Mobile Unified Communications Gaining Enterprise Appeal According to Infonetics Research

Market research firm Infonetics Research has released excerpts from Unified Communication Product Features and Vendor Leadership: North American Enterprise Survey, part of its Continuous Research Service “CRS” series of analyst notes and surveys on the enterprise VoIP and unified communications market.

"In our most recent survey of companies that use multi-modal communications, a stunning 96 percent plan to eventually integrate the various modes into a single unified user experience. Despite the confusion sowed by vendors who have abused the term 'unified communications,' unifying disparate modes of communication has strong appeal because it ultimately simplifies the lives of users and increases their productivity," notes Matthias Machowinski directing analyst for enterprise voice and data at Infonetics Research (News - Alert).

The survey also included the top reasons for deploying unified communications as improving employee productivity, reducing operational costs, and executive demand. The fastest rising stars in the UC market are video, short messaging, and social networking, a testament to the changing nature of communication. Unified communications is most commonly delivered over a desktop computer today, but that is changing in favor of smaller and more portable devices, such as laptops, tablets and smartphones.

In October 2010, Infonetics Research also published its UC Product Features and Vendor Leadership survey, in which Infonetics interviewed purchase decision-makers at 106 US and Canadian companies with at least 100 employees that use multiple types of communication, including IP telephony/VoIP, e-mail, and instant messaging “IM”.