SAN JOSE, CA – Several new products announced Monday at the VON.x conference in San Jose had a common theme: Cisco Systems isn’t the only name for unified communications. Many companies unveiled new products to promote UC, a concept championed by Cisco in recent years, at all levels of the enterprise network.

The landscape for UC has traditionally been marked by competition between Cisco and Microsoft. Both companies leverage software-based approaches to integrating voice-over-IP with other forms of communications, including instant messaging, conferencing and e-mail. The market has received significant attention for its ability to increase productivity and ease of interaction in the corporate environment. According to In-Stat, the UC market will experience a compound annual growth rate of nearly 25% in the next five years, with the market as a whole reaching $24.2 billion by 2012.

“Cisco really started hyping the market in 2006, when they put out their unified communication marketing and really educating people on what it could be,” said Matt Edic, senior director of product marketing for NextPoint. “Fast forward about two years later, people have purchased the products, they are getting out of the labs…The US is hitting the maturity curve and hitting the next wave of moving beyond the convergence play, getting beyond the transport level and getting into combinations of applications that have been out there.”

NextPoint, which provides IP-based connectivity between devices and networks, today unveiled the Unified Communications Exchange (UCX), focused on enabling service and network providers to roll out next-gen services quickly, effectively and securely. The product addresses what Edic said are the three biggest demands for UC equipment today: presence, video and voice. The UCX allows any number of devices and networks to communicate across all standards.

“We are fascinated to see that, while SIP trunking is getting a lot of the hype, we’re spending more and more time helping people really unify their core,” Edic said. “Bridge together the pieces they’ve got, then they are better able to take advantage of the services like SIP trunking to kind of save or bring in new services across different service providers at a more effective price point for them.”

U4EA Technologies is another company following in Cisco’s footsteps in addressing the need for converged communications. Jim Greenway, vice president of marketing, said Cisco’s presence in the market is a good news/bad news scenario. It shows the market has potential to be big, but it also means his company will be competing with Cisco. That being said, Greenway said U4EA’s FusionView 700 Element Management System announced today will be competitive based on its strong SIP and VoIP capabilities, security features for voice and data and its patented guarantee of service (GoS) technology that manages network congestion by throttling parts of the network as needed.

“Our GoS is smart enough to allow bandwidth to be used for other types,” he said. “The second we detect VoIP, we’ll use the bandwidth.”

Classic bandwidth reservation involves splitting a T1 between voice and data traffic, Greenway said, and reserving that bandwidth solely for either voice or data. With the U4EA platform, if any part of the voice bandwidth is not being used, the data traffic is throttled through that network as well. As such, telcos can configure 90 to 100% of their access link, whereas Cisco does not advise configuring more than 33% with their platform, he said.

Enterprise communications provider Aastra today also introduced a new SMB IP product to the North American market. Called the AastraLink Pro 160, the product is designed specifically for small businesses, relying on open standards and open source software, including Linux, Asterisk and SIP telephone. While Aastra supplies PBXs to the global market, this is the first time it is available in North America. Fixed mobile convergence is on the horizon for Aastra, but according to executive vice president Yves Laliberte, this is the appropriate starting point for small businesses.

“I think there is an evolution of going from traditional telephony system to converged telephony system, and the IP base is just beginning in the enterprise space,” Laliberte said. “Before they prioritize FMC, they want to have their basic foundation in place first. The small businesses are getting more and more sophisticated, and they are doing their homework and they know about these things.”

As carriers look toward value-added services to reverse their declining voice revenues, UC and FMC remain at the forefront of their plans going forward. Through integrating voice with PC- and mobile-based apps, Sylantro is attempting to reinvent the voice cash cow. Today at VON, the company – winner of a VON Innovation award for its partnership with Microsoft - unveiled new features for its mobile operator customers, including real-time handover between desk phones and mobile portals to access enterprise PBX services and Web mash-up capabilities for mobile devices. Like Aastra, the company is focusing on UC as a way to bridge the gap to FMC.

“We think that fixed mobile convergence is part of it, but it is more about unified communications,” said CEO Marco Limena. “The technology should take voice across any service and any client – the IP phones on your desk, the mobile device that you carry with you and the application and the PC environment.”

Sylantro is focused on partnering with providers in emerging economies, looking to build a network starting from scratch, as well as companies operating in mature markets, like Microsoft, adding new features to increase enterprise productivity.