UC implementations in U.S. doubled in 2010, ROI seen as rising

A report released today shows unified communications implementation rates doubled from 2010 to 2011, with 16 percent of organizations fully implemented today. The report also said 76 percent of organizations that have fully implemented UC and track return on investment and that ROI has met or exceeded their expectations--up 5 percent since 2010.

The results are from tech solutions provider CDW's third annual Unified Communications Tracking Poll, which surveyed some 900 IT professionals who work on unified communications or component technologies in business, government, healthcare and education.

"Across industries, organizations are embracing ‘anytime, anyplace' access to information to boost productivity. They also continue to look for opportunities to use budget dollars more effectively," said Christine Holloway, vice president of converged infrastructure solutions at CDW. "Unified communications delivers on both of those objectives."

Employee productivity (53 percent) and reduced operating costs (48 percent) were ranked as the top UC benefits. Even so, 48 percent of respondents said they had difficulty securing budgets to fund UC implementations, and 29 percent said they had trouble securing reliable cost projections.

Increasingly, cloud computing is seen as one way around a tight budget, CDW said. Among respondents who had fully implemented a UC solution in the cloud, 75 percent said cloud computing enabled faster UC deployment, and 65 percent said cloud computing made it more cost effective to deploy UC. Only 18 percent of organizations using a cloud-computing platform to deploy UC solutions said they were concerned about capital costs associated with UC, compared to 47 percent of organizations not using a cloud computing platform.

For more:
- see this release

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