2011 Unified Communications Adoption Trends

Unified Communications (UC) continues to mature as more applications emerge and organizations continue to build out their UC solution suites. According to a 2011 survey from our partner Computer Economics, a solid majority (65 percent) of organizations worldwide with annual revenue of at least $50 million are engaged in activities related to researching, investing in, or adopting UC solutions for their business. As an enabling platform to improve business processes and employee productivity, UC continues to be an investment priority, despite the soft economy. Importantly, most organizations reported meeting their budget commitments, and 64 percent reported a positive return on their investment. This year’s survey also found increased interest in cloud solutions. This trend will spur an increase in hybrid UC cloud adoption, as organizations add new UC applications from service providers and integrate them into their core on-premise platform. Although all size organizations report UC adoption, midsize companies reported the highest investment rate this year, and we predict organizations of all sizes will continue investing in UC as the demands for collaborative communications continues to expand.