Unified Communications: More in Store for Channel in 2011

Those who monitor the unified communications and collaboration space saw a lot of action in 2010. Advances in technologies, a shift in standards and myriad partnerships have morphed UCC into a technology that many now consider a must-have rather than a nice-to-have, and the channel can bet there’s more to come in 2011. What did we see in 2010 and what can we expect to see in the next year? Read on …

The hype around unified communications in 2010 stemmed largely from a corporate need to do more with less. Lower travel budgets and fewer employees forced many companies to consider UCC as a way to help their employees be more productive while not sending them to an early grave. Vendors and channel partners alike recognized the opportunity and responded in kind.

Open standards ruled the UCC space in 2010 as technologies from vendors such as Polycom to Siemens Enterprise Communications touted their ability to interoperate with other open standards-based offerings, thus expanding the market for the channel. And to help propagate the technology further, a number of vendors forged alliances as a way to offer end-to-end solutions.

And technologies that once were the purview of the large enterprise due to their large footprint and large price tag were brought down to a more manageable, flexible size, making them ready for corporate prime time. Video, for example, moved out of the conference room and onto the desktop, as offerings from Avaya, Microsoft (through a partnership with Polycom) and Cisco hit the market.

So now that UCC is becoming more of a household name, what does 2011 have in store? Channel partners can expect to see even more collaboration between vendors, as mobility becomes the latest trend in UCC technology. Indeed, mobility have an incredible impact on the way communications technologies are packaged and delivered to users in 2011.

Also, channel partners can expect to see more in the way of truly complete UC solutions. The problem thus far with UCC is no vendor offered a soup-to-nuts solution – one that natively included voice, video, presence, IM, mobility and all other elements of UC. Microsoft Lync apparently has changed that. Other vendors, I expect, will follow suit, either through homegrown innovation of through acquisitions.

It’s safe to say that 2011 will see more action in UCC, which is good news for solution providers in the communications and collaboration space. Let’s hope the direction UCC takes in 2011 is as fruitful as the path it took in 2010.

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