According to a study conducted by business technology research firm Nemertes, more organizations are choosing to source all the parts of their unified communications systems from a single supplier. Reasons given for this trend are that it lowers costs and makes the system simpler for users.
"IT leaders are struggling with interoperability and the ability to build a multivendor scenario that's viable long term," Nemertes vice president and service director Irwin Lazar said in the report. "If it were easy to make Skype for Business interoperate with Cisco or Avaya, users wouldn't be consolidating."
The report found that the most common communications applications businesses were consolidating were desktop video, Web conferencing, instant messaging and voice. This way, employees won't have to have several applications open in order to, for example, instant message questions to the presenter at a meeting being held over video conferencing software. This can cause both applications to slow down and can confuse employees.
Lazar also mentioned in the report that many business owners are realizing they're paying for the same service several times over, and are consolidating to save money. He gave the example of a client who was running IBM for instant messaging and web conferencing and Cisco for voice and video. The client realized that Cisco also provided instant messaging and web conferencing services, so they consolidated to just using Cisco.
Another recent Nemertes report found that many employees aren't trained properly on how to use UC solutions, so if you do decide to consolidate your communications applications, remember that it's important to provide employee training to bring everyone up to speed on how to use the new tools.
For information about consolidating your telecommunications systems, contact us today.
