The State of UC: Future Adopters Poised to Reap Benefits via Cloud

T
ime, talent, and customers. They’re three
essentials for every business. They also represent
three challenges many organizations successfully
address with unified communications (UC).
UC adoption, however, remains less than universal. UBM
Tech therefore undertook a study of business and IT
decision-makers at 426 enterprise and SMB organizations
to better understand the experiences of UC adopters—
and to discover what might be holding latecomers back.
Key findings of the study included:
• Only one-third of organizations surveyed have fully
embraced UC.
• 87% of adopters say UC met or exceeded their expectations.
• Perceived ROI and cost issues are primary obstacles to
UC adoption.
• Successful adopters have stronger C-level support than
latecomers (74% vs. 58%).
• Future adopters are much less likely to opt for
on-premises UC than current users (13% vs. 47%).
These findings and others suggest that the market is
primed for a wave of cloud-based UC adoption that
overcomes concerns about capital costs and near-term
ROI. They also suggest that UC advocates at latecomer
organizations need to better educate line-of-business
(LOB) and C-level managers about UC’s considerable
business benefits.
August 2015
Future Adopters Poised to Reap
Benefits via Cloud
THE STATE OF UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

UC Adopters: Getting Results
Thirty-three percent of respondents to the survey have already implemented
UC—and 25% have been using it for more than a year (Figure 1). Their motiva-
tions for adoption varied. At the top of the list were improved team collaboration
and improved individual productivity. These were followed by improved cus-
tomer experience and reduced costs (Figure 2).
Farther down the list, respondents
cited a wide range of anticipated ben-
efits. Many saw UC as integral to their
company’s mobile “work anywhere”
strategy. Others simply faced a short-
age of physical conference rooms
and turned to UC to facilitate more
virtual meetings. Still others needed
to digitally archive team meetings to
facilitate content sharing and/or to
satisfy compliance requirements.
These diverse motivations highlight
UC’s ability to meet organizations’
varying needs. UC, after all, is not
a single monolithic technology. It
is instead a loosely defined set of
integrated capabilities—including
presence detection, voice mail, email,
audio and video conferencing, and
the like. So organizations can read-
ily mix and match these capabilities
to address a wide range of business
painpoints.
Eighty-two percent reported that their
UC deployment met or exceeded
their expectations for improved team
collaboration, and 20% went as far as to claim that it greatly exceeded those
expectations (Figure 3).
The second piece of good news is that UC adopters have also reaped many
UBM TECH || THE STATE OF UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||
■ We have had UC in production for
more than 1 year
■ We have had UC in production for
1 year or less
■ We are in the process of
implementing UC
■ We are still evaluating alternative
UC solutions
■ We are actively considering UC,
but not committed yet
■ UC is a topic of discussion, but
nothing more than that
■ We have no UC plans, or at least
none that I know of
DATA: UBM Tech survey of 426 business
technology professionals, June 2015
FIGURE 1. UC ADOPTION
STILL LAGS
What is the current state of
unified communications (UC)
adoption at your organization?
25%
8%
8%
11%
11%
12%
25%

