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Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications

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Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications
27 August 2012 ID:G00232192 Analyst(s): Bern Elliot, Steve Blood

VIEW SUMMARY During the past year, UC vendors advanced their increasingly full suites of functionality, with particular progress in the key areas of mobility, video and hybrid deployment options. 2012 has seen vendorsincreasingly leverage price, bundles and standards to improve competitive positioning.

Market Definition/Description
The convergence of all communications on Internet Protocol (IP) networks and open-software platforms is enabling a new paradigm for communications, and is changing how individuals, groups and organizations communicate and collaborate. Gartner defines unified communications (UC) products(equipment, software and services) as those that facilitate the use of multiple enterprise communications methods. This can include the control, management and integration of these methods. UC products integrate communications channels (media), networks and systems, as well as IT business applications and, in some cases, consumer applications and devices. UC offers the ability to significantlyimprove how individuals, groups and companies interact and perform. These products may be composed of a single-vendor (stand-alone) suite, or customers may deploy a portfolio of integrated applications and platforms spanning multiple vendors. In many cases, UC is deployed to extend and add functionality to established communications investments. UC products are used by people to facilitate personalcommunications 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 communications. UC applications are increasingly being integrated or offered in concert with collaboration applications to form unifiedcommunications and collaboration (UCC). It is useful to divide UC into six broad communications product areas: Voice and Telephony — This area includes fixed, mobile and soft telephony, as well as the evolution of PBXs and IP PBXs. It also includes live communications, such as video telephony. Conferencing — This area includes voice conferencing, videoconferencing and Web conferencingcapabilities, as various forms of unified conferencing capabilities. Messaging — This area includes email, which has become an indispensable business tool, voice mail and various approaches to unified messaging (UM). Presence and IM — These will play an increasingly central role in the next generation of communications. Presence services, in particular, are expanding to enable the aggregation and publicationof presence and location information between (from and to) multiple sources. This enhanced functionality is sometimes called rich presence. Clients — Unified clients enable access to multiple communications functions from a consistent interface. These may have different forms, including thick desktop clients, thin browser clients and clients for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, aswell as specialized clients embedded within business applications. Communications-Enabled Applications — This broad group of applications has directly integrated communications functionality. Key application areas include collaboration applications, contact center applications, notification applications, and consolidated administration, reporting and/or analytics tools. Eventually, otherapplications that support business processes will be communications-enabled; these might include integrating UC with hospital applications to improve doctor-nurse-patient coordination, or adding communications to purchasing/order-processing applications to improve the accuracy and speed of the process. When business applications are integrated with communications applications to improve operations,...