• The world of unified communications is expanding with mobility — and consumer communication devices are being brought into the enterprise. While not a great number of organizations are supporting bring-your-own-device policies, users expect applications to work across multiple platforms, mobile devices and operating systems.  
• More UC vendors are beginning to standardize video by using codecs like SVC, which enable competitive vendor pricing as well as scale to multiple devices.  
• The cloud has affected every side of IT, and UC is no exception. UC as a Service (UCaaS) will pick up in popularity and incorporate cloud provider behemoths like Google into the competitive landscape.
• Last but certainly not least, is the introduction of collaboration products. Collaboration has been so integrated into UC that the market term is now known as “unified communications and collaboration (UC&C or UCC).”

UC Magic Quadrant author Bern Elliot, VP Distinguished Analyst, explains the reason for such a tight-knit integration:

It’s a natural fit to start integrating collaboration capabilities with communications capabilities… It really was enabled by the convergence of communications into software environments on Internet networks around Internet standards…. As unified communications comes together, the environment can do more because it’s software [which can break down] … unified communication silos.

These trends will continue to evolve the definition of UCC. In the coming year, we can hope for fewer silos between different types of communication, like messaging and telephony. We can expect more cloud services for UCC; UCC products with mobile clients will become the norm; and video will become more integrated, higher quality and less pricey.

For example, Habitat for Humanity’s Kim Trainor, community relations director of the greater Lowell, Mass., area, isn’t a bleeding-edge technology adopter. She’s been more of a last-gen user using a black push-button phone with no features for the past three years. In a job where she spends time looking for corporate sponsors, writing grants and working with families that need housing, a hold button, basic voicemail and the ability to transfer calls without telling someone to call back could have changed her life.

When the opportunity to beta test Avaya’s new AvayaLive Connect public Internet UC solution presented itself, complete with new handsets, Trainor and her four office mates graduated to a plug-and-play service that include audio and video conferencing, presence, mobility, messaging, and of course voicemail that can be delivered to email. At that moment, Lowell’s Habitat for Humanity group joined the 95% of companies doing something with UC, according to Nemertes Research vice president Irwin Lazar.

Trainor’s group didn’t have to know what presence or soft clients are. They just got to use the features.

“We knew we needed a new phone system, but in the non-profit world, you just try to make do and hope that people donate stuff,” Trainor said. “We have no technology budget. But we’ve been testing it for two months, and it has made our lives much easier.”

AvayaLive Connect, which is designed for small businesses, will roll out commercially in early summer.  Its aggressive pricing, we’re told (unofficially), will be $20 per user, per month, with Avaya throwing in a free month’s subscription.

Announcing the service at Enterprise Connect 2012 in Orlando this week, Avaya is betting on attracting the huge and often underserved small business market. It plans to have its channel partners heavily involved — at least those who have shown they’re good at selling services, not just boxes. The service is also available via the Avaya website.

While the service runs over the public Internet, Avaya announced a strategic relationship with Level 3 Communications to support AvayaLive Connect. It is unclear what the provider’s strategic mission is.

Cloud and/or hosted collaboration service announcements are plentiful this week, and providers (which include carriers, UC vendors and startups) are labeling them as “cloud,” “hosted” or “managed” services to avoid customer “cloud fear.” Microsoft also markets Lync Online, its Office 365 public cloud services suite, for small business customers.

Many more announcements targeted larger enterprises. For example, Sprint announced the availability of Sprint Complete Collaboration, a managed UC service bundle that integrates Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration solution (HCS) platform that provides connectivity through SIP trunking via its MPLS network. Capitalizing on its carrier background, Sprint offers class of service at no charge and integrates client- and network-based mobile integration intended to extend PBX features to mobile devices. 

UC services like Sprint’s are too big for Trainor’s needs, however, with its sweet spot of enterprises with 500 to 5,000 users. Avaya Live Connect can scale down to two users to fill a blank in the market, according to Philippe Allard, product manager for AvayaLive Connect, adding that the handsets arrive completely assembled with cords plugged in if the customer even wants to buy phones, which is not required.

Avaya has recently announced a new offering –Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions (COS)–aimed at managing communication operations of a company. Moving into managed services is a smart move for Avaya, as many companies with aging communications infrastructures would like to make improvements but may be constricted by a budget.

In fact, Ed Nalbandian, vice president of Avaya Operations Services told me recently that these are the types of companies that are benefiting the most from this offering. By offering a managed service and charging per month, enterprises can migrate from their older infrastructure while reducing risk of performance issues and avoiding a big investment.

Matrix, the front-end management platform for COS customers is cloud-based, providing a private cloud-like environment for the user. Customers really want a transparent view of their infrastructure, Nalbandian said. The offering also offers multi-vendor support, which makes sense given UC is a bit of a mixed vendor environment.

While enterprises seem to be selectively outsourcing, the managed service trend appears to be growing for enterprises struggling with product upgrades and tight budgets. As vendors continue to develop and grow communications and collaboration offerings, demand for managed services for communications infrastructures from enterprises could certainly increase.

“The Ciscos and Siemens and other UC vendors should be looking at this concept to see what they can do to [learn from] or even to interoperate with this platform,” she said. “There’s been talk about Cisco WebEx, and it’s really prime to interconnect with Google Wave.”

But wait, isn’t Google Wave infringing on Cisco and Siemens hard fought turf?

Alvarez said it can be a win-win, because Google’s had trouble penetrating the enterprise market while the UC traditional vendors have stumbled drumming up developer support.

“We’ve told the UC community to start nurturing their own developers, and Avaya has DevConnect, but Cisco has had trouble with that,” she said.

Whatever partnerships follow from the Wave announcement, Alvarez said she’s excited about its potential.

“It’s definitely ground breaking in the sense of what it does, it definitely revolutionizes the current state of the market today,” she said. “But it has a long way to go. It still is in a very infant state.”

There’s even Google Wave discussion on Cisco‘s own forums, where Dan Miller, founder and analyst with Opus Research, writes in a posting:

In the near term a feature called “playback” is destined to be the difference maker. It is a feature that enables Wave users to tap into conversations at any point in time – past or present. While it is tempting to think of such a conversation as a “thread” in a email trail or discussion group, tapping into (and reviewing the entries to) a Wave is tangibly different. Most dramatically, entries are displayed on the screens of all participants in real time (or close to it). So there are times when participants, literally, work on the same documents at the same time. To paraphrase Gene Kelly: “That’s Collaboration.”

Playback is also the doctor’s prescription for social media-driven attention deficit disorder. It is the mechanism that enables people to search and tap into an ongoing “thread”, review it from the beginning and work up to real time. But, as the infomercial goes “that’s not all”. Wave enables picture sharing and the addition of any media feed for that matter.

Read more at SearchUnifiedCommunications about Google Wave’s UC potential.