Top Unified Communications Predictions For 2008

In 2007, the vendor side of unified communications (UC) saw tremendous hype, while many buyers struggled with confusion, wondering exactly how to define UC and what UC meant for their businesses. Still, UC met a growing demand; more than 50% of enterprises now report that they are evaluating, installing, or running UC solutions. The great promise of UC is that it will enable communication with experts and decision-makers in order to facilitate the resolution of business issues when, where, and by whatever means is best suited to achieving the task at hand. What should you expect in 2008? Mobility will become an expected part of UC, video will come of age for multiple purposes, communication-enabled business processes will start providing return on investment (ROI), and hosted and software-as-a-service (SaaS) UC offerings and demand will grow. Don't expect federated presence to break out of the pack yet, though; interoperability and user-configuration tools remain roadblocks to adoption in the near term.