benefits that they did not originally anticipate. These benefits include acceler-
ated decision-making, the ability to more easily relocate employees to different
physical offices as required by the business, and the freeing up of IT staff for
more strategic tasks—since UC can significantly simplify telephony-related
moves, adds, and changes. In other words, UC clearly enables companies to
make the most of their time and their talent.
These unanticipated benefits reflect
a pattern common to many technolo-
gies that have found their way into the
enterprise. The Web, for example,
started as a means of accessing static
documents—and only later evolved to
provide access to dynamic data and
transaction processing. Mobile phones,
too, were first adopted specifically so
on-the-go executives and salespeople
could make and receive voice calls
while out of the office. Smartphones are
now a necessity for knowledge workers
who need voice, text, and application
access anywhere, any time.
Based on this historical pattern, the
benefits current UC adopters report
most likely represent a snapshot in time
rather than a definitive list. As the tech-
nology evolves—and as mobility, video,
and the like become more intrinsic to
workplace culture—UC is likely to pay
off in new and unexpected ways.
How They Got There
UBM Tech also asked UC adopters about their experiences with the UC
implementation process. On the upside, very few respondents encountered
obstacles that came close to derailing their UC implementation projects
entirely. That said, UC does involve a number of “moving parts”—so, not unex-
pectedly, a little less than half (44%) reported technical issues that presented
moderate difficulty.
1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||
BASE: 140 respondents at organizations with UC in production
DATA: UBM Tech survey of 426 business technology professionals, June 2015
FIGURE 2. COLLABORATION AND PRODUCTIVITY
TOP EXPECTED BENEFITS LIST
How important were expectations of the following benefits to your
organization’s decision to adopt UC?
Improved team collaboration
Improved user productivity
Enhance our company’s customer experience
Reduced travel costs
Lower technology ownership costs
5% 9% 50% 36%
4% 1% 10% 52% 33%
8% 7% 16% 41% 28%
5% 10% 17% 41% 27%
9% 7% 18% 43% 23%
■ Don’t know ■Not an expected
benefit
■ Minor expected
benefit
■ Important expected
benefit
■Critical expected
benefit

These issues included:
• Insufficient bandwidth in certain network segments
• Human error by insufficiently skilled or experienced technical staff
• Unexpected changes in network endpoints (OS updates, BYOD mobility, etc.)
• Incompatibilities in vendors’ implementations of Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP)
• Ensuring product compatibilities across multiple geographies
About half of the successful UC
adopters who responded to the
survey said that end-user adop-
tion also presented a moderate or
significant challenge. A common
story is that technical users are
eager to embrace UC, but that
nontechnical users tend to resist
a new and unfamiliar way of doing
things. That’s why these respon-
dents suggest that future adopters
invest in dedicated resources for
user evangelization and training as
part of their implementation plan in
order to maximize ROI (Figure 4).
While choosing a technology
provider that can help with train-
ing and support is critical, it is also
worth noting that UC adopters were
able to push through their technical
and adoption challenges because
of strong leadership. Eighty-one
percent say their company’s top IT
executive supported their UC initiative—and 26% identify that individual as the
project champion. Seventy-four percent also had buy-in from a C-level execu-
tive. Many also enlisted power users, external consultants, and other allies to
build strong advocacy for the move to UC.
1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||
FIGURE 3. UC RESULTS CONSISTENTLY MEET OR
EXCEED EXPECTATIONS
How well did your UC implementation deliver the following benefits once
it was in production?
Improved team collaboration
Improved user productivity
Lower technology ownership costs
Enhance our company’s customer experience
Reduced travel costs
7% 2% 9% 44% 18% 20%
7% 3% 10% 46% 20% 14%
14% 3% 9% 47% 14% 13%
17% 2% 4% 45% 20% 12%
13% 2% 12% 41% 20% 12%
■ Don’t know or too
soon to tell
■ Fell very short of
expectations
■ Fell somewhat short
of expectations
■ Met
expectations
■ Somewhat exceeded
expectations
■ Greatly exceeded
expectations
of adopters say that UC
has met or exceeded
pre-deployment expectations.
87%

What’s Holding Others Back?
Given the positive experiences of UC adopters, why aren’t more organizations
moving forward with their own implementations?
For one thing, those who have not yet adopted UC tend to underestimate its poten-
tial benefits. Thirty-six percent of UC adopters, for example, anticipated improved
collaboration as a critical potential benefit of UC even before their implementation
began. Only about half as many nonadopters have the same perception.
This disparity harmonizes with
nonadopters’ answers about what
stands between their organization
and UC adoption. The top answers
were cost (76%) and executive
management’s uncertainty regard-
ing ROI (74%). Obviously, neither
cost nor ROI would be such
an obstacle if decision-makers
were certain about UC’s ability to
contribute to bottom-line business
performance (Figure 5).
Survey respondents cited several
other obstacles as well. Sixty nine
percent of nonadopters perceived
UC implementation as posing a
risk of disruption to the business.
A similar percentage said they
found confusing vendor claims to
be a moderate, significant, or even
deal-breaking obstacle.
Interestingly, only 5% of non-
adopters reported a previous
negative experience with UC as
a game-stopper for UC adoption.
This reinforces the observation
that obstacles to UC have more to
do with misperception than reality.
UBM TECH || THE STATE OF
1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||
FIGURE 4. UC IMPLEMENTATIONS DON’T
PRESENT SIGNIFICANT DIFFICULTIES
How much difficulty did each of the following present during
your organization’s UC implementation?
Choosing on-premises or cloud
Choosing UC vendor(s)
Solutions did not work as promised
Cost or time overruns
End-user adoption
Functional problems during pilot
Technical complexity
■ Don’t know ■Little or no
difficulty
■ Moderate difficulty
■ Significant difficulty ■Almost derailed
the project
19% 45% 27% 7% 2%
17% 45% 23% 13% 2%
18% 40% 26% 14% 2%
20% 36% 29% 11% 4%
14% 32% 37% 14% 3%
16% 29% 44% 9% 2%
13% 23% 44% 16% 4%
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

