7/21/2009 -- It's still early, but Cisco Systems Inc. has vaulted to the top of a fast-growing segment in the unified communications (UC) marketplace.

According to market watcher Infonetics Research, Cisco jumped from No. 5 to No. 1 in the still-expanding UC communicator segment, leap-frogging rivals Siemens and Avaya. Cisco is third in the contact center segment, behind market leader Avaya and runner-up Alcatel-Lucent.

All told, Infonetics concluded, the networking giant is well-positioned in a market that performed well -- it is growing by double-digits -- in spite of the economic downturn.

"The unified communication market (unified messaging and communicator software) did well in 2008, growing 16 percent sequentially, a respectable performance given the deterioration in the economy worldwide and its effect on enterprise spending," said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data with Infonetics, in a prepared release.

It's in this respect that Cisco's performance in the fast-growing communicator segment is particularly noteworthy, and bodes well for 2009. "While reduced enterprise spending will be a drag on the market, revenue in the communicator segment, the most important measure of the overall unified communication market, is expected to nearly double in 2009," Machowinski continued.

According to Infonetics, sales of communicator clients spiked by 47 percent in 2008, a drop from 2007's tally (which saw communicator sales triple) but not at all bad, at least in the context of economic instability. Cisco was the primary beneficiary, Machowinski noted, but a key driver was last year's Nortel-Microsoft alliance, which helped generate "significant growth."

The UC market as a whole should perform very well in 2009, Infonetics projected. Budget cuts or no, enterprises are turning to UC to help reduce costs and improve flexibility.

"Unified communication enables workers to communicate more effectively with mobile and geographically dispersed colleagues, and to integrate multi-modal communication services to help increase productivity," Machowinski said. "These drivers, combined with aggressive bundling by PBX vendors to increase the competitiveness of their offerings...will push the UC market to relatively good growth in 2009." --Stephen Swoyer