Europe Has a Long Way to Go Before Being UC Ready

By Oliver VanDervoort
Contributing Writer

Unified Communications (News - Alert) comes with a number of different uses. This is one of the reasons why a new report, which shows that almost half of all European organizations are unable to deploy the technology across all of their sites is particularly vexing. A new survey by Easynet shows that UC communications deployment is lagging behind demand by quite a large margin, despite finding that 60 percent of respondents said UC brings improved business efficiency. Another 45 percent said that the technology brings improved business agility.

Communications service providers are being leaned on more than ever when it comes to bringing UC technology to the market. The survey found that 85 percent of  enterprise level companies dealing in the UC field trust CSPs to bring the tech to the market. Despite the huge majority implicitly trusting their CSP (News - Alert), one in five companies say they are still not using their service providers in order to access UC tech.

Another findings that would appear to be bad news for UC tech is that just 29 percent of respondents said that their WAN infrastructure is able to fully support the tech. Nearly half (49 percent) said their WAN would need upgrades at their home sites or out in locations in order to really benefit from the use of Unified Communications.

The level of readiness that a European country had when it comes to UC rollout varies, but even countries that appear very ready are not well equipped. Countries like Belgium and the Netherlands reported that less than half of the companies that deal in this market (40 percent and 37 percent respectively) could roll out a full UC platform at this time. In the United Kingdom, that number was quite a bit worse with just 28 percent of firms saying they were ready for UC’s complete rollout and usage.