An in-depth study of the Enterprise market demand for Unified Communications (UC)

Important findings:

• Based on our survey of 160 Enterprise decision-makers in the first half of 2008, over 75% of the U.S. Enterprises were in the process of implementing, trialing or planning to implement IP Telephony.  And about 65% were in the process of implementing, trialing or planning to implement Converged Applications.  However, due to cutbacks in IT spending, about one-quarter of these reported that they had made the significant changes in their implementation plans for 2008.
  

• As a result, the IUC forecast published in May 2008 for the U.S. Enterprise market projected a growth in 2008 IPT line shipments of 10% compared to the 12% increase that was projected in the IUC forecast published in 2007.  And the current forecast of U.S. revenue for Enterprise Converged Apps in 2010 was 5% lower than was projected in the previous forecast.   

• Despite these cutbacks in 2008 spending, the Enterprise decision-makers were actually more optimistic about their implementation of UC applications in the future.  In the 2008 IUC Survey, U.S. Enterprises expected higher attach rates in 2012 for 4 out of the 8 UC applications compared to the 2007 Survey results, and for two of the UC apps the projected attach rate was unchanged.

• IUC analysis indicates that Unified Communications is being implemented in the following three phases:

• System-centric phase – implementing IP Telephony based on hard savings with a focus on attributes such as reliability and security
• Application-centric phase – implementing UC applications with a focus on business value derived from productivity savings
• Process-centric phase – implementing UC applications based on business process improvement through communications-enabled business processes

• At the end of 2007, 49% of U.S. Enterprises and 50% of International Enterprises were in the Systems-centric phase.  In addition 38% of U.S. Enterprises and International Enterprises had not yet started implementing.    However, by the end of 2009, both U.S. and International Enterprises were optimistic about their progression to the more advanced phases.

• These Enterprise decision-makers clearly believe in the potential value of UC apps, but many are expecting their IPT and UC App vendors to help them identify the best opportunities for realizing this potential value.

For more information on this report contact Mike O'Neill at 973/602-0114 or at  moneill@telecomweb.com