A partnership between BT and Cisco will see the two multinationals deliver a converged IP telephony service aimed at businesses.

The platform, which is part of BT’s Onevoice UCC portfolio, will utilise Cisco’s Hosted UC services and converges enterprise communications such as voice, mobile, data and video conferencing.

Vice president of BT Global Service’s global portfolio Neil Sutton claims that the technology has measurable benefits for businesses, despite slow adoption, claiming that enterprises currently suffer from “multiple, fragmented, disparate IT and telephony infrastructures that restrict communication”.

He added that cloud-based unified communications could potentially help organisations to both boost productivity and reduce capital expenditure, two factors which have been the subject of recent heated debate when discussing the benefits of the technology.

With its utilty-based, per user pricing structure, it appears as though BT and Cisco are keen to push cloud-based unified communications as a more economic alternative to dedicated counterparts.

The partnership also falls in line with the findings of research published by In-Stat last month that forecast that infrastructure providers such as Cisco and Microsoft will look to join forces with VoIP suppliers as they position themselves to take advantage of any forthcoming upturn in unified communications adoption.

According to In-Stat’s data, global unified communications revenues will jump to $39.7 billion in 2013.