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Siemens Enhances OpenScape Suite 2011 With Video, Mobility, Conferencing: Page 2 of 2

"Siemens gets that idea really well, and when they talk to customers about UC, they start with the basics, then layer from there," says Turek. "Their open, foundational approach lets them do that--customers can add on capabilities as they see fit and their budgets allow."

Competition has been heating up in the UC market, she adds, with many announcements of late. The most notable is perhaps from Microsoft, with Lync, but there has also been news in the past few weeks from Cisco, Mitel and now Siemens. "A lot of those new products feature advanced, and often very cool, capabilities. But it's really important to keep in mind where users are at in their deployments, rather than where the market wants them to be. The market needs to think ahead and show that it is always innovating; users, or, rather, buyers, are usually years behind."

According to Gartner's Oct. 15 update to its Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications, UC "remains a daunting and confusing topic" to many enterprises.

Despite the emergence of complete UC portfolios, these are still in an early stage, and no vendor product adequately addresses all of an enterprise's UC needs. Gartner says Cisco and Microsoft have maintained their lead from a product perspective, while Avaya continues to strengthen its portfolio.

As for Siemens, it says the company "is wholly focused on the provision of enterprise-class UC ... [and its UC solution should be considered if organizations] are looking for a full-featured, software-based solution, intend to integrate UC with business applications or are an existing customer.'