Monday, October 27, 2008

Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009

Unified Communications is number 5 on that list

Unified Communications. During the next five years, the number of different communications vendors with which a typical organization works with will be reduced by at least 50 percent. This change is driven by increases in the capability of application servers and the general shift of communications applications to common off-the-shelf server and operating systems. As this occurs, formerly distinct markets, each with distinct vendors, converge, resulting in massive consolidation in the communications industry. Organizations must build careful, detailed plans for when each category of communications function is replaced or converged, coupling this step with the prior completion of appropriate administrative team convergence. Unified communications can be used to streamline existing business processes improving operational efficiencies in the near term and supporting more aggressive transformational efforts longer term.