Driven by the rapid rise of mobile devices, mobile broadband networks and business apps, the benefits of unified communications (UC) are now at a stage where they decidedly outweigh the barriers, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.
“Mobility was again a key trend running through our UC survey. More businesses are embracing BYOD and also outfitting employees with company-issued smartphones and tablets. This, in turn, is driving requirements to extend UC applications to these devices,” Diane Myers, Infonetics’ principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS, was quoted in a press release.
Eighty-eight percent of respondents to a survey conducted for Infonetics’, “2014 UC Cloud and On-Premises Strategies and Vendor Leadership: North American Enterprise Survey” said they intend to add video conferencing within their organization’s UC platforms. Other highlights of Infonetics latest report include:
- Mobile device integration is rated a very important UC capability by 74% of respondents
- According to enterprises surveyed, the #1 factor driving cloud UC adoption is cost
- E-mail is the most common UC application deployed in the cloud (private or public) today by survey participants, followed closely by instant messaging, voice, conferencing, and collaboration
- When asked who they consider to be the top 3 suppliers for on-premises and cloud UC products and services, enterprises most often named Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM
- Qualities businesses most often look for when choosing a hosted provider include a high level of service support, QoS guarantees, and security.
“The barriers to adoption no longer outweigh the benefits of unified communications (UC), and as a result there are fewer and fewer businesses not utilizing UC,” Myers added. “Enterprises have a number of choices, from traditional premises-based solutions to a variety of cloud capabilities. This makes for a fragmented market for businesses to wade through, but it also provides options to best fit a wide swath of requirements.”
Image courtesy of flickr user Old Shoe Woman.
