BANGALORE, INDIA: Enterprises are rapidly migrating to a unified communications ecosystem and the segment is set to grow from $ 302 million in 2008 to $ 4.2 billion by 2014 says ABI Research.

“Companies have been buying only those component technologies that they think will deliver immediate value,” says ABI Research practice director Stan Schatt. “It’s only later that they start tying it all together as true unified communications.”

Unified Communications, merging IP telephony, conferencing & collaboration, messaging and other integrated information exchange are driving adoption of unified communications.

MNCs with multiple locations are expected to benefit the most from unified communications.

We foresee a booming market for managed services, simply because unified communications are tricky and many companies won’t want to spend the time and effort to do it themselves. That applies to the market as a whole, but particularly to smaller businesses,Schatt added.