Building Business Case For UC Still Difficult For IT & LOB Leaders: IDC

IDC has released its annual Unified Communications and Collaboration Survey which canvassed opinion across 11 Asia-Pacific countries from nearly 700 IT leaders who are directly involved in procurement. 70 percent of Australian respondents reported less than 500 employees working in a country which provides a snapshot of the mid-market sentiment. IDC also recorded responses from 16 different verticals.

The key findings from the report show that there is a strong interest in UC. 40 percent report to be deploying these solutions today in the enterprise with an additional 35 percent looking to roll-out services within 1-2 years. The remaining are committed to trials. There are also nearly 15 usage cases identified from emerging areas such as social analytic applications through to mainstream capabilities such as softphone integration, click to call and video conferencing. There is no general consensus on the types of features that are most important, the starting point of where to integrate UC as well as the perceived benefits once it has been implemented. The survey does show that enterprises are also beginning to integrate UC into enterprise applications across-the-board.

Video conferencing, which 65 percent of respondents either use or plan to use within next 1-2 years is also moving from immersive Telepresence rooms down to the desktop. In terms of perceived benefits, increases in productivity, better customer interactions ranked the highest. Reducing travel costs has always been a top-three consideration and now this is moving down the list which shows the market is maturing. However budget, ongoing maintenance costs and interoperability are still strong concerns.

In terms of vendor procurement, enterprises show a strong preference for hardware vendors for UC solutions. This was followed by telecom operators and shadowed closely by system integrators. Cloud-based hosted services also show promise in 45 percent of the cases.

“UC is a complex sell for vendors and difficult to implement in many businesses, especially when looking to exploit transformative components such as business process automation for competitive advantage,” said Dustin Kehoe, associate research director, IDC Australia. “The journey should begin with a strong business case based on a roadmap of achievable business outcomes. Most UC projects end in failure and building support and even having an internal communications strategy in place can often be the make or break with these types of projects.”