A new IDC MarketScape report has found that Cisco, Microsoft and Avaya are leaders in the unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) market for 2013.
“UC&C customers have a variety of excellent platforms to choose from, but also the challenge of figuring out which vendor solutions are most appropriate for them,” says Rich Costello, senior research analyst: Unified Communication/Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC.
“Selecting a UC&C vendor solution should be based on several factors including whether vendors meet the organisational criteria for call control, user profiles, communication and collaborative applications, cost savings and benefits, and revenue-generating opportunities.”
Other vendors profiled in this IDC MarketScape analysis and ranked as either Major Players or Contenders in the UC&C market include Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Digium, Huawei, IBM, Interactive Intelligence, Mitel, NEC, ShoreTel, Siemens Enterprise Communications, and Toshiba America.
IDC is seeing renewed interest in UC&C solutions, driven particularly by segments such as mobility, collaboration, video conferencing, and business process integrations with communications (CEBP). In addition, a good percentage of the global market is still slowly transitioning (or planning to transition) from old telephony and messaging platforms to new UC&C platforms and solutions.
However, many companies still face challenges over issues such as cost justification, return on investment (ROI), identifying proper use cases, implementation and support skills, and the integration complexities associated with UC&C deployment projects.