ABI Research describes the progress of UC within the context of its elements, which include VoIP, fixed mobile convergence, contact center technology, hybrid IP/TDM PBXes, messaging and conferencing and collaboration. The firm says the overall category will produce revenues of $4.8 billion by 2015.
The release shifts to the present and suggests that IP PBX vendors will ship more than 35 million IP and/or IP/TDM PBX lines

The other study is from Infonetics Research. The firm found that 96 percent, in other words, pretty much all the companies that participated in the survey, intend to eventually move to a UC platform.
Besides that surprisingly high figure, Infonetics verified many things that generally are accepted as common wisdom. For instance, the firm found that Cisco is the leading IP telephony vendor in North America, while Microsoft leads in e-mail and IM. Microsoft is being challenged by Google, the firm said.
The reasons found for deploying UC also are not surprising. They include improving employee productivity, reducing opex and simply satisfying the whims of executives. The biggest growth areas are video, short messaging and social networking. Infonetics found that the main UC end point today is a desktop, but mobile devices are gaining steam.
Taken together, the two studies suggest that unified communications will grow in the enterprise – and, in time, become the main platform for corporate communications.