By 2016, over 50 percent of medium and large organizations in North America will be running some of their Unified Communications (UC) applications over either a private or public cloud hosting service, according to new survey results from Infonetics Research. The technology market research firm conducted in-depth surveys with 162 organizations in North America.
Unified Communications (UC) integrates fragmented communication modes, such as voice, e-mail and instant messaging, into a single communication experience. Infonetics Research’s 2015 UC Cloud and On-Premises Strategies and Vendor Leadership: North American Enterprise Survey explores enterprises’ plans for UC and their perceptions of UC vendors and unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) cloud hosting providers.
“Businesses continue to migrate their unified communications applications to the cloud, citing flexibility as the key reason,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS at Infonetics Research, now part of IHS. “Cloud solutions are inherently more flexible than premises-based solutions, offering businesses the ability to scale users up and down, centralize management, and deploy new features and applications quickly.”
Unified Communications Survey Highlights:
- The number-one unified communications device used by respondent businesses is the smartphone, ahead of traditional computing devices such as laptop and desktop computers
- Web- and video-conferencing and text messaging are increasingly becoming part of businesses’ UC communication types, reflecting changing user behavior
- By early 2016, 93 percent of respondents plan to implement video conferencing into their UC solution
- When choosing a unified communications supplier, enterprises surveyed ranked product reliability and technology innovation as the most important criteria
- When asked about their perceptions of unified communications vendors, respondent businesses rated Cisco highest in product reliability and Microsoft highest in technology innovation
- The most important criterion to survey respondents when selecting a cloud/hosted provider is security levels
Vendors mentioned in the survey include Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC, ShoreTel and Unify. For more information about the report, visit: www.infonetics.com.
Infonetics Research has recently been acquired by IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS). Infonetics will be integrated into the IHS Technology group, which includes 10 major market coverage areas, including Automotive and Transportation; Consumer Electronics; Displays; Industrial, Security and Medical Technology; Information Technology (IT); Materials and Cost Benchmarking; Media; Power and Energy; Semiconductor and Components; and Telecommunications.
