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Unifying UC
Demand
By
Martin
Vilaboy
T
he need for unified communications is
fairly ubiquitous. Across just about every
vertical and SIC code organizations are
faced with sprawling employees and devic-
es, fast and agile competitors, empowered
and demanding customers and a need to
control cost, be it in real estate or telecom expenses.
ools that unify communications and facilitate collabo-
ration specifically address all those issues.
Yet unified communications as a packaged ser-
vice, despite its relative maturity, remains far less
than universally adopted, particularly outside of
larger enterprise accounts. A recent survey of more
than 400 enterprise and SMB IT decision-makers,
performed by UBM Tech for XO Communications,
found that only one-third of organizations had fully
embraced UC. On the other side of the spectrum, a
separate survey performed by Osterman Research
for ConnectSolutions found that about as many IT
decision-makers (26 percent) and business deci-
sion makers (39 percent) are either “somewhat” or
“very fearful” of migrating to UC. Nearly half of those
surveyed admitted that they don’t fully understand
the full impact UC would have on their organizations.
These fears and trepidations come despite the fact
that 71 percent of those surveyed by Osterman be-
lieve there are “significant” or even “enormous” ben-
efits that can be realized from the deployment of UC.
UCaaS expected to drive next adoption wave
30
Channel
Vision
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May - June 2016