Last year, when the global economic slowdown was at its peak, all CIOs chanted one mantra: “Do more with less.” With its ability to trim expenses and simultaneously improve productivity, Unified Communications (UC) tools became the obvious option. Today, even as the economy gradually limps back to normalcy, Indian enterprises are now moving beyond basic communications and have made UC an integral part of their processes.

For instance, in many Indian enterprises, it is now mandatory to specifically mention the reason for a specific travel request. In many companies, executives who file a travel request form have to justify why a particular business meeting or transaction cannot be done using UC tools.

According to a Frost & Sullivan study, currently India leads the SAARC region's UC market in terms of total spending and better overall awareness of UC. The total market size of the Indian UC market is likely to grow to more than USD 1 billion by 2010. The addressable market for Unified Communications is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.3 percent. With continued adoption by several key verticals such as IT/ ITeS, FMCG, healthcare, telecom, etc, the Indian UC market is poised to be huge.

“Over the past three years, we’ve held 592,484 internal meetings at Cisco using telepresence. This has saved the company USD 503 million in travel costs”

V C Gopalratnam, CIO, Globalization, Cisco

Indian enterprises are deriving clear benefits by using UC with the workforce getting distributed across locations. UC has facilitated easier communication between co-workers – be it R&D labs, sales teams or even for interaction between top management and employees.

BPO companies are using UC tools to provide instant technical support to clients, while IT teams are collapsing borders and forming virtual teams. Telecom giant Vodafone Essar uses the power of UC to communicate key management messages from the company’s headquarters across all offices.

Wipro is using this technology to form virtual teams on demand. Similarly, FMCG major, Perfetti Van Mille India (PVM India), is using UC tools to conduct trainings, events, vendor meetings and meetings across offices in other countries. Infosys is using UC for pursuing large deals by leveraging global subject matter experts, while the Mahindra & Mahindra group uses UC to improve collaboration in R&D.

With the growing demand for cloud based services, UC too is being delivered as a service – though in small forms. This trend is set to accelerate with traditional devices like desktop computers being replaced by mobile devices and smartphones.