Unified Communications refers to new telecommunication services offered to companies to improve efficiency through every employee.
These include fixed and mobile telephony, video telephony, instant messaging and even the corporate IT environment. 
Thanks to a survey by NoJitter blogger Zeus Kerravala, we can offer you a retrospective of the 2013 UC year: When you look back at 2013, it’s hard not to realize just how rich the year has been both in terms of new products and in terms of upheavals linked to management changes, mergers and so on.
Speaking of upheaval: last year was marked by Avaya’s decision to poach Pierre-Paul Allard from Cisco and put him in charge of group sales.
The results are clearly visible.
Indeed, excellent results were unanimously noted across all product ranges and at international level.
Coincidence?
Certainly not.
In addition to having received international recognition for his contributions (he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003, as well as the Trudeau Medal from the University of Ottawa), Pierre-Paul Allard had already had the opportunity to work with industry giants such as IBM.
In 2013, Oracle also sought to reassert its importance in the communications industry by acquiring Acme Packet, a pillar of network acceleration, as well as network signaling leader Tekelec.
Larry Ellison, the world’s 5th richest man and co-founder of Oracle, stops at nothing to broaden the scope of his company’s activities. 
2013 has also been an excellent year for Lync, with many people starting to hear about it and become interested in Microsoft’s new chat and videoconferencing solution.
This is undoubtedly due to Microsoft Lync’s desire to communicate on its chat function but above all to popularize its voice services.
Lync mobile has also expanded, and a number of suppliers, notably Polycom and Aastra, have turned their attention to launching Lync-compatible phones to complement the range of Lync phones already on the market, offering a wider choice of IP phones.
At the end of 2012, Rowan Trollope was appointed to head up Cisco, which had seen 3 executives change hands in less than a year.
These successive changes led to the departure of several people within the group, resulting in a significant renewal of the management team.
Rowan Trollope’s mission is now to simplify Cisco’s collaboration in all areas (ease of use, deployment…).
All this reorganization already seems to be bearing fruit, as the company has been posting its first positive results for several months.
In terms of product launches, Amazon surprised us with the launch of Mayday, a remote support application dedicated to Kindle.
With the click of a button, a virtual agent appears to solve problems and even control the e-reader remotely.
The application, which simply puts the Genius Bar in the Apple Store to shame, is a complete innovation in the field of videoconferencing.
Good for you! 
During 2013, Rich Mc Bee raised Mitel’s share price from Fr 2.5.- to Fr 9.- , how?
While it’s true that the company was going through difficulties, Rich McBee took the bull by the horns by cleaning up at the operational level and acquiring PrairieFyre and Aastra (which will become Mitel in mid-2014).
As planned, Siemens entreprise communications became Unify and unveiled its new visual identity and slogan “Harmonize your entreprise”.
A good foundation for the company’s new platform called Project Ansible, which positions itself as the leader in virtual meetings.
Unify has also undergone management changes, with Chris Hummel and Hamid Akhavan announcing their departure.
Hamid Akhavan has already been replaced by Dean Douglas as CEO.
A departure on a high note. 
And finally, what would this retrospection be without a round-up of the year’s failures?
It would be brutal to call Blackberry 10 and Windows 8.1 failures, yet it’s hard not to acknowledge the disappointment they’ve caused.
While Blackberry 10 promised to be the new smartphone on the market and a serious challenger to Apple and Android, its release was more than frustrating for fans of the mulberry brand, which did nothing to halt their migration to rival brands.
Windows, for its part, clearly demonstrated its new focus on mobile and cloud, and failed to really respond to its customers’ requests for Windows 8.1.
The balance sheet for 2013 is therefore relatively good, and promises plenty of new features for 2014!
