There exists a number of clear benefits from the
successful deployment of unified communications (UC) as part of a
mobile computing strategy, yet even though a majority of
companies have UC firmly on their agenda, evidence from a recent
survey by Siemens Enterprise Communications has revealed a clear
disconnect between those who implement and those who use
UC.
The sample comprised 252 IT and telephony professionals
responsible for implementing enterprise telephony systems and 254
non-IT end users of enterprise telephony systems in US enterprises
with more than 2,000 employees.
The stand out trend was that there were
consistent motivations for implementing UC: increased productivity
and responsiveness plus more effective business processes.
These were mentioned by nearly all respondents as being benefits
that they expected to gain as well as being important to their
company.
In all, just more than half of firms were discussing or had
already implemented UC. However, only 16% of firms had actually
implemented and only 14% were in the process of doing so.
The other key finding was the attitudes of workers towards UC.
Two-thirds of large enterprise end users ranked their own
company’s UC efforts as average at best, with 28% saying there was
just a “glimmer of hope” or that they were stuck in the “dark
ages.”
Firms also indicated clearly that they expect
UC to throw up a number of challenges in deployment. The most
frequently mentioned in the survey were that implementing UC was an
“all or nothing” process or involved ripping up and replacing
existing infrastructures. Security issues and the need for
proprietary software were also cited as challenges.
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