Enterprise-scale organizations are using more video as part of their unified communications (UC) capabilities, according to a new report from Infonetics Research titled “UC Strategies and Vendor Leadership: North America Enterprise Survey.”
“The biggest change we’re seeing in unified communication deployments is the adoption of video,” commented Infonetics’ principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS Diane Myers. “Businesses have been implementing more mobility into their UC architectures over the past year and now are looking toward videoconferencing to help drive further productivity.”
“The vendors that can effectively deliver integrated video and mobility into their UC solution and do so in a simple and easy-to-use manner will be best positioned for success,” she added. “According to enterprises participating in our UC survey, Cisco and Microsoft are the leaders in unified communications thanks to their installed base and perceived positions of leadership.”
Like many other applications, UC is moving to the cloud. As they make that move, survey respondents most frequently cited security levels, service and support, and device options, in that order, as “very important” considerations when choosing a cloud/hosted service provider, according to Infonetics. Pricing and innovative service offerings followed, respectively.
Also among the report’s highlights:
- Companies are adopting unified communications to improve response times, increase employee productivity, and reduce operational costs
- 87% of enterprises surveyed plan to add videoconferencing to their UC architecture by August 2014
- The use of the cloud is also on the rise: 22% of respondents already have implemented portions of their UC architecture in a private cloud, and 19% have done so in a public cloud
- Collaboration is the most common application deployed in the cloud (private or public), followed by conferencing and faxing
- For businesses that have not adopted UC, the #1 barrier is cost
Image courtesy of flickr user Penn State.
