84% of Organizations Considering Unified Communications (UC) In The Near Future

System and Vendor Obstacles Demonstrate Implementation Strategies Needed Before Solutions

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Apr 01, 2014, 06:44 ET

WAYNE, Pa., April 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Evolve IP, The Cloud Services Company™, today unveiled research indicating that IT professionals and executives are predominately considering implementing unified communications (UC) for their organization. According to a survey of nearly 1,000 respondents, 84% of organizations that do not currently deploy UC features are planning for, or considering the services, for their business in the next one to three years. The survey also found that fewer than 4 in 10 organizations with less than 2,000 employees are presently using any UC related features.

For the study Evolve IP defined UC as: "The concept of consolidating phone, email, fax, chat, video, and collaboration into a single unified channel, either on a device or on a computer." In addition to looking at UC as a whole, the survey also examined UC components and uncovered that the most requested UC features are:

Audio & Web Conferencing (51%)
Unified Messaging (46%)
IM&P Instant Messaging and Presence (40%)

The survey also showed that a majority of the businesses that have evaluated UC for their organization uncovered obstacles in implementation. Nearly 6 in 10 respondents felt that selecting the right system was a difficult or major challenge and 55% felt identifying the right vendor was equally as hard.

"The problem with approaching UC as an 'all-in' vendor solution is the level of compromise you need to make at the organizational or user level; whether it's an expensive forklifting of a current system or simply not getting all of the features you want, " said Scott Kinka, chief technology officer for Evolve IP. "We tell our customers to first define a strategy that is based on the tools and systems that your associates use today and then build a solution from there. The last thing you want to do is force a Microsoft product on a Google-based company and vice-versa."

Kinka continued, "Once we have identified the strategies around an organization's main methods of communication, and the systems that support them, we take a platform neutral approach to building the system that's right for the customer."

Other survey findings included:

60% of all companies using UC also enjoy a Work From Home program, while just 4 in 10 non UC companies have a similar program
Unified Messaging was rated as extremely important by 50% of current companies using UC
Companies with 2,000+ employees, which inherently have a greater need to reduce communications latency and enhance productivity, are more likely to be using UC features with just over 5 in 10 already having UC features implemented
72 percent of businesses surveyed are utilizing some type of video solution (either one-on-one desktop video, large video conferencing systems, or small web conferences with video)
71 percent of those surveyed were either very unfamiliar or somewhat unfamiliar with the term Unified Communications before the definition and features were provided for them.

Survey Methodology

Evolve IP conducted a blind, web-based survey in November 2013 with 974 IT and executive decision maker respondents. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed were from organizations with between 50 and 1,999 employees, largely defined as mid-market. Twenty-four percent had less than 50 associates and twenty percent were enterprise with 2,000+. Evolve IP customers were excluded. For full results of the survey and additional UC resources, please visit: http://pages.evolveip.net/PR2014UCBundle.html.

ABOUT EVOLVE IP

Evolve IP is The Cloud Services Company™. Designed from the beginning to provide organizations with a unified option for cloud services, Evolve IP enables decision-makers to migrate all or select IT technologies to its award-winning cloud platform. Evolve IP's combination of security, stability, scalability, and lower total cost of ownership is fundamentally superior to outdated legacy systems and other cloud offerings. Today, over 50,000 customers across the globe depend daily on Evolve IP for cloud services like virtual servers, virtual desktops, disaster recovery, unified communications, contact centers, and more. Visit www.EvolveIP.net or http://blog.EvolveIP.net.

PRLog ID: www.prlog.org/12303606

SOURCE Evolve IP