Tim had some great observations:

As a UC systems integrator and early adopter/integrator for the Microsoft UC products we're seeing some stabilization of the marketplace. We seem to be getting out of the evaluation/education phase and having more concrete conversations about how UC can actually benefit our customer's organizations.

What's interesting is that each company deploys UC to solve unique challenges in their business. Since UC is a relatively large umbrella, organizations are beginning their UC strategy with a single component (e.g., video conferencing at the desktop) and then leveraging the infrastructure to phase in other components as part of a larger strategy. Not sure if that is what the rest of the world is seeing but we're finding it all starts with the first step and with a specific end in mind.

Tim's comments are right on target with me, and with Forrester's survey and analysis, if I'm reading that correctly, including Henry Dewing's point that UC requires multi-interest decisions and management of some technical complexity.

Tim's comments also go right to the point that we at UniComm Consulting have been making for over a year, particularly in the June 2007 BCR Article, "Top UC Applications Are Now Apparent." We find, again and again, that the high ROI opportunities come from optimizing specific business processes using one of the top five application approaches that we observe in enterprise deployments. Tim touches on a similar point, using desktop video as an example. While desktop video alone would seem to be the UC-User Productivity category, behind that investment is usually a business process that needs to be improved, such as collaboration between a product company and their off-shore manufacturing sub-contractors for product release "collaboration acceleration" or for production throughput management via "resource identification and problem resolution."

Thanks, Tim, for adding another confirming input that UC is taking shape and growing in the marketplace.