Unified Communication - an overview

Unified communications (UC)  will over the next 5 years bring about a significant shift in the way that businesses communicate with their staff, customers and suppliers enabling faster, cheaper and more flexible communications.

It enables and streamlines global business communications by integrating real-time communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, IP telephony, video conferencing, call control and speech recognition with non real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax).

UC is not a single product, but a set of products that provides a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types.