Massive Economic Upside for Unified Communications

A significant new analysis of the economic potential of video, data and voice systems that work together over the Internet -- known collectively as Unified Communications (UC) -- demonstrates that when these collaboration technologies are interoperable, they deliver clear commercial and consumer benefits.

The paper, written by Dr. Michael Katz and Dr. Bryan Keating studies the current unified communications market. The Katz/Keating study outlines the potential negative outcomes for the market of some UC vendors refuse to adopt industry standards that would enable video-to-video calls between different systems.

"The economic effects of incompatibility are not an abstract academic theory," Katz said. "There are real, everyday consequences to economic growth, consumer well-being and business productivity when one company has a proprietary Internet video system that does not work with others. This means less jobs will be created and people and businesses will not be able to communicate as freely, thus negatively affecting global economic potential. Our strong view is that government should monitor this market carefully to ensure that the implementation of standards is not blocked by dominant players seeking to gain competitive advantage."

UC  technologies -- especially video calling -- have been found to improve collaboration, boost productivity, reduce travel costs and enable remote training and services in health care and education.

However, according to the research by Katz and Keating, industry standards are critical to the future growth of the UC market. The market study reports that analysts at both Gartner and Frost & Sullivan find that interoperability is an important consideration for enterprise customers and that standards will increase flexibility for users as well as help lower costs.

"UC has the potential to be a huge growth industry at a time when many sectors are stalling," Keating said. "As with the Internet, we can't afford to have a ‘go-it-alone' mentality in this area.  We must do everything we can to ensure that companies adhere to the common global standard for video calling so that businesses and consumers reap the full benefits of these compelling communications platforms."

The study, commissioned by Cisco, included these findings:

• UC technologies have significant potential to increase business productivity but the lack of interoperability is an impediment to widespread adoption.
• UC is particularly susceptible to market failures that could impede standards based interoperability: (a) there are powerful network effects, meaning that the technologies become more valuable as more users are connected; (b) there are significant costs associated with using multiple vendors or switching from one to another; and, (c) certain vendors have large installed bases and important complementary products.
• Under prevalent market conditions, those vendors who would gain a competitive advantage when networks are proprietary can have incentives to thwart interoperability by undermining industry standards or refusing to adopt them.
• For these reasons, Katz/Keating conclude, the UC market should be monitored closely for signs of specific anti-competitive conduct.  When there is evidence of conduct that could or has adversely affected competition through effects on interoperability, government should address that conduct and impose appropriate remedies that would ensure adherence to agreed-upon industry standards. 

The economic study follows two recent surveys in the U.S. and in Europe which showed strong support for video technologies working together.  Nearly four in five likely U.S. voters surveyed believe it is important for technologies such as video calling to work together to help create jobs, promote innovation and deliver critical benefits in remote health care, education, business and other services.  And 84 percent of European consumers surveyed believe that video calling should be as easy as making a phone call.

The use of video by consumers, government and business is growing at a staggering rate.  According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, in just three years, one million video minutes (the equivalent of 674 days) will traverse the Internet every second.  Use of video calling services is also increasing. Share your support for an open video community.

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How Mobile Applications will Transform all Businesses

Mobile communication related activity is now considered the number one business technology issue on the minds of IT professionals in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the latest market study by IDC. Their analysts have been exploring, in depth, what mobility really means for organizations and how utilizing a variety of commercial mobile applications will become the norm in the near future.

Clearly, enterprise mobility has been a familiar topic for savvy business and technology leaders within most multinational organizations. For many companies it means mobile email, perhaps some form of unified communications (UC) or fixed mobile convergence (FMC).

Moreover, for the more adventurous IT leaders, they have already embarked on extending workplace applications into the mobile environment.

How Mobility Supports Operational Business Goals

Tim Dillon, IDC's Associate Vice President for Asia-Pacific says, "That's yesterday's view. It's changed. Organizations that continue to take enterprise mobility for granted will be swept aside in the new environment. Today, we’re seeing what we could call a perfect storm, created by the evolution of different areas of technology combining to fundamentally, and drastically change how organizations can use enterprise mobility to support business goals and strategies."

IDC research clients are seeing new access networks, new devices, new mobile operating systems, business related applications (apps), platforms and delivery models come together to create an all-embracing enterprise mobility.

Previous IT turning points were the move from mainframes to desktops, and the growth of Internet access. Now, new mobile devices and numerous productivity-oriented applications will constitute the next wave of business technology adoption.

Amongst the many issues that IDC will continue to explore, perhaps the changing landscape for devices is most prevalent -- where media tablets, such as the Apple iPad, and large-screen smartphones can now run almost fully functional versions of all enterprise software and services.

