TMCnet Unified Communications Week in Review

 No matter the size of your business or what industry it inhabits, one thing every company has in common is their immediate need for a unified communications platform. Powering rich, high-quality interactions amongst a geographically dispersed employee and customer base is key to firms keeping their competitive edge in addition to measuring up to increasing demands.

This week in the space, it was revealed in a recent report from UC Strategies that as the UC industry expands the necessity for efficient management solutions that can keep mobile devices protected from cyber attacks, while simultaneously enabling IT administrators to much more closely see the actions taking place on these devices and applications will grow significantly in 2013. Not only will UC continue to be adopted rapidly but carrier management, consultation, application development and management, bring your own device (BYOD) and mobile device management offerings will also be leveraged by the masses in the not so distant future, the report added.

An additional and extremely interesting fact highlighted by the source claims that more entrants expanding their footprint into the unified communications space will lead to the vertical becoming much more competitive this year. Another variable that can be attributed to the increased competition is the fact that next generation communications offerings are always being introduced into the corporate environment as way to reduce costs while raising the bar on customer satisfaction.

In other news, headlines were made when join.me, an instant online meeting and screen sharing service from LogMeIn (News - Alert), was selected by Scripps Networks Interactive to enable its product development and project management teams to work together in a much more cohesive manner.

Before beginning to implement this next generation platform, Scripps was using an outdated Web conferencing solution that was prohibitively expensive as well as slow. The company quickly realized it needed a more cost-effective offering that could increase efficiency throughout its entire workforce.

 “The intuitive nature and fast start time of join.me make our daily product development meetings much more productive and effective, while opening the doors for more ad-hoc collaboration sessions between teams,” said Bud Ketterl, vice president of Project Management at Scripps Interactive Networks (News - Alert), in a statement.

Closing out the week, ACT Conferencing, a company deeply rooted within the integrated conferencing vertical, joined hands with Vidtel (News - Alert), a cloud-based video conferencing provider. The alliance was formed with the sole purpose of introducing a cloud-based video conferencing services to businesses.

 "ACT and Vidtel share a common belief in delivering visionary products and cost innovation which improve reliability and the user experience," elaborated Gary Iles, vice president of sales and marketing for ACT Conferencing in a statement. "Our mutual commitment to that winning combination is why we're excited about the partnership and the opportunities that we're already seeing in the market."

The cloud service is touted as seamlessly integrating i H.323, SIP, Skype (News - Alert), Google Talk and WebRTC endpoints into a single virtual meeting room, serving as an innovative video conferencing solution that firms will benefit significantly from.

For all of the most vital breaking news in the industry, be sure to stay tuned to the unified communications community, exclusively on TMCnet!

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.