Networking

Unified Communications: Creating a Consolidated Approach to Access

Survey finds that unified communications offers a way to better manage comm and network services within the enterprise — and also better serve users.

Photo: Mike Kemp/Getty Images

Survey finds that UC offers a way to better manage comm and network services within the enterprise — and also better serve users.

Photo: Mike Kemp/Getty Images

Survey finds that UC offers a way to better manage comm and network services within the enterprise — and also better serve users.

Driving Network Consolidation for Uncle Sam

Advantages:

• Decreased Costs

• Increased Productivity

• More Reliable Communications

Potential Concerns:

• Network Security

• Training Requirements

What Are the Hurdles to Getting Started?*

46% Securing budget commitments
33% Narrowing options to a workable solution
29% Identifying reliable cost projections
28% Choosing a single- or multi-vendor approach
27% Convincing leadership of ROI potential

*Respondents could select more than one answer.

Lay of the Land

Federal organizations are more likely than other sectors to be concerned with security but also more likely to have prepared a strategic plan and business case for UC. Defense Department organizations have had more success in securing funding than their civilian counterparts.

"We have 50,000 users that are mobile-connected — 25,000 have wireless cards. With that level of scale, anything you can do to reduce cost allows you to do things to expand your capability.”
David Stender

IRS Chief Information Security Officer

Smartphones and other handheld devices “are now another desktop essentially” to manage in the enterprise.
Rick Holgate

CIO for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Where Federal Adoption Stands with UC

20% Implementing

38% Planning

34% Assessing

8% Deployed

Tips

From Government Organizations that Have Fully Deployed UC

Set the Bar: Communicate the project’s expectations and your strategy clearly.

Measure, measure, measure: You need to quantify and measure total cost of ownership and benefits so that implementation and performance can be tracked going forward.

Make Users Comfortable: Return on investment hinges on end-user adoption. Create initial and ongoing training plans that will ease concerns and encourage the shift to the new technology.

Change the Game: Be ready to break old paradigms of how your agency works. Understand all the cultural changes and how they affect your users.

Think Big: Keep an enterprise perspective, and don’t let hiccups along the way knock your long-term plan off track.

Component Technologies Lead the Way: Agencies Have Deployed Many UC Elements*

64% Video Conferencing

64% Emergency Notification

60% Collaboration

59% Smartphones

58% Unified Messaging

45% Presence

DATA SOURCE: CDW•G survey of 915 IT decision-makers from education, government, healthcare and industry; 150 federal respondents (66% from civilian agencies, 34% from DOD)