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Research suggests managed UCC is gaining support

By 2015, between 34 and 42 per cent of large enterprises will seriously be considering procuring various unified communications applications as a premise based, but managed, service. And while businesses should not ignore the cloud options – particularly as more become available for large enterprises – they should also be looking for a services partner to manage their evolving UCC assets and investments.

This is one of the findings of the Dimension Data 2013 Global UCC Study. Earlier this year, Dimension Data commissioned research firm Ovum to conduct a global survey of the unified communications and collaboration market in the USA, Australia, Asia, Europe, and South Africa. Over 1,320 enterprise ICT decision-makers and 1,390 employees in a broad spectrum of industry verticals in 18 countries were interviewed.

Neill Hart, director of Converged Communications, Europe at Dimension Data, said, 'Premise based managed UCC is already significant, and almost as pervasive as premise based internally managed. The fact that enterprises have opted for managed services in the past, across a broad range of UCC applications, indicates that they understand these areas are complex and they often do not have the in-house expertise (or the budget) to support UCC evolution on their own.'

'Nevertheless', added Hart, 'despite the existence of private cloud solutions for a number of years, enterprises are opting to take a cautious approach to cloud adoption, with premise based accounting for 88 pr cent of IP-PBX systems and 83 per cent of audio-conferencing bridges. In fact, our research revealed that only 20 per cent of enterprises plan to seriously consider cloud for UCC deployments in the next 24 months, and across all UCC applications, less than 30 per cent of companies will seriously consider traditional premise based unmanaged deployments.'