Featured Articles from IP Phones

Avaya (News - Alert) this week announced that its entire portfolio of SIP-based phones is now interoperable with the BroadSoft BroadWorks platform.

The portfolio of Avaya SIP phones includes a conference phone, a desktop handset, and the new Avaya Vantage phone. And the company plans to add more devices to this line.

As for the BroadWorks platform, that carrier-grade application software delivers cloud PBX (News - Alert) and unified communications functionality. It is used by 25 of the world’s top 30 service providers, according to the companies.

“As growth in UCaaS offers via third party service providers continues to climb, this is a natural move for us and a great opportunity for them to increase value to their customers by offering a premium portfolio at affordable prices,” commented Mark Monday, vice president and general manager of engagement platforms at Avaya.

More companies are migrating from premises-based to cloud-based business communications solutions – or at least to UC solutions that leverage a combination of the two (what we call hybrid solutions). The cloud, of course, allows customers to pay as they go and focus on their core competencies as opposed to managing voice and unified communications gear.

Global Market Insights says the overall UC market is poised to reach $96 billion by 2023. And it notes the expected proliferation of hosted products in this category. Meanwhile, a 2015 BroadSoft survey indicates UC’s cloud market share will increase six fold by 2020, when it’s expected to reach 41 percent. The company adds that cloud-based UC is poised to grow by more than seven times in the mid-market arena.

And more than 70 percent of respondents to a recent survey conducted by IntelliCom and TMCnet indicated they are now actively using public cloud-based UC services to some degree. Meanwhile, 26 percent said they are using them broadly across their organization.

According to last year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications (News - Alert) as a Service, Worldwide, BT, RingCentral, 8x8, West, and Fuze are the unified communications as a service leaders. And Aragon Research in April named BroadSoft, Cisco, Microsoft (News - Alert), Google, Unify, RingCentral, and Fuze as the leaders in the unified communications and collaboration arena. NEC, Polycom, and Huawei are contenders in this product category, according to Aragon Research. 8x8, GENBAND, and Avaya are listed as innovators in this realm, according to Aragon Research, which mentions ShoreTel (News - Alert) as the sole “specialist”.