economy

UC Market Rebounding and Prospects Looking Good

This is a short post just to highlight two stories I saw today which seemed to fit well together.

The first one reports that the UC market had its first quarter of growth since Q3 of 2008. The growth was modest, but significant given the impact of the economy on all IT sales.

The second is a report projecting that the UC market will grow at compound rate of just under 39% from 2009 to 2014, generating $87 billion in revenue over the 5 year period.

Taking thw two pieces of information together, it looks like UC might be recovering from the economic downturn and that the UC market has a very promising future…at least for tne next 5 years.

Saving Money By Investing in Unified Communications

When is an expense not an expense? When the expense saves more money than it costs. There is a reason that so many organizations are continuing to invest in unified communications deployments. They are laying off workers, freezing pay, and cutting budgets in other areas in response to the recession / depression and general state of the global economy.

But, investing in unified communications is seen as a cost-cutting measure as well as an investment in technologies that will help the organization to communicate more effectively and operate more efficiently so it can continue to get more done with fewer resources. In a time when people and budgets are being cut, unified communications almost becomes an imperative so that the people who are remain can still get the job done and deliver quality products and services for customers.

That is just my $.02 (which may only be worth half a cent in this economy- so take it for what its worth). You can get another point of view on the subject from this CIO.com article: Unified Communications, Collaboration Can Help Save Cash.

Want Stimulus? Get Unified Communications

Pssst. Over here. Keep this just between us, ok? The global economy is trashed. Shhhh.

If you haven’t heard, the United States and the rest of the world are in a recession bordering on depression. In the United States unemployment is the highest its been in decades. The stock market is the lowest it has been in years. The federal and state governments are scrambling to find solutions and turn things around.

President Barack Obama and the United States federal government have put forth a stimulus / recovery package to help get things back on track. Businesses that are looking for ways to cut costs and increase the bottom line can create their own stimulus package by investing in unified communications.

Making the move from traditional voice to VoIP has a number of cost advantages that could represent significant savings for many companies. For some companies though, one of the biggest expenses is travel. Flying people for onsite meetings involves airfare, rental cars, hotel lodging, per diem dining at restaurants, and more.

Companies can minimize, or even eliminate, those expenses by embracing unified communications and leveraging the conferencing functionality. Unified communications makes it simple to schedule and host a voice conference call. If documents or images need to be shared, a Live Meeting or similar collaboration session can be used to enable participants to see each other’s computer desktops. For situations where face to face meetings are desired video conferencing can accomplish virtually the same goal at a fraction of the cost.

Do your part to turn the economy around by investing in unified communications and creating your own stimulus package.

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Unified Communications Defies Economic Trends

You have probably noticed that the economy isn’t doing so hot. Microsoft announced the first round of job cuts in the company’s history. Tens of thousands more job cuts were announced just this week from trusted and reliable entities such as Home Depot and Sprint. Companies that aren’t cutting employees are still freezing salaries, shelving projects, and looking for ways to cut costs.

Fortunately for unified communications, investing in a unified communications project is a pathway to reducing operational expenses and cutting costs. Perhaps that explains why companies that have stopped spending on everything from travel to paper clips are still considering investments in unified communications.

A CDW survey of 766 unified communications IT professionals found that 61% of the respondents feel that unified communications allows their organization to accomplish more with less and increase productivity while reducing costs. Implementation is ongoing for 20% of the respondents, and 33% report that they are actively planning for imminent deployment projects. Combined with the 6% who reported a complete unified communications deployment is already in place, that means that 59% of the respondents either have, or are still actively pursuing unified communications even with the faltering economy.