UC
Last week HP and Alcatel-Lucent teamed up to deliver a suite of UC applications and services aimed at helping customers make the switch to unified communications. Combining strategic consulting, integration with business operations, and vertically-specific offerings, this initiative underscores the fact that enterprise IT managers increasingly turn to professional services to help them address UC deployment challenges around architecture, integration, deployment, and on-going management and support. Fifty-six percent of IT leaders tell us that integration concerns are their biggest challenge in establishing a successful UC implementation. We’ve tracked strong growth in UC adoption: 47% in 2008 to 60% in 2009. Despite the economic concerns of the last few years, we see plans to deploy continuing to rise. However, we’ve noted a shift exists as IT planners increasingly look at UC tactically rather than strategically, deploying UC where it makes most sense from a productivity and cost standpoint. UC planners should evaluate third-party support to ease the transition to UC, leveraging their knowledge and past experiences to aid implementation, reduce costs, and overcome integration challenges.
