If there was ever a time for solution providers to pitch the value of a unified communications strategy, that time is now.

Unified communications (UC) integrates telephony, video, messaging and business applications to deliver a productive and collaborative experience that saves money for mobile, geographically distributed companies. Why pay to fly or drive to a meeting, when UC can make it seem as if you're there, and let you see and hear what's going on?

"The biggest drivers today are cost savings and the productivity gains achieved by moving to a unified communications infrastructure," says Mike O'Brien, a technology solutions engineer at Ingram Micro.

Manufacturers have taken notice and are enhancing their UC offerings: 3Com, Avaya, Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Mitel, Nortel, ShoreTel and others are continuing to update their UC product lines. Just weeks ago, HP and Microsoft announced a multiyear, $180-million deal to codevelop products and combine their UC sales and marketing efforts.

In addition to cost savings and productivity, how UC can improve the decision-making process is also on the minds of business customers. UC improves the performance of distributed workforces through better collaboration, reducing communication bottlenecks. GPS and virtual presence features can add an additional layer of efficiency.

"There is a strong business case for unified communications for any business that would benefit from increasing the speed of decision-making," says Irwin Lazar, vice president for communications research at Nemertes Research. "Think of customer service agents taking twice as many calls, or supporting customers more quickly and with more authority. This capability is needed by any business that has field engineers," he adds.

George S. Demou, president and CEO of Transcend Communications, says UC is hot. "Last year, we landed 70 net new clients, representing 350 sites, and not even half of the market has made the transfer from legacy communications to IP telephony," he explains. "What we are seeing is pent-up demand due to delayed budgets the last 18 months, coupled with legacy technology that has not had an upgrade since Y2K. Companies are eager to migrate from disparate legacy systems to a unified platform," he says.

Demou may be on to something big. In fact, both Demou and O'Brien say that since so many businesses already have the right network components to support UC (such as managed Ethernet and MPLS), there's an ease-of-deployment advantage for the channel. Many times, the cost of a UC deployment can be justified by simply moving the business from a standard phone system to an IP telephony infrastructure leveraging a company's existing WAN, with additional savings from the productivity enhancements, Demou says.

Fortunately for solution providers, UC isn't a one-and-done sale. "A considerable amount of integration work can be needed in these deals," Lazar says. "First, there's the network integration, which can include the integration of the UC with the IP and non-IP systems," he says. And that's just the beginning, he adds, as the demand continues for UC -- and how deeply it will be integrated into enterprise applications. Many organizations can benefit from integrating UC capabilities not only into CRM applications, but also ERP and other applications. "The potential time and cost savings are extensive when you consider scenarios in which an employee looking at a potential supply- chain issue can click on the part, see the supplier and contact it directly from within the application for resolution. That's where UC is heading. The potential is huge," says Lazar.