Unified Communications Week in Review: Mitel, Tadiran, Barnes & Noble

By Steve Anderson
Contributing TMCnet Writer

We close out the month of February in unified communications (UC) on a strong note, with plenty of news on new products and changes to the familiar. With the arrival of March, we start looking forward to warmer weather at last, but we can't forget to look forward to all the changes in UC, either. To get a better handle on how these changes will impact our everyday lives, it's good to take a bit of time to consider what was big news this week. That's just what we'll do now with our Week in Review coverage!

First came word from Mitel, who was recently featured in a Synergy (News - Alert) Research Group study that showed the company had almost twice the number of cloud communications subscribers—as well as seats—as the nearest competitor in the field. That would be impressive enough, but Mitel (News - Alert) actually accounted for fully 20 percent of all cloud communications, with over 850,000 cloud seats operating around the world. Mitel's versatility of offerings—in hybrid cloud, strictly private or public—were cited as one major reason for its success.

Next we turned to BroadSoft, who made an appearance at last month's ITEXPO Miami event to talk about not only its own success on the UC front, but also growth markets and the like within the field. BroadSoft (News - Alert)'s director of solutions product management, Asif Rehman, offered up some comment on the UC field in general, and BroadSoft in particular. Of note was the revelation that BroadSoft's biggest customers had brought out over 500,000 hosted UC seats so far, and that the mobile workforce would likely prove a big contributor to UC.

Barnes & Noble stepped in with a piece of news, launching a spinoff from the Barnes & Noble retail and Nook Digital businesses. Dubbed Barnes & Noble Education, the separation would reportedly allow the education arm of Barnes & Noble to better function, being a “pure-play” company with the necessary flexibility to go after opportunities in the field, like the increasing growth in digital educational content.

Then we had a look at cloud infrastructure, and the growing number of firms helping others build castles in this new cloud. With Microsoft putting a greater emphasis on the cloud in 2015, and Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) still a major part of things, a new report from RightScale—the “2015 State of the Cloud” report—shows that there have been a great many gains this year, and the competition is starting to get thick. While there are clear leaders, there are also plenty of up-and-comers, so the cloud market is likely to see plenty of changes in 2015.

Finally, we got a new report from Tadiran, whose Aeonix program landed the 2015 Unified Communications Product of the Year award from TMC (News - Alert). Tadiran's Aeonix got the nod thanks to what TMC CEO Rich Tehrani described as not only “...ingenuity and excellence...” but also “...groundbreaking work....” The Aeonix solution allows for easy deployment thanks to a software-based nature, and offers automated diagnostics as well as excellent recovery functions to help improve failover tolerance.

That was the week that was in UC, and it was clear that plenty took place this week. This is a market that's going to see plenty of changes before it's all said and done, and the best way to keep up with those changes is to turn to our global online community, always at the front of the line to bring back the best in news. So keep it here next week for all the latest, and every weekend as well for our Week in Review coverage!