Enterprises embrace UC and mobility

The benefits of adopting a unified communication (UC) solution have been discussed on this blog numerous times. However, as with any innovation, it is evolving, so staying on top of the latest trends is crucial. Infonetics Research examined the latest thoughts of the unified communication industry in a new survey of enterprise executives and employees. The largest takeaway – mobility is key.

“Our unified communications survey reveals a really important shift taking place as enterprises increasingly use mobile devices to access UC applications,” said Diane Myers, the principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research. “Survey respondents indicate that smartphones and tablets will be the two most widely used devices for UC in 2013, passing traditional computers and deskphones.”

According to respondents, 71 percent of participants believe that the ability to successfully incorporate mobile devices into a unified solution is very important. With how popular smartphones and tablets are getting, that is easy to understand.

Employees are using mobile devices, and as the focus that the blogosphere had on Apple’s iPad mini announcement yesterday showed, there is no sign of slowing down. The survey found that time, flexibility and increased productivity are the top drivers from workers standpoint for UC and mobile devices.

Unfortunately for many small and midsized businesses (SMBs), they do not have the internal resources to successfully incorporate the devices. In fact, the survey found that complexity has replaced cost as the top barrier for UC adoption. SMBs in Ohio that are looking to take advantage of a unified communication option would be wise to partner with an IT consulting firm to ensure the right combination of tools is provided.

From our offices in Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland, PRO OnCall is your single-source technology consulting service, offering managed IT support, unified communications solutions and on-call IT support.