The 2014 State of Unified Communications by InformationWeek surveyed subscribers both large and small and had some very interesting findings. The survey had 488 respondents with 31% having more than 5000 employees slanting the results more towards larger companies than small. That is consistent with current UC implementations and does not necessarily dispute the rise in interest by SMBs.

In listing drivers for the adoption of UC business continuity was either not included as an option or respondents don’t consider it a priority. Four of the top 5 are fairly common with one (partner communications) probably more of an enterprise concern. They were as follows:

• Improve employee collaboration (62%)
• Create a more mobile workforce (37%)
• Improve communications with employees (30%)
• Improve communications with outside partners and suppliers (27%)
• Legacy PBX retirement (23%)

Interestingly, collaboration (54%) was also rated number one when developing the ROI for a UC implementation with improved productivity (52%) and travel cost savings (40%) as the following parameters. In calculating UC’s affect upon collaboration and productivity I recommend reading The Changing Landscape of Collaboration and Quantifying Productivity Improvements with UC.

The movement towards leveraging the cloud for solutions is also growing with 51% expecting to deploy UC in conjunction with or solely using a cloud application or solution. Only 30% have plans to deploy a UC strategy that is premises based only further supporting the fact that even the largest enterprises see value in the cloud.

However, the report also presents opinions on the top barriers to full UC adoption. While we spend a great deal of time understanding the benefits of UC, it is worth knowing the primary objections. Although, price is not seen as the primary objection, it does make the top 5. The top five barriers to implementation are:

• Business drivers are insufficient to justify purchase of full UC suite (15%)
• End users are not trained to use the technology (14%)
• End users have adopted consumer workarounds and ignore the official UC system (8%)
• Critical business applications are incompatible with UC system (8%)
• The technology needed to extend existing system is too expensive (7%)

End user training can be easily address with the right solution evangelists but getting end users to abandon generally available and useful apps is more difficult. Additionally, if a combination of showing a reduction in TCO and an impressive ROI cannot address the price/investment questions, then those barriers will not be removed either. That said, the survey does point out that 70% of respondents are currently deploying UC or plan to deploy within 24 months.