My New Word for 2014 - Bifurcation

That's right. Splitting in two - taking divergent paths - out of one comes two - that sort of thing.

Of course, I could be talking about anything, but my context here is the world of UC. During our recent UCStrategies podcasts looking back on 2013, then ahead to 2014, bifurcation is theme I talked about. For me, this means I see two distinct ends of the business communications market shaping up. One is just interested in VoIP, and is driven by cost savings. This would typically be the lower end of the SMB space, where the thinking is still pretty telephony-centric and legacy-based. Arguably, these businesses may never become card-carrying UC converts, but it's a pretty big piece of the overall market.

Moving upmarket is the UC-friendly crowd that the UC vendors so dearly covet. Of course, this group consists of both telephony vendors that simply have to reinvent themselves to survive, along with outliers who are Web/IP-based, and are poised to inherit the earth if they play their cards right. Among this cohort, you don't hear any talk about IP PBXs or telephony - their world is Web-centric and screen-centric. Up to about two years ago, the latter meant PC-centric, but with the rise of tablets, the opportunity now is much bigger than that. Not only has the locus of communications shifted away from the desk phone, but it's quickly shifting away from the desktop altogether.

Enough said. My 2 mintues of talk on our podcast made me realize this theme needed to be laid out a bit further. That's what I've done in my latest UCStrategies post, so while I've still got your attention, you should open up this link now and get the rest of the story. Thanks for listening!