This Week in UC: New Opportunities in SMB Market

A new report from Frost & Sullivan gave some new insights into Unified Communications (News - Alert) and the marketplace.

The small and medium businesses sector offers a great market opportunity for unified communications vendors and service providers, says Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert), a growth partnership company, says that SMBs are eager to benefit from advanced communication features.

According to the company, the communications capabilities that were once reserved for larger enterprises have now permeated the world of small to medium businesses. However, lacking the IT and financial resources that larger enterprises enjoy, small businesses require solutions that are inexpensive, as well as easy to deploy and manage. 

These market trends will be discussed during Frost & Sullivan's next Analyst Briefing on Unified Communications adoption in the SMB sector on Thursday, July 1.

In the briefing Dorota Oviedo, industry analyst for unified communications and collaboration group, will analyze trends in premises-based and hosted unified communications targeted at the SMB sector, key challenges in the European SMB sector, and also present vendor strategies for success.

Frost & Sullivan also announced  that they rated LifeSize (News - Alert) Communications as the top HD video communications service provider serving the healthcare market and has presented the '2010 Global Visual Collaboration Price Performance Value Leadership' award to LifeSize.

Global healthcare market is fast evolving and by deploying visual communications technologies healthcare providers can enhance the accessibility to medical care as well as keep the rising financial costs of healthcare delivery in control.

Elsewhere in the UC Market GetThere, a travel and collaboration management solution provider, announced it is partnering with India communications provider Tata Communications (News - Alert) to offer public and private Telepresence rooms to customers who demand virtual meetings.

The new collaboration will offer GetThere customers access to Tata communications' network of public Telepresence rooms situated around the globe.

Telepresence will let participants experience life-size HD video and audio communication and give them the sense that they are in the same room. It will assist in effective collaboration in a wide variety of interactions, from standard meetings and recruiting interviews to training sessions.

And Damaka, a provider of technology in the fields of mobile unified communications and collaboration, has announced  that it plans to further spread its presence, instant messaging, audio/video, real-time live multi-party video conferencing and application-sharing offerings to the Apple iPad.

The mentioned features are presently available on iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian (News - Alert) devices.

This Damaka application, which is the first of its kind in the industry, leverages the large form factor and mobility of the iPad, by providing key features like live video, application/desktop sharing and multi-party video conferencing. Users will be able to easily toggle between full screen and small view formats.