[June 20, 2011]

Organizations Primed for Broader Use of Unified Communications Solutions, New CompTIA Study Reveals

Deployment of unified communications solutions is poised for growth as organizations build on a foundation of voice and data applications to include more video, collaboration and social communications tools, according to new research from CompTIA, the non-profit association for the information technology (IT) industry.

Nearly half (49 percent) of the organizations surveyed for the new CompTIA (News - Alert) study, Unified Communications and Collaboration Market Trends, said their expenditures on unified communications technologies will grow relatively faster than their overall IT budget over the next 12 months.

Large firms (500 or more employees) are significantly more likely to increase their unified communications investment relative to the overall IT budget than the smallest of firms (1-49 employees), 64 percent vs. 35 percent.

"This likely reflects the complexity of communications at a large firm compared to a small firm," said Tim Herbert, vice president, research, CompTIA. "More staff, more locations, more end-points and possibly more IT systems make for a more complex communications landscape and a stronger desire to simplify through a unified communications strategy."

IT channel companies express similar positive sentiments about growth in unified communications adoption. Among IT firms with a unified communications practice, 31 percent expect significant growth in their practice over the next 12 months, while 59 percent expect modest growth. Few expect a drop-off in their unified communications business.

While IT companies and their customers are bullish on the future of unified communications, the CompTIA study indicates that greater clarity about what constitutes unified communications is needed.

From the IT channel perspective, technology product and solution providers also have several hurdles to overcome with customers. These customer challenges include price sensitivity, cited by 39 percent of channel repondents; reliability concerns (36 percent); security concerns (34 percent); difficulty in quantifying return on investment (33 percent); and a general lack of understanding of unified communications products and services (32 percent).

Defining Unified Communications (News - Alert)

Customers and their technology partners are fairly consistent when asked to define unified communications. For each group, core areas include e-mail, web conferencing, unified messaging, video conferencing, audio conferencing and IP communications.

But despite the media attention of technologies such as social communication and location-based services, they are not yet strongly associated with unified communications, according to the CompTIA study.

Additionally, fewer respondents have made the leap from viewing unified communications as an incremental improvement for interaction and sharing to the higher-level communications-enabled business processes. This is seen in the relatively lower numbers of respondents making a strong connection between unified communications with other enterprise systems such as customer relationship management tools.

Many of the technologies associated with unified communications are already widely adopted, according to the CompTIA study. For example, 64 percent of organizations surveyed have Web conferencing; 58 percent, use video conferencing; 54 percent, collaboration applications or platforms; and 51 percent, voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony.

"The integration of all these elements is the hard part, tying all these things together," said Seth Robinson, director, technology analysis, CompTIA. "Voice and data will still be important, but more effort will be devoted to complement them by bringing more video, collaboration and social elements into the enterprise."

Before this can happen, however, organizations must perform a network analysis to determine if their network can support the requirements for new solutions.

"Voice and video are the components of a solution that will drive network upgrades since they consume the most bandwidth and must be handled properly to assure high quality," Robinson explained.

Indeed, among companies in the CompTIA study who have installed a VoIP solution, 61 percent upgraded network equipment such as routers and switches; and 51 percent upgraded infrastructure, such as cabling and network drops.

CompTIA's Unified Communications and Collaboration Market Trends study is based on separate online surveys of 600 IT and business executives involved in their organization's communications initiatives or strategies and 300 companies in the IT channel. Surveys were conducted in March. The complete report is available at no cost to CompTIA members who can access the file at www.CompTIA.org or by contacting [email protected].

About CompTIA

CompTIA is the voice of the world's information technology (IT) industry. As a non-profit trade association advancing the global interests of IT professionals and companies, CompTIA is the recognized authority for IT education and credentials and the primary advocate for IT businesses and workers. Through its foundation, CompTIA also enables disadvantaged populations to gain the skills they need for employment in the IT industry. CompTIA's vision of the IT landscape is shaped by more than 25 years of global perspective and more than 2,000 members and 1,000 business partners. For more information, visit www.comptia.org or follow CompTIA on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/comptia.

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