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Market Research firm In-Stat (News - Alert) has said that unified communications is migrating to the “cloud” as more and more vendors are positioning it as a service rather than a product. According to the findings of the recent study titled “Global Unified Communications (News - Alert) Emerges from the Cloud,” by In-Stat, infrastructure providers like Cisco, Broadsoft and Microsoft are associating closely with providers of hosted VoIP services.

 

Dave Lemelin, In-Stat analyst said that several flavors of unified communications are emerging from the ‘cloud’.

 

“There are versions that operate as a hybrid mix of customer-owned equipment with managed/hosted services targeting mid-size businesses, those that act as fully hosted offerings with smaller businesses in mind, and those that are revamped broadband telephony services targeting SOHO users,” Lemelin said.

 

Unified Communications bundle up voice, video, conferencing, messaging and presence with office and business-process applications to improve collaboration. Although unified communications has a long way to go, its growth will be driven by two major trends: SIP Trunking interconnecting unified communications islands and extension of unified communications to smartphones and other wireless data devices.

 

In-Stat also expects the growth of total revenues – product + service – from unified communications to touch $39.7 billion in 2013. Avaya, Cisco and Nortel (News - Alert) will continue to lead the unified messaging market. Recently, ABI Research predicted that the unified communications solutions market will reach nearly $4.2 billion in 2014.

 

The In-Stat study also encompasses examination of market trends across market segments and forecasts for products and services sold as part of a UC solution through 2013.

 

Scottsdale, AZ based In-Stat is a strategic segment of the $9 billion Reed Elsevier (News - Alert) global information network. In-Stat’s market intelligence combines technical, market and end-user research and database models to analyze the Mobile Internet and Digital Entertainment ecosystems.