Regular SearchUnifiedCommunications.com contributor Gary Audin of Delphi, Inc., has teamed up with Webtorials.com to produce the 2011 Sourcebook of Hosted and Cloud-Based VoIP and Unified Communications Services. This comprehensive, 100-page sourcebook is based, in part, on a survey of UC service providers conducted by Delphi, Inc.

According to Audin, the confusion about UC cloud services stems from a lack of consensus on what to call the service and grows from here. Some service providers call their service hosted unified communications, and other cloud-based communications providers use Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) to describe their services.

The table below shows the more common names used by survey respondents:

Audin and his team identified 210+ providers of hosted/cloud communications services. Of these providers, only one in three offer UC services, and only about one half of providers offer mobile support. The following table shows the percentage of five top UC services supported by UC cloud computing providers.

To ensure reliable, secure UC cloud services, a carefully crafted UC cloud computing strategy is imperative — not only to simplify the evaluation process, but also to identify and lock-in administration policies. Audin urges enterprises to create an RFI that includes all UC services that are needed now as well any anticipated services. The completed RFIs will help enterprises structure a checklist and narrow the number of potential providers to a short list of viable candidates.

Webtorials.com and Delphi, Inc., have created a UC and VoIP services questionnaire to help businesses frame service provider offerings. The 2011 Sourcebook of Hosted and Cloud-Based VoIP and Unified Communications Services will further help enterprises size up cloud-based UC service providers. A vendor-neutral resource of the UC cloud-based provider market, the Sourcebook details the various business models used by responding service providers, the specific business services they provide, maintenance and support policies and much more.

Part 1: The Cloud Business Value and Provider is now available. Once you’ve registered, the next three installments of the report will be emailed directly to you.

In the meantime, check out Audin’s article on UC cloud computing contracts.