More than half (56 percent) of UK organisations advocate a managed service when introducing a Unified Communication (UC) system, a poll by Siemens Enterprise Communications has revealed.
Carried out at the Unified Communications 09 show at London’s Olympia, Siemens canvassed 100 visitors attending the event to gauge current market perceptions and buying behaviour.
Says Tim Bishop, director of strategy, Siemens Enterprise Communications: “Organisations are rightly assessing the benefits of Unified Communications and the commercial proposition that a managed UC service can deliver. They want to work with a partner that understands the technology and its benefits, who can also implement and deliver on a managed service basis.”
The poll states that most likely justifications for considering UC in 2009 are increased productivity (24 percent of responses) and reduced cost (19 percent). Improved customer service (15 per cent) and less travel (14 percent) followed closely behind. Seven per cent of respondents are also actively making video calls.
The biggest selling points for UC as a technology were identified as flexible mobile working (25 percent or responses) and a single number for all contact (19 percent). A further 12 percent of responses suggested the best thing about UC was the ability to integrate the technology into an existing communications platform.
Just over half (51 percent) of organisations are using a UC system in some capacity and 17 percent of organisations are using a full UC system. In addition, 51 percent of organisations believe that UC capabilities will be standard in the enterprise before 2012.
