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As more "digital citizens" - or under 25's - hit the job market, more companies will invest in Unified Communications systems, a networking company has revealed today.

Technology provider Azzurri stated that real-time communications are so popular in modern culture that small and medium enterprises will adopt these IT services to bring together key contact methods to the desktop.

Product development director at Azzurri, Tony Corlett, noted that the next five years was crucial for the development of the business as younger employees will naturally expect the systems to be in place to make the workplace easier to correspond within.

However, he added that it would be a slow evolution and added: "Unified Communications will become more prevalent as time goes by.

"At the moment the companies that are the early adopters are those where the business benefits are clear and obvious right now."

Microsoft said that the technology would "bridge the gap between telephony and computing to deliver real time messaging, voice, and conferencing to the desktop environment."

More than half of small businesses (53%) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support, London based Connect conducted the research in 2007.