ReadWriteEnterprise

Not long ago, video conferencing was science fiction - now it's a key part of many enterprises' communication strategy. According to a survey conducted by LifeSize, 51% of mid-sized enterprises polled use video conferencing and the majority of those that don't are planning to. And it's getting cheaper, easier and more ubiquitous. Several pieces of news in the past couple weeks are illuminating some key trends in enterprise video conferencing. Here's what we're seeing.

Somewhat overshadowed by today's news that Skype is partnering with Facebook comes a long expected announcement from the VOIP company: it is also partnering with telephony company Avaya to offer unified communication services. This follows Skype moving its business focused Skype Connect service out of beta. Of the "big three" unified communications companies (Avaya, Cisco and Microsoft), Avaya is the least well known, so this partnership may bring some cachet to the company's offerings.