Companies are adopting unified communications to improve response times, increase employee productivity, and reduce operational costs, according to market research firm Infonetics Research. For businesses that have not adopted UC, the No. 1 barrier is cost.
Collaboration is the most common application deployed in the cloud (private or public), followed by conferencing and faxing. However, the results show that 87 percent of enterprises surveyed said that they plan to add videoconferencing to their UC architecture by August 2014.
“The biggest change we’re seeing in unified communication deployments is the adoption of video,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS at Infonetics Research. “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 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, the study found.
“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,” added Myers. “According 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.”
