The UK is lagging behind most other European countries
and the US in its adoption ofIP
telephonyand the use of single, integrated
data and IP telephony networks, according to new research by
Datamonitor.
The research, commissioned by IT services company
Dimension Data,
included 390 IT managers and 524 end users across 13 countries in
North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
The survey shows 60% of US companies polled use voice over IP
(VoIP), compared with 33% in the UK, and 53% of US companies use
the same network for IP telephony and data, compared with 28% in
the UK.
In adoption of IP telephony, the UK also lags behind
Benelux
countries (44%), Austrialia (40%), and France (35%). The UK is on a
par with Germany at 33%, but ahead of only Switzerland (28%) in
Europe, Asia (28%), and the Middle East and Africa (13%).
In single network integration, the UK lags behind Benelux
countries (42%), Australia (35%), France (30%), Switzerland (30%),
and Asia (29%). The only European country behind the UK is Germany
with 23%, which was the same as companies surveyed in the Middle
East and Africa.
Steve Blood, research vice-president at Gartner, said it is not
surprising that the US leads in the VoIP market because much of the
technology comes from the US, where adoption was largely driven by
toll bypass and poor-quality indoor mobile phone services.
Mike Robinson, converged communications manager at Dimension
Data, agreed that market conditions in the UK were different, but
said UK companies still lagged other European countries in the
adoption of unified communication technologies. He said this was
mainly because UK companies tend to look at cost reduction and
productivity gain only when investing in new technology, rather
than as a business enabler.
Robinson warned that UK companies risked missing out on the
business opportunities that integrated, IP-based networks will
bring through greater alignment between business strategies and IT
with the increasing introduction of IP-based applications and
services. He said easier integration between IP-based technologies
was key to deriving maximum business value from
unified communications.
Companies in the US and other European countries are adopting a
wider set of unified communication technologies, said Robinson.
Consequently, they would be in a better position to reap the
benefits of greater business agility and more flexible working than
UK companies, which tended to adopt new technology in "bite-sized
chunks".