Source: Gartner (July 2010)
In 2010, vendor consolidation in the UC market continued with, most notably, Nortel being acquired by Avaya, and Cisco acquiring Tandberg. From a product perspective, Cisco and Microsoft maintained their strong leads, while Avaya continued to strengthen its portfolio. Product functionality overall increased, particularly in the areas of conferencing, mobility, server virtualization and session management. Additionally, we saw the emergence of complete UC suites from single vendors. Although the full suites are not yet competitive with best-of-breed portfolios, they suggest the direction for market leaders. Nonleading vendors will increasingly focus on niche market approaches and on best-of-breed capabilities. Most enterprises continue to leverage their existing strategic communication partnerships, and should expect to have two or three different UC vendors to complete their portfolio. Each vendor has at least one strength, for instance, in e-mail, telephony or networking, and each vendor seeks to expand its footprint within the enterprise. A common vendor strategy is bundling their lesser-known or weaker UC features with their stronger products. Another common strategy is the increased use of discounting and other incentives to allow new products into accounts.
Most enterprises take a longer-term approach to UC. They start by defining their strategy and longer-term direction. They then determine the most effective way to deliver this, while controlling costs, retaining control over their accounts and leveraging existing investments. Often, the UC initiative focuses on a particular project, and as some projects are completed, others are initiated. In this way, UC evolves as a process of continuous and incremental improvement. A strategy for accomplishing this is described in "Focus on UC Projects, Not on UC Technology," "Developing an Enterprise Unified Communications Road Map" and "Developing a Vision for Unified Communications." "Market Share: Enterprise Unified Communications Infrastructure, Worldwide, 2008" describes vendor market shares.
While most solutions today support key standards such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), an important distinction is the extent to which they federate and integrate with third-party products. Some solutions are intended primarily to enhance and operate within their own specific environments; although these solutions do work with third parties, their interoperation is often limited. Other products are clearly designed to interoperate in multiple environments, thus are more flexible. Currently, there is no best approach, and no vendor offers everything an enterprise needs for communication. Companies must make decisions by evaluating the emerging options based on their own objectives, and on how the options fit with the business's longer-term strategies.
The adoption of UC in enterprises by enterprises continues to increase; however, actual penetration as a percentage of market, and, in some cases, usage rates across an enterprise, remain low. This is the result of multiple technical and organizational issues, including:
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Enterprises have large investments in communication infrastructures that must be preserved; this leads to a slower evolutionary approach, rather than to the faster revolutionary "rip and replace" approach.
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Many applications and products are complex to deploy and may require organizational changes.
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The business case frequently is based on a soft ROI or a strategic investment, such as productivity improvements, rather than on hard ROI, such as cost savings. As a result, in a conservative economy, deployments occur slower, perhaps as part of a broader technology update.
Gartner expects these barriers to be resolved slowly, and during the next several years UC will become an accepted part of enterprise communication road maps and investments. As UC technologies and products are deployed, the challenge will shift from technology issues to organizational and change management.
Several vendors offer strong UC solutions, but were not included in this Magic Quadrant, because the inclusion criteria require that vendors have strong on-premises solutions in at least three of the six key technology areas. In the area of conferencing, Polycom offers strong solutions in conferencing, but does not offer solutions in other technology areas; Tandberg, which also offers a strong conferencing solution, is now part of Cisco. In the area of UM, Applied Voice & Speech Technologies (AVST) offers a best-of-breed UM solution. Finally, service providers, such as AT&T, Google, Verizon and BT, were not included in this document because they do not offer an on-premises solution. UC service solutions are described in the "Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, North America."
You can read the whole report here:
http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol10/article19/article19.html