Digital Lifescapes

Modern business communication and collaboration solutions are an essential platform for a distributed workforce. The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought these platforms to the forefront of digital transformation. Together, they'll form a foundation for many 'digital workspace' deployments. These multifaceted offerings aren't deployed because they're the best technology. They're used to drive meaningful advances in employee productivity, agility, and flexibility that are proven to help achieve desired business outcomes. The Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) market grew 29.2 percent year-over-year and 7.1 percent quarter-over-quarter to reach $13.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020 (4Q20), according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). IT vendor revenue growth was also up by an impressive 24.9 percent for the full year of 2020 to reach $47.2 billion. Regardless, not all the IT vendors benefited from...

How agile organizations enable online communication and collaboration for their distributed workforce is top of mind for most senior executives today. More savvy CEOs, across all industries, have rapidly increased investments in IT systems and services that empower employees to work from anywhere. The global unified communications & collaboration (UC&C) market grew 26.7 percent year-over-year and 6.6 percent quarter-over-quarter to $12.2 billion in the third quarter of 2020 (3Q20), according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). As enterprise leaders moved their teams from the crisis phase to the recovery phase, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide growth of UC&C applications was driven by organizations across all business types and sizes. Unified Communications Market Development The IDC study uncovered a special interest in cloud-based solutions for voice, video, messaging, and collaboration for driving initiatives...

The global voice over IP (VoIP) service market totaled $73 billion in 2015 -- that's a 5 percent increase over the prior year, according to the latest worldwide market study by IHS . The growth was fueled by more companies shifting to cloud-based services and the adoption of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). VoIP communication services, including residential and business offerings, have become viable alternatives to legacy landline telephone services in most developed countries around the globe. Although residential VoIP service remains a significant portion of VoIP services revenue, business services and the dynamic supplier landscape are driving new growth in the market. VoIP Market Development Trends The competitive landscape has become highly fragmented for VoIP business services, with an increasing number of PBX and Unified Communications (UC) vendors, enterprise agents and resellers expanding into the market along with traditional telecom service providers. Additio...

If you remember back when Centrex service was available from your local phone company, then the latest trend of enterprise voice communication moving to the cloud is like Deja Vu. It seems that we've been here before. Infonetics Research conducted in-depth surveys with 162 medium and large organizations in North America and discovered that by 2016 over 50 percent of respondents will be running some of their Unified Communications (UC) applications over either a private or public cloud service. UC integrates fragmented communication modes -- such as voice, e-mail and instant messaging -- into a single integrated communication experience. The latest Infonetics worldwide market study explored CIO and IT manager plans for UC and their perceptions of UC vendors and cloud unified-communications‑as-a-service (UCaaS) providers. "Businesses continue to migrate their unified communications applications to the cloud, citing flexibility as the key reason. Cloud solutions are in...

Video chat via the Internet is an interactive communication service that has become increasingly common with PC users, but is now expanding to other consumer electronics screens -- including various mobile devices and connected TV sets. Driven by the ease of use and improved video image quality, the growing consumer and business applications for video communication now seem unlimited. While many of the video chat software apps can crossover between screen-types, the dynamics in each market are quite unique. Still, all industry players are expected to experience significant growth. According to the latest market study by NPD In-Stat , they forecast the total number of active video calling users will surpass 380 million in 2015 -- that's a significant increase from the 63 million users in 2010. "While the mobile arena is relatively nascent, it has fueled much of the growth in usage over the course of 2011," said Amy Cravens, Senior Analyst at In-Stat. T...

Applications for digital imagery are experiencing exponential growth. Image sensors are now being integrated into all sorts of consumer electronics (CE) devices. As personal video communication becomes more commonplace, many mobile devices -- such as smartphones and media tablets -- will now include two sensors (one on the front and back of the device). The Camera Serial Interface (CSI) is a serial interface between a digital camera module and mobile device platform. Adopting a set of standard hardware interfaces will help to produce peripheral hardware products from multiple vendors which work seamlessly with numerous integrated circuit processor and system-on-a-chip products. MIPI Alliance (a non-profit corporation) efforts have led to strong MIPI CSI-2 interest, across all computing and consumer electronic devices with an image sensor. According to the latest market study by In-Stat , they have forecast that the overall CSI total addressable market (TAM) will surpass $3.5 billio...

According to the latest market study by ABI Research , over 11 million media tablets and 43 million netbook PCs will ship worldwide this year. That is lower than analysts expected at the end of last year, based on the results during the period following their introduction. Regardless, says ABI Research principal analyst Jeff Orr, "43 million netbook shipments are good growth, just not the meteoric pace of the past couple of years." Part of the drop in demand for netbooks may be due to media tablet sales. However, tablets are still a long way from the 40-50 million annual shipments that ABI Research considers the threshold for a mass-market consumer electronics product. "Apple has sold a few million iPads in its first quarter, which is great for creating a new market," Orr says. "But early adoption of media tablets is not outpacing netbooks. The iPad average selling price above $650 isn't driving consumer adoption. Competition, especially on price, is ...

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) penetration among U.S. businesses will increase rapidly over the next few years, reaching 79 percent by 2013, compared to 42 percent at the end of 2009, according to the latest market study by In-Stat . This market penetration reflects companies having a VoIP solution deployed in at least one location. "VoIP adopters have a good understanding of the cost savings associated with VoIP, and have oriented their limited budgets to optimizing efficiency and savings by replacing legacy TDM voice solutions," says David Lemelin, In-Stat analyst. With businesses opening up fewer new locations than we have seen in recent years, much of this current investment is occurring at headquarters locations where efficiencies and savings can be maximized. In-Stat's market study found the following: - Hosted IP Centrex has now surpassed Broadband IP Telephony as the leading revenue-generating, carrier-based business VoIP solution. - 33 percent of businesses that have...

The upside potential of Unified Communications (UC) -- merging IP telephony, conferencing and collaboration, and messaging -- are on a steeply rising curve of adoption within the enterprise. According to a the latest market study by ABI Research , the market's size was just $302 million in 2008, but will rise quickly to nearly $4.2 billion in 2014. "Companies have been buying only those component technologies that they think will deliver immediate value," says ABI Research practice director Stan Schatt. "It's only later that they start tying it all together as true Unified Communications." Once that happens, synergies multiply: for example, many companies have messaging by voice and email, but when they are integrated, a user can see voicemails and have emails read aloud. Such synergies can deliver increased productivity and efficiency, and greater customer satisfaction. Big corporations with multiple locations will benefit most immediately from Unified Comm...