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If you’re in telepresence, the future’s looking so bright you gotta wear shades. And if you can name the band that reference comes from, you spent waaaay too much time on ‘80s pop music.

CDW (News - Alert), which sells tech to business, government, education and health care concerns, conducted a Video Conferencing Straw Poll Report recently, finding not only that half the companies surveyed use some form of video conferencing today, but that “another quarter plan to implement the technology within the next two years.”

The report is based on two surveys and includes a total of 631 information technology and telecommunications managers at U.S. companies.

Within the next two years, survey officials report, “almost half of those surveyed indicate that they plan to implement immersive telepresence,” which uses high-definition, life size images to simulate an in-person meeting. It approximates “the sensation of being at the same table with users spread across multiple locations,” according to CDW officials.

This is consistent with robust interest in communications technology recently: According to TMC’s Rajani Baburajan, Unified Communications (News - Alert) implementation rates doubled from 2010 to 2011, with 16 percent of organizations fully implemented, according to another study from CDW.

“According to 76 percent of organizations that fully implemented UC, their ROI has met or exceeded their expectations – up 5 percent since 2010,” Baburajan wrote.

Video conferencing adoption is being driven mainly by reduced operating costs, naturally, since it does cut out a great deal of business travel expense. Also cited as reasons for adopting the technology, the survey found, were “improved decision making” and “improved communication.”