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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Gartners Magic Quadrant on Unified Communications: Enterprises are buying it but is anyone using it?

By Karen Auby on August 5, 2010

Gartner recently published its annual Magic Quadrant on UC for 2010. Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya and IBM continue to lead the pack of vendors. In the market overview, Gartner notes, “The adoption of UC in enterprises by enterprises continues to increase; however, actual penetration as a percentage of market, and, in some cases, usage rates across an enterprise, remain low.” Surprisingly, Gartner did not offer any insights or explanation as to why usage across an enterprise remains low in some cases. Getting the workforce to actually use UC tools is essential if companies are to reap the “soft” benefits of increased collaboration and productivity and realize “hard” metrics such as cost savings.

Enterprise decision makers should be wary of a UC plan that does not provide specific and actionable strategies for end-user adoption. Last week, guest contributor David Burnand posted Unified Communications: The March of the End Users. He suggests enterprises and UC vendors treat the end user like a consumer rather than attempting to control their collaboration tools and devices. For some enterprises, the idea of user-owned devices may seem impractical and even daunting. That doesn’t mean end users and their preferences can be ignored. Tom Pacyk recently penned “6 Tips for Deploying UC to End-Users” based on his experience delivering UC implementations for his clients. He suggests small digestible training and follow-up sessions coupled with marketing the new tools through internal communications and seeding evangelists within the organization.

Take it from an actual end user, David and Tom are right. I need to be convinced that UC will make my life easier and I want it customizable so I can use the devices I choose. Ignore me and I’ll continue to use my tools (like Google Chat or Twitter or BlackBerry Messenger or Skype) or find alternatives and my company’s UC investment will go the way of Google Wave, Friendster and Windows Mobile.

After many years during which communications vendors of all types attempted to force companies to accept their devices and user interfaces, a revolution is occurring from the ground-up.

Smartphones are now everywhere, whether for business or pleasure. From iPhone to Android, Blackberry to Nokia, just about everyone has their eyes fixed firmly on a touchscreen. According to Gartner, the smartphone market grew an amazing 49 percent in the first three months of 2010. And this phenomenon is having a huge impact on unified communications. End users are now unwilling to accept a low-quality user experience or to move away from the interfaces and operating systems that they use at home when at work. Now, after years of resistance, CIOs and vendors are beginning to embrace the inevitable.

The idea of employees deciding which devices to use in the office – even if they pay for them themselves – is both a challenge and an opportunity for IT departments. On the one hand, they pose management, governance and security challenges for CIOs. Yet if managed correctly, user-owned devices remove the need for a huge investment in UC devices – and device investment has traditionally been a stumbling block in justifying unified communications roll-outs.

The changing face of user demands is reflected in the changing priorities of vendors. They are finally accepting that if they want to sell their solutions, they are going to have to play on the devices we use every day. And they have to deliver interfaces and solutions that are a whole lot more user-friendly than they have been in the past.

The result is a move toward openness, high-quality Web-based interfaces, and the use of operating systems such as Android and iOS rather than the clunky engineering-led interfaces and proprietary approaches of old. As Cisco’s recent announcement of Cius, Siemens’ integration of social media management into unified communications, and Microsoft’s focus on delivering improved interfaces on Communications Server prove, vendors are listening and changing their approach.

This is change for the good of all concerned. Why? Simple: Unified communications is a participation sport. Like social media, it relies on the maximum possible number of users being able to use the platform in order for companies to maximize the potential return on their investment. Opening up solutions to the widest possible user base and providing ease of use and a rich user experience are vital to ensure that employees not only have access to unified communications applications, but that they actively use them to communicate and collaborate with co-workers, business partners and customers. By doing so, they drive the return on investment that justified the roll-out in the first place.

The next step is to improve inter-company unified communications and collaboration solutions, such as videoconferencing and presence. For example, why should an end user have to jump through hoops to carry out a videoconference with another company? And why can’t they see the presence of a trusted partner within an external agency due to firewall issues?

As the world of work becomes more fluid, with increasing reliance on virtual teams and partners within other companies, end users will drive demands to make these key parts of unified communications as simple as getting a dial tone. We can already see the first signs of change in some of the recent agreements on interoperability and the foundation of the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum. Those vendors that refuse to change to this new reality will become increasingly irrelevant, as end users reject their solutions and IT departments struggle to justify a return on investment.

The result will be what unified communications has promised but often under-delivered: seamless anytime, anywhere, any-device communications that puts the user in control. The results will be better for everyone – lower costs, lower carbon and higher productivity for companies, better conditions for employees, and growth for communications vendors after some tough years. The great irony is that this wave of growth will be spurred on by CIOs and vendors giving new freedoms to the end users that they have traditionally tried to control.

David is Group Marketing Director at the i3 Group, one of the UK’s fastest-growing technology companies, providing fiber-optic networks to government, businesses and communities. An award-winning B2B marketer and a former Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Siemens Enterprise Communications, David is a regular commentator on unified communications in his spare time through his Twitter feed and Unified State of Mind blog.

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