The Results Are In: Frost & Sullivan's End-User Survey on UC&CThe Results Are In: Frost & Sullivan's End-User Survey on UC&C

Somewhat surprisingly, the global recession appears not to have had a significant negative impact on the multinational organizations participating in the survey.

We've just released the results of our latest survey of more than 100 C-level executives, in which we asked about their use of and interest in unified communications and collaboration in the enterprise. The resulting deliverable is chock-full of data-it runs to more than 90 slides, with cuts along SMBs/LEs and vertical industries/government-but I wanted to pull out some of the key highlights here.The primary objective of this research is to assess attitudes and strategic thinking among US-based C-level executives of multinational corporations with regards their personal and organizational use of communications and collaboration products and services. The research also:

* Measures awareness of communications and collaboration tools; * Identifies leading communications and collaboration vendors; * Identifies the frequency and level of use of communications and collaboration tools; * Determines the value of communications and collaboration tools; * Quantifies the impact of the economy on communications and collaboration tools; * Determines future intentions for communications and collaboration tools.

Somewhat surprisingly, the global recession appears not to have had a significant negative impact on the multinational organizations participating in the survey. The results indicate that the responding C-level executives are trying to "ride out the storm," with the largest proportion of them maintaining budgets for communications and collaboration products and services. Additionally, responses to the survey suggest that communications and collaboration tools are increasingly seen as providing cost-reduction benefits, especially when it comes to unifying global operations. Furthermore, the survey results suggest that, despite the global economic downturn, these companies are formulating plans for future use of more advanced communications and collaboration tools, and some are planning to significantly increase budgets and usage in the near future.

Awareness and usage is highest when it comes to those tools that are well-established (e.g., video and audio conferencing), yet some relatively newer tools (including instant messaging and web conferencing) are also "top of mind" among C-level Executives. These same executives admit that others within their organizations often use UC&C technologies more widely than they do personally, but their relative lack of first-hand experience does not minimize the importance and perceived benefits they associate with such applications.

Indeed, for many respondents, the new technologies are increasingly viewed as delivering a strategic advantage to their organizations--especially as those organizations grow more geographically dispersed and become more virtual, with large numbers of employees working from remote, home-based and/or or mobile locations.

What will probably come as no surprise to CIOs and CTOs is how clueless other C-level execs are when it comes to understanding IT budgets; the latter group's estimates of how much their companies spend on UC&C technology was off by 100 percent or more!

If you'd like to learn more about our data-rich results, please contact me ([email protected]).Somewhat surprisingly, the global recession appears not to have had a significant negative impact on the multinational organizations participating in the survey.