CDW Government, Inc. yesterday announced the results of its first Unified Communications Tracking Poll, based on a survey of 766 IT professionals who work on unified communications (UC) or component technologies in business, government, higher education and healthcare. While the survey found that only 6 percent of organizations report their UC deployments are complete, it also uncovered gathering momentum for UC adoption, with 20 percent of organizations actively implementing UC and 33 percent actively planning for implementation. Seventy percent of organizations currently in the UC planning and implementation phases expect to complete their adoption within two years, despite the weak economy.

"Unified communications promises so many benefits that many organizations are eager to find a solution as quickly as possible," said Ken Grimsley, vice president of strategic sales at CDW Corporation. "Forty-one percent of responders said they are assessing their opportunity for UC -- a wise first step because successful implementation depends on a well-conceived migration plan. The best solution addresses the readiness of the organization's network and includes the organization's applications that will benefit most from integration with UC."

The very definition of UC, which historically has been as diverse as the organizations and technologies it encompasses, also appears to be converging toward a result-oriented definition such as that offered by technology research firm Gartner Inc. Sixty percent of CDW-G survey respondents said Gartner's definition most closely fits their understanding of UC: "A direct result of the convergence of communications and applications through the integration of products that facilitate the use of multiple enterprise communication methods, including equipment, software and services."

UC offers many benefits that positively affect the organizational bottom line. Sixty-one percent of respondents identified increased productivity and 56 percent identified operating cost reductions as the most important benefits. Other benefits cited included more reliable communication (48 percent), improved cross-functional communication (44 percent) and more effective use of remote or mobile workers (41 percent). One healthcare IT executive commented, "Unified communications is one of the biggest ‘wins' IT has recently delivered."

Among the many possible approaches to UC, CDW-G's tracking poll found rich media conferencing strategies are emerging as a dominant approach, with 39 percent of respondents reporting their organizations are choosing that approach over telephony-centric approaches (32 percent), e-mail-centric (18 percent) and instant messaging and presence approaches (11 percent).

Because UC adoptions usually embrace entire organizations, the planning is intricate and the challenges can be many. The most common concerns among organizations planning for UC implementation are network security (45 percent of responders), equipment and capital costs (44 percent) and operating costs (42 percent). However, the tracking poll shows that, with careful planning, many of those apprehensions ease once implementation begins: Organizations that have completed or begun their implementations report substantially lower levels of concern with those same issues (27 percent, 28 percent and 31 percent, respectively).

The Unified Communications Tracking Poll also includes findings specific to each of the five industries surveyed. For example:

• Medium-large businesses are most likely to have developed a business case or strategic plan for the adoption of UC (67 percent vs. 52 percent of respondents from other surveyed industries) and are most likely to consider UC very important to the reduction of business travel (46 percent vs. 30 percent), a common cost-cutting strategy in tight economic times.
• Federal government organizations are most likely to consider the continuity of operations benefit of UC to be very important (43 percent vs. 27 percent of respondents from other surveyed industries)
• State and local government organizations are most likely to select an e-mail-centric approach to UC (27 percent vs. 17 percent of respondents from other surveyed industries)
• Healthcare organizations are most likely to select a telephony-centric approach to UC (38 percent vs. 29 percent of respondents from other surveyed industries)
• Larger higher education institutions with 8,000 students or more (49%) are more likely than smaller institutions (31%)