IDC: UC hype affecting phone, service purchases

Publishing two survey reports today, IDC says increasing "attention and buzz" around unified communications is getting to decision-makers in how they select phone systems and services.

The first study, "Key Trends in Enterprise VoIP 2008: Customer Perspectives on Unified Communications," shows that end users have become more sophisticated in understanding UC and have higher expectations about what solution providers should be able to offer.

Survey respondents ranked Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya and IBM as the top 4 key vendors in their company's UC plans; last year, respondents ranked Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft and Nortel as their top 4 UC choices. More than 41 percent of respondents believe that advanced applications integrating business communications with business applications should come directly from Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes or Domino environments.  

What's more, 79 percent of respondents believe that UC is a desktop or mobile-based solution or platform that combines a common inbox for email/fax/voicemail, advanced IP telephony calling and management, Web/audio/videoconferencing, instant messaging, and presence management, which can be integrated with business-critical applications.

"Key Trends in Enterprise VoIP 2008: North American Enterprises' Buying Behavior," IDC's second study, focused on how U.S. enterprises are buying phone systems and services. The intro of desktop-based IP telephony solutions by Microsoft and IBM has led to a shift in focus on the source of key advanced communications functionality and call control. Long distance savings, ability to integrate with existing business applications, and cost savings over legacy equipment are the three most popular reasons why businesses are currently using or planning to use IP telephony within the next 12 months. Finally, unified messaging, remote/teleworkers solutions, and videoconferencing are the top 3 IP communications applications expected to drive future investment in data and telephony network budgets.

For more:
- IDC says UC hype affecting telephony purchasing decisions.

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