Smarter and more capable mobile operating systems, along with the applied talent of independent software developers, are providing the market with the ingredients for an agile ecosystem that can quickly mobilize these new applications -- extending the functionality of virtually all IT systems to mainstream mobile devices.

Mobility Combined with Cloud Computing Services

Dillon adds, "ICT is evolving on multiple fronts to create a true revolution in mobility. As enterprise applications become mobile, the boundaries of the enterprise become extended and blurred. With the constant evolution in devices and applications that tap into the core enterprise systems, all systems become increasingly vulnerable to the acts of negligent users and malicious attacks -- companies will need to pair pervasive mobility with ubiquitous security."

Furthermore, as more and more communication and collaboration applications transition to the cloud -- via either managed public or private cloud computing services -- demand for mobile access is likely to increase, in line with the continued user adoption of multifaceted smartphones and purpose-built business-centric tablets.

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Redefining Mobility in the Workplace with Cisco Cius

Cisco has introduced the AppHQ -- an application ecosystem built specifically for Cisco Cius that provides new ways to create, manage and rapidly deploy tablet applications in the enterprise.

Cisco Cius, an Android-based tablet created for the enterprise, combines voice, video, collaboration, and virtualization capabilities unlike any other tablet on the market today. With Cisco Cius, organizations can now deliver an optimized tablet with enterprise-grade security, as a natural extension of the enterprise network.

The device provides customers with mobility, centralized manageability, virtual content creation and computing capabilities, and a comprehensive suite of collaboration applications.

AppHQ provides developers with tools and resources to create, test and market applications for Cisco Cius, and allows IT managers to control which applications can be used on the devices. Additionally, companies can create private, custom-branded application storefronts for their organizations where employees can find, publish and procure applications that complement their business environments.

Introducing Cisco AppHQ: A Trusted Source for Business Applications

Cisco AppHQ is a highly secure, cloud-based user storefront that provides capabilities for end users and IT managers not found in other application stores today. Some of these capabilities include:

• Testing and validation: IT managers want to know that applications deployed in their environment are appropriate for the enterprise. Cisco AppHQ provides IT managers and users with a trusted source for applications, ensuring that every application within AppHQ goes through Cisco validation testing, whether developed by Cisco, third-party Android developer partners, or users within the enterprise. The validation process includes interoperability testing both for the application itself and in typical configurations within the device.
• Store-within-a-Store: Enterprises will have a Cisco hosted, highly-secure and private application store within AppHQ. Businesses can customize the storefront, following their corporate branding guidelines, including use of logos, icons and color schemes. Beyond customization, the store-within-a-store is a platform that customers can use to deploy applications efficiently in their organizations.  For example, a financial services company could deploy applications pertaining to their back office operations, such as human resources or payroll apps, and populate those applications on the devices of relevant employees. 
• Empowers IT management: With AppHQ Manager, IT will have the ability to allow (or deny) access to application marketplaces by user role or device and to grant (or deny) access to applications by type, source or category. This unique capability will let IT organizations balance the individual freedom of users with the enterprise-class policies on security and cost efficiency.

"The promise of mobile Unified Communications and Collaboration for decentralized, accelerated decision-making is coming to light with the advent of intelligent 4G LTE networks, the cloud and enterprise tools such as the Cisco Cius. Our sales teams and customers will continue to benefit from cloud-based enterprise apps that help them get the job done from virtually anywhere with greater collaboration and speedier service delivery to their customers," said Mike Smith, vice president enterprise communications, network and mobility, Verizon.

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Demand for Managed Multi-Service Business Gateways

We're clearly in a period of global IT market transition. Enterprises are moving more applications, data and associated services to the central data center. Meanwhile, more small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are relying on managed service providers to deliver various types of hosted service offerings.

These trends are driven by cost savings that are realized through consolidation -- the impact reaches beyond basic data processing requirements, as it also impacts traditional voice communication needs.

SMBs are turning to hosted Centrex service, and enterprises are moving PBX capability and SIP trunking -- a VoIP solution based on SIP protocol -- to the unified data center.

Looking to support less infrastructure on-site, branch offices and SMBs are able to consolidate multiple services into a multi-service business gateway (MSBG). According to the latest market study by In-Stat, they have forecast that the growth of MSBG revenues in the SMB market will exceed $1 billion in 2015.

"The health of the MSBG market is closely linked to the health of the worldwide economy," says Norm Bogen, VP Research at In-Stat.

Economic growth leads to the establishment of new businesses and branch offices -- essentially driving new demand for MSBGs. However, the pace of new branch offices worldwide is expected to slow over the next five years, but this will be offset by acceleration in the establishment of small businesses.

As the economy recovers, new and evolving small businesses will flourish -- plus new technology, including the MSBG, will enable small firms to be more competitive with larger firms.

In-Stat's latest market study findings include:

- Revenues generated from MSBG sales are expected to grow at a lower rate than unit shipments.

