Do not discount UC promises: executive
Younger generations will eventually adopt these technologies across the board despite its slow adoption rate
Unified communications (UC) might be about internal efficiencies now but younger staff entering the workplace will broaden its use, says one industry player.
Dave MacFarlane, managing director of comms provider Gamma Network Solutions, suggested to delegates at IT Expo Europe this week that too many tech providers have thought of UC benefits in terms of customer communications.
In fact Gamma "very, very rarely" sees this as a driver for purchase, MacFarlane confirmed.
"I would say that UC has some business value, but very little customer business value, because very few organisations actually connect with customers using UC," he said.
The real driver for UC sales, he said, is as an internal tool, hinting therefore that end user expectations around its benefits should be managed accordingly in the meantime.
"I don't know how many people in this room have all-UC but I would say it is less than 10 per cent," MacFarlane said. "We tend to think we have been sold a pup. It doesn't deliver what we thought it would."
In 2005, people were saying that UC would take over the world of telecommunications in 2-5 years, but that hasn't happened. Yet there is an opportunity there, even if the technologies are not the panacea people have been led to believe, MacFarlane said.
"The workforce is changing. The workforce is young, and getting younger. The Generation Y or Millenial workers are currently 28 per cent of the workforce and will be the majority very shortly.
"These users expect on-demand services, and will be 58 per cent of the workforce by 2015," MacFarlane said.
UC products will deliver more value in a younger-generation workplace. Ninety-two per cent of new apps being developed and released today are for personal and mobile devices, and these are almost exclusively web-based, he noted.
As Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as well becomes more widely adopted, the truly unified experience that these younger users will appreciate is within reach, MacFarlane said. Voice is not dead, as some have claimed, but will simply become IP-enabled.
"And as Generation Y workers become finance directors and CEOs they will use these tools to communicate not only with their peers but with their customers, IT and IT managers, and a whole plethora of competitors," MacFarlane predicted.
You may also like
/sponsored/4039897/industry-voice-constant-life-change-last-months
Security
Industry Voice: "The only constant in life is change*", and no more so than in the last 18 months
We've seen a monumental change in how we buy, work, and communicate, and more change is afoot…
/sponsored/4035557/partner-content-voice-mobility-set-critical-services-resellers
Security
Partner Content: Voice, data and mobility set to become critical services for IT resellers
Exclusive research conducted by CRN in association with Gamma, shows how the pandemic has increased the appetite for Unified Communications