The report, Unified Communications and IP Contact Center Market Outlook, says worldwide sales of unified communications applications increased 21% between 2005 and 2006, to $363 million, and are expected to grow in the high double digits each year from now at least through 2010.
"Unified communications is the buzz du jour in our industry, but there are a lot of different ideas out there for what it actually is.
What everyone seems to agree on, though, is that there are 2 key components that form the cornerstone of UC: unified messaging, which stores all message types, and communicator, a presence-enabled directory that shows contact availability by communication mode. A true UC user will have both, and in fact they are the top 2 applications being deployed by IP PBX adopters. The unified messaging market is already quite large, but communicator is in its infancy," said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst at Infonetics Research.
"The other topic getting a lot of attention these days is the IP contact centre. The contact centre market is well understood, and is undergoing a technology transition similar to the PBX market, from TDM to IP. That's causing the IPCC market to grow quite rapidly,"
Machowinski added.
Other highlights from the report:
- Unified messaging makes up the bulk of the unified communications market
- The communicator market is still very young, and growth is expected to be very strong due to its early stage and high demand
- Avaya leads the worldwide unified messaging market in 2006, but its top competitors, including Nortel, Cisco, and Alcatel-Lucent (in that order), are gaining
- Alcatel-Lucent is the market share leader for worldwide communicator revenue in 2006; Siemens and Avaya are neck and neck
- In the IP contact centre market, Avaya leads by far for worldwide revenue, followed by Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nortel