UC in the Cloud
The cloud may well provide one possible answer. A majority (54%) of those
who don’t yet have UC in production believe cloud can help them with their top
obstacle to implementation: cost. About the same percentage (53%) see the
cloud as offering more flexible scalability—a key concern for incremental UC
rollouts (Figure 6).
These advantages, combined with ongoing advancement in cloud technol-
ogy and market acceptance of the cloud model, are making it more likely
that future adopters will opt for some type of UC-as-a-service offering. Of
respondents who made their decision to implement UC a year or more ago,
only 35% even considered the cloud—and just 19% wound up going with a
cloud-based solution. Of respondents who are still contemplating their UC
implementations, on the other hand, more than half are now likely to consider
cloud. In fact, 15% have already made up their minds that if and when they
implement UC, it will definitely be cloud-based.
1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||
A majority of those who don’t
yet have UC in production
say the cloud can help them
with their top obstacle to
implementation: cost.
54%
UC and the Customer Experience
While UC is often associated with improved internal
collaboration and communication, successful adopt-
ers also see it as part of their customer engagement
strategy. Eighty-five percent of adopters respond-
ing to our survey cited enhancement of customer
engagement as an expected benefit of UC. And
almost one-third (32%) said it exceeded their expec-
tations in this area. Customer engagement was also
the benefit where the lowest percentage of respon-
dents (6%) expressed disappointment in the results
they’d achieved.
It’s fairly easy to see how UC can play such an
important role in customer engagement:
• UC is an enabling technology for multichannel
contact centers that allow contact center staff
to communicate with customers in a common
manner via voice, email, chat, shared browsing
sessions, etc.
• UC can make it easier for contact center staff to
escalate customer interactions to subject-matter
experts in the business.
• “Follow me” capabilities allow account managers
to more promptly respond to customers whether
they’re in the office or on the road.
• UC facilitates provisioning of remote agent desk-
tops that allow companies to bring in independent/
home-based contractors as needed to cope with
spikes in demand.
• UC “screen pops,” interactive voice response
(IVR), and similar integrations can increase agent
efficiency and facilitate customer self-service.
These are vital advantages in today’s hyper-
competitive markets, where customers’ expectations
regarding responsive service and low-effort problem
resolution are escalating relentlessly—and where
they can so easily take their business to a competi-
tor if those expectations aren’t met. In fact, one study
conducted by Watermark Consulting showed that
customer experience leaders outperform the SP 500
by almost 50%—while customer experience laggards
underperform that same benchmark by 62%. The
impact of UC on customer experience is thus some-
thing that every UC advocate should be sure to bring
to the attention of decision-making executives.

