications Summit, Menon puts UC on the same level of importance as other major issues like rising oil prices and the U.S. economic slowdown.

"UC is expected to become the norm among enterprises 10 years from now," he said. "IP telephony has already become standard deployment in most markets today." Menon added that increasing business collaborations and changing user communication preferences have driven demand for UC solutions. Consequently, competition among vendors has heated up, with giants like Microsoft seeking a piece of the UC market.

Creating business value UC solutions provide enterprises the opportunity to reduce total cost of ownership and raise productivity, according to Menon. "For example, McDonald's U.S. operations use a centrally hosted IP telephony solution to cut manpower needed to handle customer orders."

However, he noted several deployment challenges including communication security and reliability, as enterprises are still in the "early stages" of adopting such solutions.

Interoperability is another issue. "Because no single vendor can currently provide a complete end-to-end UC solution, enterprises need to leverage on offerings by multiple vendors," Menon said. He added that UC applications are adopted in phases, with strong growth in demand for conferencing and mobility applications. "UC is also driving IP telephony upgrades." "When enterprises consider a particular UC vendor, they should also consider other players in the vendor ecosystem to ensure successful deployment," Menon said.