As VoiceCon 2008 wrapped up last week in San Francisco, the usual announcements about new products, more interoperability demonstrations, and end-user case studies were standard fare. But another theme emerged about how unified communications deployments are being affected by current economic conditions as several company executives shared their views. The bottom line: Unified communications can be used to reduce telco costs and improve employee productivity - and proving these in a business case are especially critical in uncertain economic times.

From his perspective, Miles Valentine, CEO at Zeacom said in an interview his company has had a very good financial performance for the past six or seven quarters and that with half of Zeacom’s business outside of the U.S., he is cautiously optimistic despite the uncertainty around the U. S. economy. But he noted that in the SMB contact center environment, “Unified Communications with strong productivity and a proven ROI helps to get buyers-- it cannot be considered a luxury.”

Mark Spencer, founder and CTO of Digium agreed --noting during a VoiceCon panel discussion that, “The sell is all about cost savings.”

Mitel’s announcement for a unified communications portfolio packaged with a role-based software licensing approach focused as much on the business case benefits as it did on the technology. In his prepared statement, Paul Butcher, president and chief operating officer at Mitel said, the new solution was made to “enhance business communication and collaboration with customers, partners, and colleagues, helping employees to make better, faster decisions, be more responsive, and deliver greater value to their clients...making it easier to achieve the kind of communications that can mean the difference between a company just getting by or winning in the current economic environment.”

And in his daily blog wrapping up the last day of the show, Eric Krapf, VoiceCon Program Chair noted that, “panelists from Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft, IBM, Siemens and Mitel all agreed that cost was the overriding concern for enterprises.”

Our observations: While the ROI has always been a business consideration for unified communications, it has been melded with attraction to new technology, the need to improve business process, and the desire to better customer service. It looks like the cost considerations are now “front and center” as enterprises face an uncertain economy.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.