2008

• A very active M&A year. E.g., Microsoft, IBM and Cisco will buy at least 20, 20 and 10 companies respectively
• The year of UC with Microsoft becoming a top 3 VoIP vendor
• Unified communications will be available to the SMB market through managed service offerings
• The battle over UC developers erupts pitting Microsoft, Cisco and Avaya against each other as they woo developers
• High end desktop phones sales drop like a rock, as UC and smartphone sales skyrocket
• SIP Trunking takes off as the preferred way to connect UC islands and provide inter-enterprise UC links
• Virtualization moves beyond, power and space savings in the data center into networks
• NAC, NAP and TrustSec define the core of a compliant ready network
• Enterprise mobility expands outside of email and calendar as mainstream corporate applications go mobile
• 16 million Iphones will ship, representing nearly 10% of total expected smartphone shipments replacing Palm OS
• Green IT hits the US as the corporate social responsibility programs start to include IT purchases
• WAN Optimization, Layer 4-7 and SSL VPN technologies come together to create an “application delivery” market

2012

• Telepresence is available in 40% of organizations
• There are only three enterprise switch companies with annual revenues over $600M, inclusive of Cisco
• There are only four enterprise communication suppliers in the market with revenues greater then $5B, inclusive of Microsoft. Microsoft reaches 25% market share in VoIP
• Open source IP Telephony reaches 10% market share
• UC based softphones are ubiquitous on laptops, desktops and mobile end points.
• Phone tag and v-mail usage is nearly gone from corporate communications, replaced by presence based IP communications
• Apple Iphone will be the second largest player in the advanced OS smartphones market. Apple is still half the size of Microsoft
• More then 50% of global 2000 concerns appoint a Chief Communications responsible for communications enabling business process. Communications Enabled Business Processes or CEBP is systemic and common across the global 2000 as it’s a contributor to corporate annual productivity, on the order of 1.5 to 3%.
• Networks evolved from a connectivity service to a platform with embedded security, application delivery, quality of service, virtualization being systemic in corporate networking
• FiberChannel and Infiniband market share fall as Ethernet becomes the single network technology in the data center
• IPTV finally gets traction
• WAN optimization products can be found in 35% of branch offices