Unified Communications Featured Article

Unified Communications Week in Review: Open for Business

By Steve Anderson
Contributing TMCnet Writer

Unified communications (UC) is a field that's making a lot of gains, in education, in homes to some extent, and perhaps clearest of all, in business. This week in UC featured several critical developments for UC in the enterprise, and now that we've got a weekend at our doorstep, it's a good time to take a step back and consider the wider impact of all this news, a process made simpler by consulting our Week in Review coverage!

First we saw a new star rise in Gartner's Magic Quadrant studies in the form of Orange Business Services, a firm offering up cloud-based unified communications services for business users. Gartner (News - Alert) put Orange Business Services into its Leaders quadrant owing to Orange's Business Together as a Service system, and this represented the only company to be placed in the Leaders quadrant this time around. Orange (News - Alert) also packs in a variety of other services, from voice and video to conferencing and mobility, making it an increasingly powerful name in the field.

Then we had a look at Cisco (News - Alert)'s Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS), and a new addition to said system. Specifically, Cisco brought in VOSS-4-UC to join HCS version 10.1.1, and in turn, provide access to new breeds of Web portals, as well as automation tools, simplification of MACD administration tools, UC interface and component modules, and several other tools. The addition also opens up the way for other VOSS partners to distribute the system to contacts in major multinational firms or government entities.

A deal between Telstra and Tata Communications was the focus of our next point, as a deal between the pair called for a network-to-network interconnections agreement, giving Telstra (News - Alert) access to fully 116 points of presence established and operated by Tata, giving Telstra both tier-2 and tier-3 access to cities throughout India including Trichy, Surat and Jaipur. In turn, those turning to Tata's subsea cable network—said to be the most advanced on Earth—will get access to the same kind of security and service quality normally afforded to Telstra users.

Then reports from several analyst firms, ranging from Infonetics Research to the Dell (News - Alert)'Oro Group and beyond, started to emerge about the overall state of several markets as looks back at the second quarter of 2014 have begun in earnest. While several differences are on hand, the general consensus seems that applications for the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud-based voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and UC are all on the rise, with UC seeing steady gains in business deployment worldwide.

Finally, we had a look at the high definition (HD) voice market into 2019, and that market was set for some pretty impressive expansions as well. The market was expected to reach about $2.297 billion in 2019, up from $815.5 million in 2014, with North America set to lead the charge in terms of market size, and Europe and the Asia-Pacific market set to make substantial contribution as well. A market of this projected size will bring in competition as well, so new developments are likely to be brisk in the field.

That was the week that was in UC, and for enterprise users, this was one big week indeed. A host of new developments kept our global online community hopping, and bringing back all the best in news this week. So be sure to join us back here next week for all the latest from the field, and every weekend as well for our Week in Review coverage!