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title: 2013 Trends: Karien Ciggaar, Sales Director Southern Africa & Hospitality Europe, NEC Unfied Solutions - Developing Telecoms
description: Unified communications will be a major trend among organisations in 2013, particularly in emerging markets...
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date: 2013-10-24T16:05:05Z
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Unified communications will be a major trend among organisations in 2013, particularly in emerging markets...

Unified communications will be a major trend among organisations in 2013, particularly in emerging markets.

**Unified Communications and Collaboration Reduce Latency and Drive Productivity**

With organisations becoming increasingly fragmented, departments more flexible and employees more mobile, collaboration is a means of enabling them to work together, in real time, and interact swiftly, efficiently and effectively with each other, with clients and suppliers. UC&C uptake will surge as applications and tools make use of chat, voice and video conferencing, file sharing and so forth - from any desktop or mobile device, inside or outside the office.

**Mobile Connectivity and BYOD is Key**

In many business settings, it has become more important to reach a specific person and not that person’s location. Fixed Mobile Convergence capabilities offer communication services independent of the access technique. Consumerisation will mean enterprises will not be able to - or want to - force users to use a standard form factor; enterprises will need to support a greater variety of devices (BYOD).

**Social Interaction is Business**

More businesses will deploy social media as an integrated element in their business process. The value of their social media activities will increase. Promotions are the top drivers of consumer engagement through social media, so businesses will need to build new linkages among marketing and sales.

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