More MNCs to Implement Unified Communications in 2010

While most organizations have been forced to operate under budget constraints over the last several months, research firm Ovum says that MNCs are still increasingly implementing and integrating unified communications or, “UC.”

 

According to the global advisory and consulting firm’s latest research, “Multinationals Keep the UC Ball Rolling,” several individual UC applications have already been deployed and a number of video applications will be implemented in the coming year.

 

Many larger organizations want to extend UC to mobile devices and almost all the companies surveyed by Ovum (News - Alert) said that they have a global strategy for implementation of IP telephony.

 

Pauline Trotter, principal analyst based in London said that more than 40 percent of organizations they surveyed have a global IPT strategy including a roadmap for implementation throughout the company or group.

 

This result represents a major change since last year, when only one out of four organizations surveyed said they had a group-wide implementation plan in place.

 

Today, a growing number of MNCs are looking towards global implementation phase and are collaborating with other companies to meet this goal.

 

About 86 percent of the companies surveyed had chosen a global equipment vendor for IP telephony and this represents a significant increase since last year, according to Trotter. Although Cisco (News - Alert) and Avaya have gained a competitive edge over other players, several other IPT vendors are also coming forward.

 

Mobile phones are also becoming popular all over the world and according to Ovum’s research both e-mail and instant messaging are the most commonly deployed applications on handheld devices today.

 

Several companies also noted their intentions to deploy more mobile UC applications within the coming year and are especially interested in telephony presence features. Applications such as click-to-call from mobile applications, single voicemail, single number and simultaneous ringing for fixed and mobile devices will be widely used.

 

Dual-mode or “GSM/Wi-Fi” devices are also predicted to increase in market share but at present, few companies are interested in extending video applications to mobile devices. Although 65 percent of companies currently have no mobile devices acting as PBX (News - Alert) extensions, Ovum predicts modest growth within a year.