Information Age: News, analysis & insight for IT & business leaders

Familiarity among users also aids adoption, survey finds

Demand for unified communications (UC) is being driven by employees rather than from the top, according to a survey by IT services firm Dimension Data, with business technology becoming a staff attraction and retention issue.

The survey of IT managers within organisations of over 1,000 employees found that half considered end-user demand a key factor in UC adoption, particularly from younger employees. Of those who had deployed UC, 61% said adoption was faster than other IT projects because users were familiar with the concepts.

“Employees, especially young graduates, are frustrated by inflexible, old-fashioned technology and draconian usage policies,” says Rob Stanley, line of business director at Dimension Data. “The top driver of UC adoption coming from employees is enabling flexible and remote working, followed by improving job satisfaction, reducing stress and enhancing productivity,” he added.

Employers who fail to ‘enterprise-enable’ the familiar consumer-grade technologies like social networks and instant messaging can find rogue programs smuggled onto the network anyway, according to Stanley. “If employees can’t [use them], they sometimes introduce them themselves,” he says.

Further reading

The growing pains of unified comms
The vision of a unified communications infrastructure, centred on IP, has been an alluring prospect for over half a decade. So what is holding back broad adoption?

Find mores stories in the Comms & Networking Briefing Room