More
businesses are buying
unified communications products. Worldwide sales have increased
by 21% between 2005 and 2006, to £191m, according to analyst
Infonetics Research.
Matthias
Machowinski, a directing analyst at Infonetics Research, said,
"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 two key components that
form the cornerstone of unified communications:
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,”
he said.
Infonetics also
said that worldwide sales of
IP contact centre applications - including automatic call
distribution, interactive voice response, and computer telephony
integration - totalled £253m in 2006, a 26% increase over 2005.
Avaya is the leader in the worldwide
unified messaging market by sales, said Infonetics. But its top
competitors, including Nortel, Cisco and
Alcatel-Lucent (in that order), are gaining fast, said the
analyst.
Alcatel-Lucent is
the market share leader for worldwide communicator sales, and
Siemens and Avaya are neck and neck close behind.
In the IP contact
centre market, Avaya leads, followed by Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and
Nortel.
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