Two trends are poised to enhance the richness of unified communications, reports In-Stat. SIP trunking, now touted as a cost-saving mechanism, will ultimately enable interconnection of unified communications islands, thus enriching communications across suppliers, business partners, and customers. Second, the wireless industry’s evolution toward higher data rates is enabling the extension of unified communications to smartphones and other wireless data devices.

“The market is shifting to unified communications as a “cloud” service,” says David Lemelin, In-Stat analyst. “Infrastructure providers, like Avaya, Cisco, BroadSoft, and Microsoft, are working closely with hosted VoIP service providers to enable this shift.”

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

• Unified communications service revenues will rise to reach over $17 billion by 2013.
• The product side of unified communications is continuing to grow as well. Revenues will grow nearly three-fold between 2009 and 2013.
• Survey respondents ranked collaboration (file sharing) while in conference as the application of most importance.

The research, “Global Unified Communications Emerges from the Cloud”, covers the worldwide market for unified communications. It includes:

• Examination of market trends across market segments.
• Forecasts for products and services sold as part of a UC solution through 2013.
• 2008 and 1H 2009 messaging market end-user revenues.
• Profiles of managed/hosted unified communications providers: Alteva, Cbeyond, Orange Business, Verizon Business, CallTower, Chinook Hosting, LightEdge, Outsourcery, and Smoothstone.
• Analysis of an In-Stat survey of 1,000 US-based VoIP decision makers.