Unified Communications Week in Review

If only holiday communication with your family was as easy as using a unified communications solution. When you need a break from turkey and uncomfortable conversations, kick back and catch up on this week's news from TMCnet's Unified Communications (News - Alert) community.

Avaya reported mixed Q4 financial results this week. Although its $1.2 billion in earnings beat its Q3 performance, revenue was down 6 percent compared with Q4 of 2012. To spur growth, Avaya (News - Alert) pushed more than 100 new products through the pipeline in 2013. The company also saw growth in its government business. Avaya Government Solutions announced the U.S. Navy plans to deploy Avaya IP phones on its San Antonio-class amphibious warships.

Also this week, Unify, the artist formerly known as Siemens (News - Alert) Communications, debuted Version 7 of its OpenScape 4000 convergent IP communication platform. Version 7 includes a new One Number Service that enables employees to stay connected from any location. Additionally, Version 7 increases telephone security by switching encryption keys every 60 seconds during phone calls. The OpenScape 4000 update is available from Unify and its partners.

Broadview announced this week that it had won a spot in Gartner's 2013 Magic Quadrant for UCaaS. Broadview's Office Suite is a complete phone system for businesses, to which Broadview Networks (News - Alert) adds contact center functionality, CRM integration applications and multisite data networking alternatives. The company made a big push in VoIP this year, and CEO Brian Crotty said that Broadview's investments put Gartner (News - Alert) under the company's magic spell.

Finally, MarketsandMarkets released a report predicting that global UCaaS revenue would grow to $7.62 billion by 2018. According to the report, many organizations deploy UCaaS on top of existing solutions, creating a hybrid UC infrastructure. Organizations use UCaaS for telephony more than any other technology, and cloud telephony will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.3 percent over the next five years.

With that, we come to the end of the big UC news for Thanksgiving week. Try to hide in the back of the living room while your family watches football, or pretend to be asleep. If those ideas don't work, then explore the UC archives on TMCnet until you're finally allowed to go home.