Unified Communications is one of the areas I cover pretty closely in my work. Everyone in the business knows that Cisco and Microsoft are the two dominant players at present in UC, especially from the point of view of marketing dollars invested in this market. But over the last few weeks I’ve been struck by the positions of two other players: Dimension Data and BT.

I’ve heard a fair amount from BT about its UC strategy over the last few months as it gears up to make a big push around its solutions in this area. And its focus is going to be on integrating the Cisco and Microsoft solutions. BT is of course a big Cisco partner and through its INS acqusition (now rebranded as BT Professional Services) it is also a big Microsoft partner. As a result, it’s in a great position to bring the two together, and has a project underway to make this happen.

Dimension Data is Cisco’s biggest reseller. It also has a significant business in reselling and managing Microsoft software including Exchange, Sharepoint, and Live Communications Server / Office Communications Server. As such, it too is in a great position to bring the two together, and it also recognizes this and is making it a major thrust of its UC strategy. DiData is in a stronger position with Cisco, whereas (in the US at least) its Microsoft partnership is new and relatively undeveloped compared with BT’s.

Each company has its strengths and weaknesses in this area, but both have recognised a crucial point: that customers will buy many of their UC solutions from Microsoft and Cisco, not one or the other, and most of those will need help integrating the two. For those not directly selling their own UC solutions, this could be a great opportunity, and for these two companies in particular the fit is particularly good. AT&T, Verizon and others will also attempt to play in the UC space, but for these two carriers at least the focus is actually on providing clients that will compete with the Cisco and Microsoft Communicators rather than doing integration work. Although this will win some customers, my money’s on BT and Dimension Data to really make money on UC.