Today UC is getting all the attention because it is a broad product area that fits into the marketing plans of major software vendors – especially Microsoft and IBM (who lead in conferencing and collaboration). But the process of ‘unifying communications’ alone is not nearly as promising as building better ways to support person-to-person, person-to-machine and machine-to-machine conversations and today’s measurement of the UC market will always underestimate the value of (and spending on) these endeavors.

In a post that she wrote in anticipation of the upcoming VoiceCon, my friend and colleague Blair Pleasant (of Commfusion LLC and UCStrategies) characterized conferencing and collaboration as a “bright spot” in the otherwise flat Unified Communications marketplace. She’s referring to the fact that the economic downturn has put a crimp into planned spending on capital equipment, maintenance and staff to support all manner of IT spending. Amidst the gloom, Blair notes that her research shows that spending on “True UC” implementations of conferencing and collaboration will more than double when comparing 2009 to 2008. That means it will exceed $20 million, up from $9.6 million.

There’s a good news/bad news quality to this assessment. Growth in excess of 100% is always a good thing, but… In this age when we’ve adjusted our mental acuity to the point where we comprehend “a trillion dollars”, the idea of $20 million in spending is more like a rounding error.

We live in a world where “the billion dollar” opportunity is the pre-requisite for building product development and marketing efforts. Blair’s definition of UC-based conferencing and collaboration” is highly refined and distilled. Her overall estimate for “True UC” as revealed in a “State of the UC Market” report at last year’s VoiceCon placed overall spending at a little more than $200 million for 2007 and a high-growth scenario (roughly 65% per year) leading to $2.4+ billion in spending in 2012. I’ve drawn similar growth curves for adoption of automated speech driven customer care and well understand that they must be adjusted downward when overall economic conditions in the real world have their way with IT budgets.

The multi-billion opportunity that the vendor community craves is often relegated to a more distant future. Still, as Blair points out, there are many counter-cyclical aspects to UC investment. The move to IP-based telephony can be a real cost saver, especially when it becomes the underpinning for remote agents operating out of their homes or other “virtual contact centers”. Phone based and IP-based conferencing saves on travel spending. Using status indicators and “messenger-like” clients to bring several remote experts into a problem-solving situation can save time and money and promote better responses to customers, clients and trading partners.

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