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Study: UC delivers ROI, but customers still wary

January 5, 2012 — 11:19am ET | By Jim O'Neill

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A new study says that potential customers for unified communications continue to struggle to justify the expense of converting to a UC platform, and remain worried they won't see a return on their investment. The good news, according to International Data Corporation? Once a company commits to deploy a UC solution, the technology delivers.

IDC analyst Rich Costello, who wrote IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Unified Communications Voice Infrastructure 2011-2012 Vendor Analysis, said educating potential customers is critical.

"It's an ongoing effort for customers to understand and identify appropriate business cases for UC and the overall complexities associated with it," he said. "But, once that connection is made, UC delivers."

Costello said UC vendors should continue to focus on developing incremental business use cases to build confidence among customers and drive investments in UC. Vendors and partners must also focus on the business case, and not just the technical aspects, of a fully integrated UC environment.

Costello said that for the segment to continue its growth, vendors need to help customers identify tools and features that are most appropriate for their organization, and which sources they should turn to for those selected features and tools, adding that a business case for UC has to include a mix of IT and business benefits.

He also pointed to vertical markets such as healthcare, education, financials and manufacturing as some of the most powerful UC customer success stories to emanate from business process flows.

IDC named Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Avaya in its "leaders" category among vendors, with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Siemens, NEC, IBM, and ShoreTel (Nasdaq: SHOR), recognized as "major players."

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