<p>Your firm's biggest client is on the phone. The deal of the decade is almost done. But there are two problems: she wants to speak to your sales director now to confirm the small print, and she needs the contract tomorrow. You can't get through to Sales, and no one in Legal's answering the phone. They must all be out for lunch. You don't know where anyone is or who else could help, and now the deal looks less and less likely. Too bad your firm doesn't use UC.</p><p>Unified communications (UC) could be the answer to problems like these. More and more organizations are blending networks, systems, and business applications and reaping the benefits of integrated channels for enterprise communications. And those benefits are clear: UC improves how employees collaborate, which in turn improves the bottom line.Know today's UC market leaders</p><p>Among the current plethora of UC providers, Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, and Siemens lead the field, according to Gartner.</p><p>Avaya, which controls 12% of the world PBX market, provides a UC solution based on the Avaya Aura platform. This can be deployed in-house or as a virtualized solution, and the vendor also offers a turnkey option for mid-sized businesses. Available components support messaging, video, and contact centers, and Avaya has invested heavily in cloud technologies. Avaya is best known for telephony, however. Its Radvision SCOPIA videoconferencing software has only been available since the vendor's acquisition of Radvision in 2012, and its other UC services are also relatively new.</p><p><a href="http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/unified_communications/unified-communications-101-intro-to-uc.html">Keep reading...</a></p>