- Worldwide annual shipments of MSBGs will approach 1.8 million units by 2015.

- Cisco has gained an overwhelming share of the MSBG market.

- Nearly all MSBGs marketed for enterprise branch office applications will need to offer some form of unified communications functionality.

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Managed Services Gaining Global Momentum

Savvy business leaders are increasingly turning to managed services to enable them to focus more attention on their core competencies, according to the latest market study by Pyramid Research. Managed services free up valuable IT and networking resources, decrease staffing needs and enable investment in activities that differentiate companies from their competition.

That said, the primary adoption driver is the current state of the global economy. As business leaders everywhere face increased financial pressure, they’re looking to managed services to offload their capital expense burden and improve operational efficiencies.

Analysts typically define managed network services as the management and monitoring of telecom infrastructure or applications by a third party -- either with equipment at the customer’s premise or hosted in a managed services provider (MSP) data center.

Responding to the Growing Global Demand
MSPs have responded to the increasing demand for new managed cloud services with a dramatic increase in investment to grow their managed services portfolios to include different types of out-tasked IT services for their customers. They are creating additional services that can be layered on top of the basic transport network offerings.

To learn more about the current market potential, Pyramid Research conducted an independent survey of more than 200 IT professionals from around the world to determine the types of managed services they’re using.

Primary conclusions from the market study include:

• Executives polled were willing to spend a large portion of their IT budgets -- between 10% and 20% -- on network-centric managed services, as the providers continue to prove the value and reliability of their offerings.
• The majority of enterprises -- almost 60% -- already use a managed service and have been doing so for between one and four years.
• Europe still has had the highest adoption of managed services -- driven in large part by the challenges of managing and maintaining business across multiple borders. However, the economic recession drove more North American companies to adopt managed services -- to lower costs and improve employee productivity.
• Additionally, emerging markets, such as those in Africa and Latin America, are preparing for managed services -- especially as broadband network access becomes more established.
• Multinational corporations and large enterprises have the most uptake in network-centric managed services, with SMEs now also looking for proven solutions that lower their costs.
• IT managers are applying a significant portion of their budget to managed services. Almost 25% of enterprises spend between $10,000 and $50,000 annually. Additionally, 26% of enterprises allocate between 10% and 20% of their IT budgets for managed services.
• The types of managed services that MSPs are providing are growing at a phenomenal rate. They manage everything from unified communications (UC) applications, to network security, to network connectivity and telepresence video collaboration services.
• Service trends over the next 18-24 months include managed machine-to-machine (M2M) services, such as automotive telematics, smart utility metering, fleet management, mobile health, point-of-sale transactions, mobile computing, wireless alarms, remote monitoring and wireless local loop (WLL).
• Growth is expected to continue throughout the U.S. and Europe -- especially in Eastern European countries, over the next 18 months. Latin America and Asia will provide continued expansion of these managed services.

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Shared Vision for the Future of Hosted Collaboration

With the increased reliance on IT from business leaders, it's important for CIOs to understand the concerns of CEOs and the implications they may have on IT, according to Gartner, Inc.

"Business leaders see very uncertain times ahead in 2011, and they must defend growth despite falling business and consumer confidence," said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

According to Gartner's assessment, CIOs should target at least one major business process to be revolutionized or obliterated in 2011 or 2012 -- substantively improving how companies collaborate is one example.

BT and Cisco have a shared vision for the future of hosted collaboration and unified communications services, built on their insight across a variety of networked IT and communications services.

The companies' mutual understanding of complex network environments and solution provisioning has helped them deliver superior capability, service, and value with global reach.

BT and Cisco jointly addressed the ongoing transition to hosted collaboration, unified communications and Internet Protocol (IP) telephony services, including the developing demand for IP telephony as a cloud-based service, at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2010.

Collaboration: New Realities, Rules and Opportunities
Stephen Bruce, head of UCC and Mobility portfolios for multinational corporations at BT Global Services and Matt Rowan, manager of partner operations at Cisco, discussed the new realities, rules, and opportunities that stem from a cloud computing-based collaboration and unified communications strategy, including the implications of a utility-priced service.

Bruce said, "As more of our customers contemplate their end-of-life traditional telephony environments and look to embrace the cloud, they are obviously interested in the notion of moving their IP telephony applications into the cloud. The carefully planned transition to cloud-based IP telephony can help customers dramatically reduce upfront investment costs while accelerating the adoption of IP telephony and unified communications on a global scale."

Rowan said, "As businesses analyze their options related to the consumption of collaboration solutions, cloud models offer compelling value. We are seeing enormous demand for cloud based collaboration solutions. Customers are asking for a low risk, minimally disruptive transition, and I believe BT offers a solid answer."

