Unified Communications Featured Article

Unified Communications Week in Review

By Adam Brandt
Web Editor

This week in unified communications has indeed been an eclectic one, with topics covering trending products in this vertical, to trends in the vertical itself.  Follow this author, all the way down the rabbit hole, as we explore the exciting world of UC.

MarketsandMarkets, a global research and consulting company, released this week a study highlighting current and future trends pertaining to the enterprise video market.  Amongst analyzing the current competitive landscape, MarketsandMarkets predicts that by 2019, enterprise video markets will have grown into a $32.87 billion industry.  Also covered in the study were the latest and greatest advancements in video technology, including highly efficient video codecs, alter-HD, and web real-time communication.  For more on this, check out the full article here.

Striving to create a simpler UC ecosystem is IceWarp (News - Alert), with the release of their all new IceWarp Mail Server 11.0.1 standalone mail service.  Serving small and massive businesses alike, IceWarp’s product is an attempt to carve out some of the enterprise UC space vastly controlled by Microsoft (News - Alert), by offering a full service solution that is both cheaper and less cumbersome than the Microsoft Suite.  With a range of add-on features and optional integration with Microsoft Outlook, IceWarp looks to be a promising contender in the world of enterprise unified communications.  For more information on IceWarp’s product, check out the full story here.

While IceWarp’s product attempts to simplify things for the IT department, Plantronics (News - Alert) is targeting cloud service providers (CSPs) with a pay-as-you-go communications solution.  Plantronics Device-as-a-Service, as it has been so aptly named, offers CSPs a 12-36 month program plan for providing UC to their customers.  To learn more about how this new product is digging out new revenue streams for the modern enterprise, click here.

On the eastern front, Nepal Telecom of Southern Asia announced this week plans to incorporate UC into its already nationally utilized service.  According to a spokesperson for NT, testing phases are already underway, and upon completion and assimilation, will allow users to wield such social media outlets as Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter through UCS.  Speaking greatly to the character of the company is the fact that, at least initially, UC services will be completely free to users, and while there are also talks about a premium service, basic model seems to cover most of the essentials.

For more on these or any other stories you may have missed, be sure to check out TMCnet’s Unified Communications page.