Take-up of unified communications - the merging of IP telephony, conferencing and collaboration, messaging and communications tools - is on a "steeply rising curve", according to analysts.

Spending on UC among businesses worldwide is expected to rise from just $302m last year to $4.2bn in five years' time, according to industry watchers ABI Research.

And it seems that suppliers of unified communications applications are now working closely with providers of hosted VoIP services, leading to several flavours of unified communications now emerging from the cloud.  Not a surprise as this combination can produce very significant benefits for your business.

Solutions now include versions featuring a "hybrid mix" of customer-owned equipment with managed or hosted services, which target medium-sized businesses; fully hosted offerings with smaller businesses in mind; and revamped broadband telephone services targeting small office/home office users. The shift to a more cloud-centric approach can be seen in the way vendors are now positioning UC as a service rather than a product.

UC implementations bring together a variety of digital communication tools to make it easier for users to collaborate and improve business processes. UC, for example, might mean bringing together instant messaging, presence information, videoconferencing, as well as email, SMS, fax and voicemail to improve productivity, and potentially trim the cost of an organisation's IT infrastructure.

The move towards higher mobile data allowances will also see the extension of unified communications to smartphones and other wireless data devices, according to the analyst.

There is also a rumour that email is turning into "grey mail" with older generations now more likely to use email than younger ones (98 per cent of people aged 65-plus, compared to 86 per cent of 15 to 24-year-olds). According to TalkTalk, young people prefer technologies that allow them to contact whole groups of friends rather than individuals one at a time.

Lawyers, accountants and other professionals should be keeping an eye on all of this as there are many opportunities to reduce costs and improve productivity to impact on bottom line profits.