Blair Pleasant

President and Principal Analyst, COMMfusion LLC Co-Founder, UCStrategies.com

Blair Pleasant provides consulting and market research analysis on Unified Communications (UC) and voice/data convergence markets and technologies, aimed at helping end-user and vendor clients both strategically and tactically. As co-founder of UCStrategies.com, a website portal providing information and analysis on the growing Unified Communications market, Ms. Pleasant publishes articles and blogs, and participates in executive interview podcasts with leading UC players. She is also a regular contributor to nojitter.com and has been featured in numerous webinars and podcasts, presenting insights, analysis and research on UC and related industries.

Prior to COMMfusion, Ms. Pleasant was Director of Communications Analysis for The PELORUS Group, a market research and consulting firm, and President of Lower Falls Consulting.

With over 20 years experience, her primary areas of focus are Unified Communications, contact center software, Unified Messaging, computer telephony integration (CTI), voice processing, and communications convergence applications.

Blair has authored many highly acclaimed market studies, and provides market research analysis and consulting services to both end user and vendor clients. Multi-client research studies include:

• Unified Communications Market, 2007-2012, June 2008, published by COMMfusion LLC
• Unified Communications End User Productivity Study, May 2008, prepared and published by COMMfusion LLC/UCStrategies.com
• Worldwide Unified Messaging Applications for Enterprises 2006-2010 Forecast and 2005 Vendor Shares: The Road to Unified Communications, published by IDC
• Enterprise Unified Messaging Market 2005-2010, November 2006
• Voice/Data Recording: Markets, Products and Suppliers, May 2004, published in conjunction with Tern Systems.
• Unified Messaging Usurps Traditional Voice Messaging Market, August 2004, published by In-Stat/MDR.
• Convergence Technology Resellers Expectations and Vendor Relationships, October 2000, prepared and published by The IN-Fusion Group, a consortium of independent analysts.

Multi-client industry market studies researched and written by Blair and published by The PELORUS Group include:

• Unified Communications for the Service Provider Market, March 2001
• Carrier Class Contact Center Applications, September 2000
• Unified Messaging CPE: Moving to Unified Communications, March 2000
• CTI: The Path to Mixed Media, October 1999
• Unified and Integrated Messaging, August 1998
• The Future Of Computer Telephony Integration, September 1997
• The Future of Call Center Software: Business Opportunities And Market Strategies To 2001, August 1996

Blair has also authored many white papers for a variety of companies in the Unified Communications, contact center and unified messaging markets, which include descriptions of market trends, technology insights, and specific product descriptions.

Custom research reports for a variety of clients include:

• Assisting UC vendor in marketing and strategic direction
• Providing market overview and analysis to help large, multinational vendor develop its UC strategy
• Unified Communications vertical market analysis, identifying the “pain points” for specific lines of business in various vertical markets and recommending UC solutions for those pain points
• Analyzing contact center best practices for a large, multi-site national insurance company, and assessing the company’s distributed contact centers to help the company better retain current customers and increase new customers
• Multi-media contact center technology tutorial for sales teams
• Competitive Analysis of Specific Vendors in the Outbound/Call Blending, and Intelligent Call Routing Markets
• Consulting next-gen switch vendor on the features and capabilities needed for contact center applications
• CTI, contact center, and UM vendor competitive analysis
• Unified messaging end-user research
• Evaluating and selecting a contact center platform and knowledge base vendor for a large university
• On-going consulting with leading unified messaging vendor regarding partnerships and product direction
• Providing consulting services and market positioning to a collaboration start up vendor
• Contact center pricing analysis
• The Market For Network-Based Intelligent Routing System
• Speech Recognition Technology Assessment
• On-going/ad-hoc consulting with leading contact center vendor
• On-going Competitive Analysis of Call Center/CTI Market, responding to various inquiries on a monthly basis
• Preparation of marketing plan for CTI start-up company

Ms. Pleasant has authored several articles for various trade magazines, and is a frequent speaker and moderator at conferences. She has also organized and managed several conferences, including developing the content, agenda, selecting and working with the speakers, in addition to serving as moderator for the 2-day events.

Ms. Pleasant received a BA degree in Communications from Albany State University, plus an MBA in marketing and MS in Broadcast Administration from Boston University.