This spring, the editors at SearchUnifiedCommunications.com presented more than 300 readers with a survey of communications products and services. The list of almost 70 different UC products and services was determined by the editors, who polled vendors the networking industry asking them which of their products, services or product families should be included.

Survey respondents were asked to select the products that they use, and to rate each product according to four different criteria that varied depending on the product or service. For each criterion, respondents gave the product between one and five stars, with one indicating poor and five excellent. They also had the opportunity to write in comments about their experiences with that specific product.

Winners were based on cumulative responses achieved by calculating each product's average score. Editors arrived at this number by assigning points for the amount of stars receives in each criterion. Each criterion was averaged first, then the results were added and averaged to produce the cumulative average score for that product.

In each product category, the highest average cumulative score received the gold medal, the next highest the silver, and the third highest bronze. Vendors were only eligible to win one award per category. To prevent products that received a very small number of high scores from unduly influencing the results, a product had to receive a minimum of 20 responses to be eligible to win. Occasionally an up-and-coming category with fewer responses is calculated based on 10 or more responses, however.