There is lack of interest in deploying public cloud-based unified communications (UC) service among organizations that are currently not using it, according to the findings of an independent survey on the cloud adoption plans of mid-to-large enterprises for UC services.
Released by Azaleos and conducted by Osterman Research, the findings of the survey say that among organizations -- not currently using a public cloud-based UC service -- only 10 percent plan to deploy such a service within the next year citing concerns over loss of customization, uptime, and security.
Less than half percent, 48 percent, of the responding organizations -- those who cannot or would not deploy public cloud-based UC services -- would deploy a private cloud as an alternative, according to the survey’s findings.
Moreover, if decision makers had to choose a public-cloud UC provider, only one-third would select Microsoft Office 365.
“This research revealed that larger organizations are interested in the benefits associated with public cloud Unified Communications (News - Alert) -- namely reduced management overhead, predictable cost of ownership, and simpler migration to new services -- but are concerned about customization, uptime, and security,” said Michael Osterman, president at Osterman Research.
He said that they were surprised to learn that among organizations that said they could not or would not deploy public cloud-based UC services, nearly one third indicated that if hybrid cloud UC solutions were available they would migrate within the next 12 months.
Additionally, the survey found that the majority of enterprises will continue to deploy UC -- email, calendaring and scheduling, voice/telephony, presence, Web conferencing, and more -- in on-premise and/or private-cloud infrastructures over the next several years. However, the public cloud-based messaging and collaboration market is also slowly gaining popularity, observes the survey report.
“According to the Osterman Report, public cloud Unified Communications services are not considered ready for prime time by most mid-to-large enterprises,” said Scott Gode, vice president of product management and marketing at Azaleos.
However, the survey did reveal that many decision makers view private cloud UC infrastructures as superior to public cloud options, based largely on their robust customization, flexibility, and more mature security benefits, Gode said.
In addition, the findings of the survey also note that the primary reasons for not deploying a public cloud-based UC system are perceived loss of customization capabilities and IT control, doubts about claims of uptime in the public cloud, and fears about the security of customer data in the public cloud.
The report, entitled Cloud Realities in the Age of Office 365, summarizes the findings of a survey of IT managers, directors, and CIOs on UC platforms they currently have in place, their perceptions of public, private and hybrid cloud deployments, plans for migrating UC to the cloud, and barriers to the adoption of the cloud for UC.
Azaleos provides managed email, collaboration and unified communications services available in private cloud, on-premise or mixed deployment architectures.
Last month, the company unveiled the Azaleos ViewX CIO Dashboard.
Anshu Shrivastava is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anshu’s articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Juliana Kenny