Report: Unified Communications Outperform Expectations of Most Firms
Are unified communications (UC) effective? A new XO Communications (XO) study of business and IT decision-makers at 426 enterprise and small and medium-sized organizations revealed UC currently is helping many organizations become more productive and efficient.
The study, titled “The State of Unified Communications,” revealed 87 percent of respondents said the benefits of UC met or exceeded their expectations.
In addition, 80 percent of respondents noted that UC met or exceeded their expectations for both collaboration and productivity gains.
“Businesses are eager to benefit from the collaboration and productivity enhancements that UC has to offer,” Jake Heinz, XO Communications’ senior vice president of marketing and product, said in a prepared statement. “XO believes that businesses profit from understanding that companies using UC services are benefiting significantly from improved collaboration and productivity.”
Other study findings included:
- UC technology costs met or, in some cases, were actually lower than anticipated, for 74 percent of respondents.
- Perceived return on investment (ROI) and cost issues are the primary obstacles to UC adoption.
- Successful UC adopters have stronger C-level support than latecomers.
- Future adopters are much less likely to opt for on-premises UC than current users.
Expect the demand for UC services to increase over the next few years as well.
Research firm Grand View Research has predicted the global UC market could be worth $75.81 billion by 2020, thanks in part to the rising demand for UC services from organizations of all sizes.
What are your thoughts on the UC market? Share your thoughts about this story in the Comments section below, via Twitter @dkobialka or email me at dan.kobialka@penton.com.
