Study: Real-Time UC Deployments Are Growing

According to a study titled “Communications and Collaboration Research Benchmark,” conducted by Nemertes Research, unified communications deployments in the enterprise are growing.

 

Almost 47 percent of the IT executives surveyed reportedly said that they’re deploying or planning to deploy UC. The figure was higher by 17 percent from that in 2007.

 

The UC deployments are propelled by scattered workgroup locations, burgeoning travel costs, and new technology options such as telepresence.

 

 “Nearly 90 percent of enterprises identified their organizations as ‘virtual’ where employees work remotely from supervisors or workgroups,” says Irwin Lazar, principal analyst and program director for unified communications and collaboration with Nemertes. “This leads enterprises to invest in technologies that enable better collaboration.”

 

Nearly 2 to 5 percent of international executive travel has been done away with due to increased adoption of desktop, room-based, and telepresence video conferencing. It was revealed that around 65 percent of executives are deploying or considering telepresence video-conferencing systems, and 51 percent are opting for desktop video.

 

The benchmark recommends building a business case that explores the chances of cutting down on human latency and travel, and enhancing meeting efficiency by utilizing suitable UC applications. “IT managers need to make sure they have a UC plan, and that they are looking at video to improve virtual worker collaboration and travel costs,” says Lazar. The 443 IT executives surveyed in the benchmark also rated their IP telephony and unified-communications vendors.

 

The eight-volume study investigates various key areas including organizational strategies, unified-communications applications, Web 2.0 and collaboration technology, mobility, voice of IP and video over IP. Nemertes will not only closely interact with 443 IT executives it will also study the vertical-market implications.

 

Nemertes Research is a research-advisory firm focused on analyzing and quantifying the business value of emerging technologies.