Unified Communications Featured Article

Unified Communications Week in Review

By Jonathan Keane
Contributing Writer

The first week of April brought us a variety of news in the Unified Communications (News - Alert) industry. With the week coming to a close, we’ve chosen some of the best news stories below.

We start with news of a recent study that was published on Tuesday regarding the uptake of unified communications in business. We’re told that most companies intend to make the move soon and we should expect 13.8 percent rise in UC over the next couple of years. Evolve IP (News - Alert) carried out an in depth study on this topic to get some solid figures. It surveyed 1,000 respondents and found that 84 percent of organizations haven’t deployed UC yet but these organizations are looking to do in the next three years. The study also looked at those that have deployed UC and found that audio/Web conferencing is the most requested feature.

Speaking of growth, Montreal-based messaging services company ChitrChatr Communications Inc. announced this week that its new Comprehensive Universal Unified Communications Platform (CUUCP) is hotly anticipated by consumers with a rise of 388 percent in founding subscribers.

This growth in UC isn’t limited to the US and Canada though and we’re seeing a rise in the market in Latin America. To address this, value-added communications technology distributor CommLogik is expanding its services to these regions. “CommLogik is a value-added distributor focused on Latin America. We have an emphasis on communications, where we sell through partners in order to help their customers enable UC technologies,” said Kevin Fox from CommLogik, who was speaking with TMC (News - Alert) at an expo recently.

“We bring together all of the fundamental delivery elements within the UC platform, which includes video conferencing, connectivity, contact center, IP telephony and all the endpoints and the service required to integrate all these technologies.” The company is also the only gold partner of Lync.

In the area of new products and services, this week Sonexis Technology Inc. announced the expansion of its flagship conferencing product line. The company released the enhanced on-premise audio and web conferencing solution, ConferenceManager2. It is a more powerful solution than its predecessor and can work within any existing voice or data network along with Web conferencing built in.

Finally, on Friday we reported that Zultys (News - Alert), a provider of UC, had won the 2013 Unified Communications Excellence Award presented by TMC’s Internet Telephony magazine. Zultys was awarded for its Zultys MX250 IP phone system. “It gives me great pleasure to grant a 2013 Unified Communications Excellence Award to Zultys for its innovative MX250 and the team’s commitment to addressing the real needs of the marketplace,” said Rich Tehrani (News - Alert), CEO at TMC. “It’s inspiring to see such commitment to excellence and I look forward to many future innovations from Zultys.”