Over 50% of IT Pros Are Unsure of UC’s Value, Study Says
Over 50% of IT Pros Are Unsure of UC’s Value, Study Says by UCStrategies Staff
MDS commissioned a study involving 205 U.K.-based IT and telecom decision makers. Seventy-five percent of the respondents are gearing up toward a unified communications (UC) infrastructure in the next 12 months. However, around 61 percent of them are uncertain of the value a UC shift brings to their businesses.
MDS, a U.K.-based managed-service revenue and customer-management solutions provider, has clearly uncovered statistics showing many IT pros in the U.K. are confused about UC’s inherent benefits. This may suggest that operators are not sufficiently conveying UC’s value to their business customers.
Another finding revealed by the MDS study is that nearly 93 percent of the polled IT pros consider IT and communications services obtained from a single provider to be “of value,” which can be seen as good news for operators of bundled UC packages. Although this has proven a strong trend toward UC adoption, the results of the MDS study also show that 57 percent of the respondents think that an increase in convergence would make it more difficult to evaluate their telecom infrastructure.
“These findings justify what many in telecoms have believed over the last few years – that enterprises are gradually migrating to a Unified Communications infrastructure,” Matt Hooper, CMO at MDS, said. “However, what has been previously unknown to the market is the scope of the opportunity for operators, and more precisely, exactly what needs to be done to validate the business case for moving to UC. Clearly businesses, especially SMEs, are keen to receive IT and communications services under a single umbrella offering, but operators in some cases are failing to deliver a compelling and clear proposition for an integrated customer experience.”
In 2015, the market for unified communications is predicted to explode to $7.7 billion, a figure nearly twice the $4 billion seen in 2011. MDS recommends that, given such a potential revenue opportunity, operators simply cannot let the robust UC market “slip by.” The UC market indicates its “need for simple yet effective UC solutions, and operators must deliver them to cash in from what is a position of strength.”
Hooper also went on to say that operators must sufficiently “educate the enterprise market.” He specified providing understandable propositions that include UC benefits, as well as clear pricing mechanics. “With continued changes in the market driven by cloud and consumptive business models, communications and IT services are being pushed ever-closer together, providing a great opportunity to offer bundled UC packages that will be attractive to the enterprise segment,” explained MDS CMO Hooper. (KOM) Link. Link.