CDW launched the annual Unified Communication Tracking Poll in 2009 to monitor attitudes, approaches and progress toward the adoption of unified communications (UC) technology. Now in its third year, the 2011 Unified Communications Tracking Poll surveys 900 IT professionals in U.S. organizations to track progress and determine where organizations are with UC adoption, what benefits are driving adoption, what challenges still hinder progress, and how organizations can successfully deploy the technology.
This slideshow highlights CDW’s 2011 tracking poll findings
Click through for results from a CDW tracking poll on unified communication implementation.
The percentage of organizations that have fully implemented UC grew from six percent in 2009 and eight percent in 2010 to 16 percent in 2011.
Of those who have fully implemented UC and track return on investment (ROI), 76 percent say UC has met or exceeded expectations.
The two UC features employees find most useful are access to work email and voicemail via smartphones. The most commonly deployed communication solutions are smartphone (80 percent) and mobile desktops (80 percent).
The top UC benefits that are most important to organizations include increased productivity (53 percent) and reduction of operating costs (48 percent).
IT managers planning a UC solution say their greatest challenge is securing budget commitment from their organizations. Manager’s difficulty securing reliable cost projections and demonstrating ROI may compound budget challenges.
Some organizations report challenges supporting UC in mobile environments. Thirty-five percent report having experienced challenges supporting a smartphone environment. Thirty-three percent report having experienced challenges supporting a mobile desktop environment. And, 29 percent report having experienced challenges supporting a virtual desktop environment.
UC solutions can encompass many different technologies. Organizations rarely adopt all of them, instead choosing specific approaches that best meet their needs.
Many organizations are turning to the cloud for UC, with 69 percent evaluating, deploying or having fully deployed UC using a cloud model. Organizations integrating the cloud say it makes UC faster (75 percent), easier (75 percent) and more cost effective (65 percent) to deploy.
Of those who have fully or partially deployed UC in the cloud, the most popular cloud models are community cloud (43 percent), private cloud (42 percent) and public cloud (23 percent).
