UC architecture enables collaboration among workers
It’s always interesting to compare technology-adoption rates between different size organizations. This is particularly true when we correlate our research data, and find adoption rates to be different than what others might first expect. Such is the case with Unified Communications (UC) adoption by small and midsize businesses (SMB).
UC’s benefits for large, distributed organizations are well-defined. UC architectures enable collaboration among workers at other locations, as well as partners, customers and suppliers. By integrating various forms of communications services and applications into a common set of interfaces, and extending communications services beyond existing boundaries, UC can reduce decision-making latency, improve productivity and deliver tangible business benefit.
What may not be so apparent is whether these same productivity enhancements apply to SMBs (defined as companies with 1,000 employees or fewer). Our research shows they often struggle with the same issues as their larger counterparts, such as needing to correspond with distributed workers and working with severely decreased travel budgets.
In fact, SMBs are adopting UC at roughly the same rate as their larger counterparts, with approximately 82% of the SMBs in Nemertes’ most recent benchmark either planning or starting to deploy UC, vs. 84% of the enterprise market as a whole.
SMBs actually have a distinct advantage in that they are better able to take advantage of integrated solutions from individual vendors that provide a complete set of conferencing, collaboration, and communication functionality in a single platform, rather than having to integrate a large installed base of existing systems.
The vast majority (73%) of SMBs consider VoIP to be their first UC application. This isn’t surprising, considering most vendors that target the SMB market with VoIP offerings try to up-sell their customers on advanced UC features that bundle applications such as conferencing and instant messaging.
Those who don’t consider VoIP to be their first application typically start with instant-messaging platforms, such IBM Lotus Sametime or Microsoft Office Communications Server, and try to integrate them into additional real-time applications, such as voice and video. This approach enables the existing IM applications to become control interfaces for launching voice, video, Web conferencing or messaging sessions.
Our research also shows they’re deploying UC applications other than voice at a higher rate than the enterprise market as a whole. For example, more than 63% of SMBs are using Web conferencing and 62% have deployed an internal IM solution. This contrasts with 52% of the enterprise market deploying Web conferencing and/or instant messaging.
Also, unified messaging use among SMBs is more than 20% higher than among the overall enterprise market (51.2% vs. 30.8%). Why? Typically, SMBs are more nimble than their larger counterparts and more willing and able to take advantage of emerging technologies that help them gain an advantage in competitive markets.
Where we see less interest is with telepresence. Cost prohibits telepresence adoption, considering each room costs at least $200,000, not to mention the monthly bandwidth required to support it. Single-screen, room-based systems are much less expensive, but SMBs must have significant travel costs to offset the investment.
Regardless of size, all organizations should investigate the benefits of UC, especially during the recession, when opportunities to use UC services, such as videoconferencing, Web conferencing, and unified messaging, can reduce travel costs, improve productivity and boost sales.
