Mitel officials in April announced the company is buying video conferencing vendor Polycom for $1.96 billion, a move that will create a much larger communications and collaboration company that will compete with such established players as Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Avaya. It's also a continuation of Mitel's aggressive acquisition efforts under CEO Rich McBee, who has argued that the unified communications (UC) market is ripe for consolidation and that his company will be among the buyers. That said, Mitel's acquisition of Polycom will be only the latest move in rapidly changing UC and video conferencing markets, both of which are being impacted by such trends as an increasingly mobile workforce, a proliferation of mobile devices, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and big data, and the growing demand for cloud- and software-based solutions. That has led to other acquisitions, partnerships and product rollouts designed to help vendors gain ground in a collaboration space that is highly competitive, very crowded, and dominated by Cisco and Microsoft. Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst with ZK Research, has argued that companies must be able to evolve and adapt if they are to survive. "There's not enough revenue for all companies to win," Kerravala told eWEEK. "Vendors must be willing to put both feet into the new [cloud] world and embrace it, and not sacrifice the future for their legacy businesses." This slide show takes a look at some of the more recent moves by vendors.
- eWeek