Siemens Enterprise Communications says that path to unified communications in the cloud is through the channel.

The company today rolled out a cloud-ready version of its unified communications platform alongside a new offering from its Enterasys unit that allows customers to outsource the management of wireless networks using the latest Enterasys access points.

Mark Straton, Siemens senior vice president of solutions marketing for voice and applications, says Siemens is trying to expand the unified communications ecosystem by making it easier to solution providers to deploy unified communications as a service.

The size of the unified communications opportunity for solution providers has always been a subject of debate. Many customers don’t have the appropriate amount of network bandwidth available to run these applications, which means they would prefer to access services that give them access to a broad range of unified communications applications. But because of a general lack of interoperability, the market for unified communications as a service has been somewhat hampered.

Like most things related to the channel, however, there has to be enough critical mass to create the problem that leads to ultimate solution provider opportunity. The challenge is going to be getting customers to appreciate the value of unified communications in enough volume that interoperability issues become a greater vendor priority.

Other new features being announced by Siemens today include a plug-in that integrates Siemens UC offerings with Google Apps and support for the gestures capabilities in the latest version of the Google Android operating system.