BT, in collaboration with Cisco, announced its hosted unified communications and IP telephony service to business customers in the U.S. in June 2010.

The service allows businesses to bring converged voice, mobile and data services to every desktop in their organizations, using BT and Cisco's cloud computing-based technologies. BT can rapidly deploy services to both large and small sites, offering business customers significant savings as well as operational predictability.

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Culture is Key to Advanced Collaboration

Organizations that deploy the most advanced Internet protocol-based collaboration technologies achieve more than twice the return on their collaboration investment and perform better than their less collaborative peers, according to a thought-provoking Frost & Sullivan market study.

"Meetings Around the World II: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration," sponsored by Verizon and Cisco, examines how busy professionals in businesses and government agencies use advanced collaboration tools such as voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging or meeting via high definition video or Cisco TelePresence to get their work done.

The study is the first to develop a model for measuring a return on collaboration investment, the Return on Collaboration (ROC) Index. It establishes a progressive impact of deploying advanced Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) technologies on business performance and measures improvements in areas such as research and development, human resources, sales, marketing, investor relations and public relations.

Advanced Collaborators Harness Competitive Advantage
The study also identified emerging business technology adoption trends and attitudes across the globe. Key findings from the study include:

• Businesses and government agencies deploying increasingly more sophisticated collaboration tools -- such as VoIP soft phones, immersive video and fixed mobile convergence -- saw a corresponding improvement in business results relative to the amount invested.
• The overall average ROC score was 4.2 -- meaning organizations received an average return of four times their investment in deploying collaboration technologies.
• The majority of organizations deploying UC&C report they are more successful than their peers compared to those not deploying UC&C (70 percent versus 47 percent).
• Of organizations deploying UC&C, 40 percent plan to increase spending.
• VoIP is leading the way for delivery of advanced communications and collaboration applications.
  

Why Corporate Culture is a Defining Factor
If you're thinking that simply deploying online collaboration tools will deliver results similar to the leaders -- then think again. Your work environment is truly instrumental to success.

How do the Advanced Collaborators attain an ROC score of 6.1? These organizations tend to have "open" entrepreneurial corporate cultures where individuals are accessible, and there's regular cooperation between business units.

"Meetings Around the World II confirms and extends the key findings of the original study and builds on those conclusions. This latest research shows adopting progressively more advanced unified communications and collaboration tools can help organizations achieve a corresponding return on collaboration and improvement across all business functions. This return was most dramatic in the areas of sales, marketing and research and development" says Brian Cotton, vice president for Information and Communications Technologies for Frost & Sullivan.

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The Secret of Business Growth in 2010

Having had their fill of the economic downside, business leaders are truly ready for the eventual upside. Apparently, U.S. companies are preparing for a global economic recovery to begin in the first half of 2010, according to a new "Road to Growth" market study from AT&T.

Key study findings include the following insights:

Business Agility and ROI Pressures
In today's economic climate, U.S. companies have significantly shortened the time frame over which a Return on Investment (ROI) is delivered.

More than half of U.S. IT executives stated they are under pressure to deliver a return on investment in half the time than their previous efforts. As a result, two-thirds cited that the change has affected their IT budgets, strategies and priorities.

The study found that companies are less willing to invest in longer-term projects -- where the return does not come quickly. One CIO stated that IT projects must give at least a 100% ROI in 12 months -- otherwise, the project is terminated.

Shrinking Costs, While Growing the Upside
No surprise, regarding the top-of-mind challenges. Cost cutting and increasing revenue remain the two primary business goals. To achieve those objectives, survive the recession and move towards growth, business technology strategies are focused on:

Reducing operating costs: 87 percent cited "reducing operating costs" as "extremely or very important." Improve collaboration with customers and partners: 85 percent cited "improved collaboration with customers and partners" as "extremely or very important." Enhancing workforce performance and productivity: 83 percent cited "enhancing workforce performance" as "extremely or very important."

Rise of the Any-Term Business Strategy
The study found that U.S. companies employ multiple strategies to address business goals, and do not distinguish between short-term and long-term strategies. It appears that U.S. companies are reducing the time period for their long-term forecasting until after the recession is over.

Moreover, the role IT plays in helping U.S. companies achieve long-term strategies is very similar to the role IT plays in supporting a company's short-term business strategies.

Ongoing Role of Business Technology
IT investments and priorities are very focused in a couple of key areas. The study found that "business continuity and security solutions" will have the biggest positive impact on business growth as U.S. companies prepare for an economic turnaround.

This is closely followed by "enterprise mobility solutions" and "Web delivery solutions." Areas of IT investment that are expected to have a high to moderate impact on businesses are "unified communications services" and "hosted solutions."

For more information, and a copy of the executive summary, visit the AT&T Road to Growth Study on their website.

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