Unified Communications Looks to the Sky

To date, cloud computing has had little impact on the Unified Communications (UC) market. The underlying technology has been slow to fall into place, the cost of these services has been high, the benefits have been hard to pinpoint, and the distribution channel has been weak. Infrastructure providers, such Broadsoft, Cisco, and Microsoft, have been pushing to overcome those barriers and may be close to providing small and medium businesses with more UC cloud options.Market research firm In-Stat is seeing a change in how UC vendors market their products, with movement away from premises based solutions to more cloud based systems. Yet, UC services have been in a nascent stage of development for a variety of reasons. These solutions are complex and difficult to deploy, a lack of clear cut standards has made it difficult for vendors to connect different UC components, and no group, say traditional telcos or resellers, has stepped up to develop and promote UC services.

But a couple of factors could drive interest in the coming years. Vendors, such as Broadsoft, Cisco, and Microsoft, have been trying to fill in many of the missing pieces, and recent technological advances could help. SIP Trunking is becoming more common and is breaking down UC barriers. The emergence of highly functional smartphones has provided executives with one more network option, and they need a way to tie them together. Consequently, a wider range of UC services is expected to emerge in the next few years, with their focus  at least initially  squarely on small and medium businesses.