In 2009, UC products continued to mature, and the market continued to consolidate. This, coupled with enterprise budgets for UC products being delayed, led to intensified competition among vendors in this market. Additionally, many enterprises have existing strategic partnerships and investments with two or even three different UC vendors. 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. One vendor strategy is the extensive use of bundling to advance the portfolio footprint. Another strategy is increased use of discounting and other incentives in order to allow new products into accounts.

Meanwhile, enterprises struggle to define road maps and strategies for advancing functionality, controlling costs, and retaining control over their accounts. While leading vendors advance a “one vendor for everything” view, enterprises often prefer to retain valuable existing investments and to maintain control by having a balance of partners. A strategy for accomplishing this is described in “Developing an Enterprise Unified Communications Road Map” and “Applying the Vendor Influence Curve to Unified Communications.” “Market Share: Enterprise Unified Communications Infrastructure, Worldwide, 2008″ describes current 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, and while 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 one 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.

Enterprise adoption of UC continues to increase; however, adoption rates remain low. This slow adoption is the result of multiple technical and organizational issues, including:

• 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.
• Many applications and products are complex to deploy and may require organizational changes.
• The business case frequently is based on a soft return on investment (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 more slowly, 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 and Tandberg offer strong solutions in conferencing, but do not offer solutions in other technology areas. In the area of UM, Applied Voice & Speech Technologies (AVST) offers a best-of-breed UM solution. Finally, some venders, such as AT&T, were not included because to be included in this report the UC solutions must be available for deployment on the enterprise’s premises, rather than offered solely as a service. Gartner is preparing separate research on UCaaS that will be published later in the year.
Market Definition/Description

UC is a direct result of the convergence of communications and applications. Differing forms of communication have been developed, marketed and sold as separate individual applications. In some cases, they even had separate networks and devices. The convergence of all communications on IP networks and open-software platforms is enabling a new paradigm for UC, and is changing how individuals, groups and organizations communicate.

Gartner defines UC products (equipment, software and services) as those that facilitate the use of multiple enterprise communication methods. This can include control, management and integration of these methods. UC products integrate communication channels (media), networks and systems, as well as IT business applications and, in some cases, consumer applications and devices.

UC offers the ability to significantly improve how individuals, groups and companies interact and perform. These products may be made up of a stand-alone suite, or may be a portfolio of integrated applications and platforms spanning multiple vendors. In many cases, UC is deployed to extend and add functionality to existing communication investments.

UC products are used by people to facilitate personal communications and by enterprises to support workgroup and collaborative communications. Some UC products may extend UC outside company boundaries to enhance communications among organizations, to support interactions among large public communities or for personal communication. Additionally, UC is increasingly being integrated or offered with collaboration applications to form UC and collaboration (UCC).

It’s useful to divide UC into six broad communication product areas: