Unified Communications adoption faces hurdles in Asia Pacific

The latest research findings by Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, reveal that the Unified Communications market in Asia Pacific is still in the very early stages of development and faces many challenges.

The findings, part of Springboard's latest report titled," Unified Communications in Asia Pacific: Key Trends and Market Insights," point out that a few organizations are aware of unified communications solutions or how their disparate communications tools or systems can be synchronized.

According to Springboard, Unified Communications (UC) refers to the integration of disparate communications systems (wired and wireless telephone systems), devices (PC and phones) and applications (email, instant messaging, and calendar applications as well as audio, video and web conferencing).

These systems, devices and applications are all integrated on a single platform accessible through a single phone number or Internet address, and not limited to a communication device or tool. The reports findings are based on a survey of 469 CIOs, IT managers and business managers at over 400 large and SMB enterprises in Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

"There is a definite disparity in the value of Unified Communications as perceived by different organizations," said Research Manager at Springboard Research Ravi Shekhar Pandey.

In large enterprises, the IT departments view unified communications as an evolution in convergence that organizations must adopt, while SMBs are more concerned about improving communications and finding solutions to their business problems, and therefore are paying less attention to unified communications," Pandey said.

Springboard said that 21 percent of survey participants have deployed unified communications solutions and companies with more than 500 employees are the leading adopters.

China leads the region in adoption with 35 percent of Chinese respondents affirming to having deployed a UC solution. Springboard's findings also reveal that organizations in Australia and India are more likely to deploy UC over the next 12 months than anywhere else in the region.