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By Henry Dewing with Ellen Daley, April Lawson
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In 2007, the vendor side of unified communications (UC) saw tremendous hype, while many buyers struggled with confusion, wondering exactly how to define UC and what UC meant for their businesses. Still, UC met a growing demand; more than 50% of enterprises now report that they are evaluating, installing, or running UC solutions. The great promise of UC is that it will enable communication with experts and decision-makers in order to facilitate the resolution of business issues when, where, and by whatever means is best suited to achieving the task at hand. What should you expect in 2008? Mobility will become an expected part of UC, video will come of age for multiple purposes, communication-enabled business processes will start providing return on investment (ROI), and hosted and software-as-a-service (SaaS) UC offerings and demand will grow. Don't expect federated presence to break out of the pack yet, though; interoperability and user-configuration tools remain roadblocks to adoption in the near term.
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS WON'T CHANGE THE WAY WE WORK IN 2008
Throughout 2007, firms were abuzz about unified communications, which we define as:
The combination of presence and availability with voice, video, email, and instant messaging, which makes it easier to communicate via the most optimal path with employees, customers, and suppliers and ultimately streamlines business processes.
Half of all enterprises in North America and Europe have some type of UC initiative (see Figure 1) (see endnote 1). Success stories from the field are about cost savings, personal productivity, and process cycle time improvement, leaving businesses waiting for examples of UC transforming business processes.
In 2007, vendors jumped into the fray with a multitude of disparate hardware, software, and hosted offerings, each claiming that their solution was the unified communications Holy Grail. The truth? Business unit heads and IT operations professionals understand UC imperfectly, and the market is still immature. What can we expect in 2008?
- Mobility will become a systemic part of unified communications. For road warriors, the mobile phone—and, increasingly, the smart phone—has become an important productivity tool. In 2008, businesses will begin linking these devices into unified communications capabilities and putting UC into the hands of mobile professionals, which will complete another leg of UC's "anywhere, anytime" promise. Setting mobile and wireless strategy was a critical priority for 15% of enterprises in 2007, and that number will remain nearly constant in 2008 as more businesses plan mobility strategies (see endnote 2). In 2007, companies began to comprehend the need to consider UC when plotting a mobility strategy and that trend will continue and grow in 2008. At least two more UC vendors will announce the availability of mobile UC, introducing solutions along the lines of Avaya's integration of new technology from recently acquired Ubiquity Networks into its one-X mobile UC solutions in 2007.
- Video will take the stage in firms' collaboration plans. Expect videoconferencing utilization at firms with new video solutions to rise from less than 10% in 2007 to nearly 50% in 2008. Using a host of systems, such as desktop Webcams, PC screens, and telepresence rooms, vendors will deliver video experiences that keep meeting attendees "glued to their screens." Cisco delivered telepresence to more than 100 customers in 2007, but all the major telepresence vendors—HP, Polycom, TANDBERG, and Teliris—will surpass this number in 2008. Desktop video will also advance rapidly via innovative solutions, such as SCOPIA Desktop from RADVISION, and Microsoft Roundtable (which integrates with Live Meeting), that enable desktop collaboration with integrated video capability. Why? Firms desire a reduced environmental impact, and they will focus on travel savings in the current uncertain economic climate.
- Leading firms' business processes will show signs of becoming "communications-enabled." Avaya is starting to see success selling products specifically designed to deliver communications-enabled business processes (CEBPs) that integrate communications capabilities, workflow tools, and existing business applications (see endnote 3). Nortel and other communications companies are aligning to service-oriented architectures (SOAs), simplifying mashups of communications and collaboration services with business applications that will reduce cycle time, improve customer service, and deliver more repeatable and consistent business results (see endnote 4). In 2008, look for major announcements from business applications leaders like PeopleSoft, SAP, and Siebel about "lighting up" presence and enabling click-to-IM or call-to-call interfaces within their applications.
- Hosted and SaaS unified communications offerings will come of age. The complexity of UC installation, integration, and configuration will drive more firms to purchase hosted or managed UC solutions. Forrester expects at least 20% of firms to buy hosted or managed UC services in 2008, and that percentage will not decrease until firms across the boards settle their interoperability and management issues (see endnote 5). Inquiries from Forrester clients indicate that developing standards and insufficient vendor interoperability are delaying their adoption of UC. Forrester sees opportunities for hosted and managed UC providers—as well as value-added resellers (VARs) and systems integrators (SIs)—to mitigate this risk for firms across industries.
- Federated and integrated UC will emerge from the labs—and only provide marginal utility. Federated presence—the sharing of presence data across corporate boundaries—will have a few field deployments in 2008. Users will need to maintain, update, and interpret presence across PC login and activity, wireline and wireless phone on-hook/off-hook state, instant messenger (IM) client log-in status, and video endpoints status. This will overwhelm them, creating the need for holistic management, administration, and reporting of presence. In 2008, federated and integrated systems will remain difficult to use and be thinly adopted outside of highly skilled technical ranks. Expect less than 10% of large enterprises to trial these solutions in 2008. Until solutions include algorithms and rules to automatically adjust presence and availability states, users will be unable or unwilling to manually maintain their status, which will limit the usefulness of presence information shared in federated/integrated UC systems through 2008.
Next: Unified Communications Implementation Status
Download the rest of this report, including graphics and notes, free of charge at http://www.forrester.com/ciozone.
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