June 13, 2007
UC Application Selection Brings In a Broad Group of Decision Makers
In recent weeks we have been examining the views, deployment plans and vendor preferences of TMC (News - Alert) subscribers and Web site visitors in the area of Unified Communications. In the latest research survey conducted in partnership with IntelliCom Analytics, we were interested in seeing how our readers would actually go about selecting their UC solutions once the adoption decision had been made.
The survey findings suggest that while IT Infrastructure groups play a significant role in choosing the specific Unified Communications (News - Alert) applications that get deployed in the enterprise, many businesses have brought additional stakeholders into the decision process.
Of the 1,141 decision makers participating in the survey, 56% of North American-headquartered enterprises (50% in Global region firms) indicated that UC application selection resided primarily in their IT Infrastructure Group, while 16% in NA (and 20% Globally) reported the selection process being driven by their internal Desktop Application, Directory or Business Application Development Groups.
Non-technical stakeholders choose UC apps in a number of businesses, with approximately 9% of enterprises worldwide viewing the lines of business (LOB) and functional user communities such as sales or technical support as their primary decision makers.
NA and Global enterprises also tracked closely in terms of utilizing committees for decision-making, with roughly 20% of all businesses looking to multi-discipline groups that draw from the technology teams as well as LOBs and end-user functions.
Selection Options:
- IT Infrastructure Group
- Desktop Applications / Directory Group
- Business Applications Development Group
- Individual Line of Business Units benefiting from UC applications
- Functional Areas (sales, engineering, etc.) benefiting from UC applications
- Some combination of the above