That said, yet-to-be-adopters still have some concerns about cloud. Those con-
cerns include security, managing monthly subscription costs, and integration
with on-premises UC components.
But as the cloud-based UC market continues to mature, it is likely that the next
wave of adopters will leverage the “as-a-service” model to avoid capital outlays,
bypass technical implementation issues, and start delivering results to the busi-
ness sooner.
1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||
FIGURE 5. MISPERCEPTIONS ABOUT UC COST/
BENEFIT RATIOS INHIBIT ADOPTION
How much of an obstacle is each of the following to your organization’s
adoption of UC?
Cost
Lack of in-house technical expertise
Management not sure about benefits or ROI
Perceived risk of disruption
Confusing choices or conflicting vendor claims
IT not sure about benefits or ROI
Previous bad experiences
BASE: 286 respondents at organizations who do not have UC in production
■ Don’t know ■ Not an obstacle ■ Moderate obstacle
■ Significant obstacle ■Deal-breaking
obstacle
19% 5% 26% 37% 13%
18% 20% 29% 23% 10%
18% 8% 27% 37% 10%
20% 11% 30% 30% 9%
20% 11% 34% 27% 8%
20% 15% 30% 29% 6%
25% 41% 16% 13% 5%

1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||
Moving Ahead
The survey results suggest three takeaways for anyone who’d like to see their
company take advantage of the benefits UC is already providing to leading
adopters:
1) Think cloud. As noted above, cloud-based deployment can help address
objections about upfront capital investment and internal IT skills shortages.
Cloud-based deployment can also facilitate the kind of smaller-scale pilot
that can provide the proof-of-value executives need to green-light broader
enterprise adoption.
Leveraging cloud does not inher-
ently mean going all-cloud either.
Twenty-three percent of UC adopt-
ers participating in the survey
have opted for a hybrid model that
leverages cloud selectively—
with positive reported results.
2) Educate the business.
Because of its technical nature,
UC often remains very much of
an “inside IT” discussion. But UC
isn’t just about how a company
manages voice and video from
a technical perspective. It’s also
about how people work and
share information.
UC advocates may therefore want
to expand their rhetorical ammu-
nition beyond UC particulars like
VoIP and presence detection to
business-level issues such as the impact of collaboration on productivity and
the customer experience (see story, p. 6). CEOs may not care about tele-
phony moves, adds, and changes—but they definitely do care about keeping
“dropped balls” from derailing critical business processes and mitigating the
risk of business interruption.
3) Don’t blow UC out of proportion. Much of the fear surrounding UC
FIGURE 6. CLOUD LIKELY TO FACILITATE
NEXT WAVE OF UC
Which of the following do you perceive as advantages of cloud-enabled UC?
NOTE: Multiple responses allowed
BASE: 286 respondents at organizations who do not have UC in production
Reduction of major capital costs
More flexible scalability
Avoidance of ongoing operational management burdens
Faster time-to-benefit
54%
53%
47%
44%
35%
Greater reliability or resiliency

1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 || © 2015 UBM LLC. All rights reserved.
XO Communications provides the technology that helps business and wholesale
customers compete in a hyper-connected economy. In the U.S., XO owns and
operates one of the largest IP and Ethernet networks that customers rely on for
private data networking, cloud connectivity, and unified communications. For more
information, visit www.xo.com/uc.
implementation seems to be based on a notion that it requires a major disrup-
tion to both IT and the workplace. Yet those who have successfully adopted UC
don’t actually report significant disruption.
Just as significantly, many respondents who self-identify as not having yet
adopted UC already have elements of UC (VoIP, instant messaging/chat, etc.)
in place. This suggests that many IT pros recursively define UC as whatever
complex collaboration mega-project they don’t want to take on. The reality,
however, is that many of these companies are already well on their way to
adopting UC without even realizing it.
Regardless of how UC is defined, ease of collaboration and communication
is only becoming more critical within and beyond the enterprise. So every IT
organization will have to respond with a solution eventually. The only question
is whether they do so strategically and soon—or after their competition has
gotten the upper hand.
Methodology
In June 2015 UBM Tech conducted an online survey on behalf of XO Communications
exploring the current state of unified communications adoption.
The data set comprises 426 business technology professionals at a mix of company sizes
and industries. Just under half of respondents held a management job function such as
CIO, CEO, VP, IT director or manager, and line-of-business manager. Forty-four percent of
respondents work at organizations with 1,000 or more employees.
The greatest possible margin of error for the total respondent base (N=426) is +/- 4.7 per-
centage points. UBM Tech was responsible for all programming and data analysis. These
procedures were carried out in strict accordance with standard market research practices.

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The State of UC: Future Adopters Poised to Reap Benefits via Cloud