Market Update: Unified Communications, Collaboration Awareness Growing, Says Frost & Sullivan

Communications and Collaboration Have Become a Part of Companies' Lives, Says Frost & Sullivan Survey:  The awareness of unified communication and collaboration (UCC) tools has been significantly growing, as a C-level executive uses four to five tools on average per day. The majority of tools available, especially instant and unified messaging, is extensively employed at all levels of the organization. With satisfying return on investment (ROI) and anticipated cost savings, companies plan to increase their budgets toward Web conferencing, instant messaging and other tools in the coming months.

Mitel Gives IT the Freedom to Break out of Closed Unified Communications Architectures: Mitel, a leading provider of unified communications software solutions, announced the general availability of the next version of the company's Unified Communicator (UC) Advanced software. New features in UC Advanced 4.0 include desktop videoconferencing that makes face-to-face video as easy as a phone call. In addition, Mitel continues to build on its Freedom open architecture by introducing server federation within an organization. 

Smoothstone Launches Enterprise Fixed Mobile Convergence Solution for Android: Smoothstone IP Communications, the leading provider of cloud-based enterprise unified communications applications and services, announced the launch of the Mobile Connect application for Android phones. Mobile Connect is an app that allows enterprises to extend the reach of their corporate communications services to mobile employees by connecting their mobile phones to the enterprise IP network.

NewBay Launches Notification System for Any Service, Any Device and Any Delivery Mechanism: NewBay, the leader in digital content services, announced the latest release of LifeCache Notifier, a real-time, white-label notification system for operators, device makers and application developers. LifeCache Notifier is the first centralized, mobile-optimized system for delivering notifications across all applications, services and devices with the ability to support billions of daily notifications across the entire user network. 

Esnatech & Fuse Networks to Deliver Cloud-based Unified Communication Services for Enterprise Customers: Esnatech, a leader in cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) applications, continues to expand its marketplace for mobility, presence and messaging applications. Partnering with Fuse Networks, Esnatech is now able to provide cloud-based UCC solutions in the U.S. and Canada. Fuse Networks will be offering Esnatech's line of UCC applications along with its hosted Mitel, and hosted PrairieFyre call center together with its suite of on-demand private cloud solutions.

Polycom and Motorola Team to Extend Mobile Telepresence to Motorola XOOM: Motorola Mobility Holdings and Polycom, Inc., a global leader in unified communications (UC), announced collaborative development around delivering Polycom enterprise-class, high-definition (HD) personal telepresence on Motorola XOOM tablets to create broader collaboration choices for businesses.

GENBAND Expands A2 Mobile Office by Integrating with MobileMax: GENBAND, a leading developer of IP infrastructure and application solutions, announced that it has fully integrated the GENBAND A2 Application Server with the MobileMax Unified Communications Suite, providing fixed, mobile and cable operators an end-to-end, mobile office and business productivity solution for smartphone subscribers. Offering Mobile Unified Communications to subscribers allows operators to add new revenue-generating services and increase revenue per subscriber while empowering business users with full office connectivity on their mobile phones. 

Apptix Announces Strategic Partnership with Quest Software to Simplify Customer Migrations: Apptix, the premier provider of hosted business communication services including unified communications and point solutions such as Exchange email, VoIP and SharePoint, announced a strategic partnership with Quest Software to onboard customers from on-premise equipment into Apptix hosted messaging and collaboration services.

Polycom Announces Acquisition of Accordent Technologies: Polycom, Inc., a global leader in unified communications (UC), announced the acquisition of Accordent Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of video content management and delivery solutions, for approximately $50 million in cash. Polycom expects this acquisition to be neutral to earnings in 2011 and slightly accretive to earnings in 2012.

Comstor Expands Cisco Offerings to Include Full Range of TelePresence Solutions, Including Former Tandberg Products: Comstor, the business unit of Westcon Group dedicated to Cisco products, announced an expansion of its offerings to now include Cisco's full TelePresence portfolio. Comstor is one of a select group of global distributors to deliver Cisco's range of videoconferencing solutions, including those recently acquired from Tandberg.