Organizations throughout the world have discovered significant communication challenges when integrating disparate systems and supporting other locations and employees not housed in the corporate headquarters.

As a result of these challenges, many have looked to unified communications to streamline processes and deliver cost savings while also driving efficiency and productivity. This has led to significant increases in UC market growth and the opportunities that exist for vendors operating in this industry.

According to Infonetics Research, a communications market research firm, the UC market, which includes unified messaging and communicator software, jumped 20 percent sequentially in 2007, following a 19 percent increase in 2006.

The same type of growth has been realized in the IP contact center (IPCC) market as it grew 24 percent in 2007, on the heels of a 26 percent increase in 2006.

A recent Infonetics’ report, Unified Communications and IP Contact Centers, indicates that together, UC and IPCC sales grew 22 percent to hit $1.05 billion worldwide in 2007, and healthy growth is expected through at least 2011.

“As a key component of unified communications, sales of communicator software clients are taking off. The Nortel (News - Alert)/Microsoft alliance drove growth in 2007, and Microsoft captured close to half the communicator market,” said Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics Research’s directing analyst for enterprise voice and data, in a statement.

“Market share will likely bounce around in the coming years, as vendors from different backgrounds try to establish themselves as the leader in the nascent UC market and promote their offerings aggressively.”

The report has also found that the sales of the relatively small communicator segment jumped 164 percent from 2006 to 2007. Unified messaging makes up the bulk of the UC market and is lead by Avaya (News - Alert) with more than one third of the market.

Avaya also leads the IPCC market by quite a bit, with more than half of the worldwide revenue. Cisco (News - Alert) is in second place in this area. In addition, the transition from TDM to IP is causing the IP contact center market to grow more rapidly than the overall contact center market.

The Infonetics report tracks add-on applications for IP PBXs that provide communication features in addition to basic IP PBX (News - Alert) functionality, including unified communications and IP contact centers, including ACD, IVR and CTI.

Companies tracked include 3Com, Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, CosmoCom, IBM, Interactive Intelligence, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Siemens (News - Alert), ShoreTel, Vertical, ZTE, and others.