In the future, mobile phones will dominate, with businesses moving
to a "bring your own device" strategy and voice virtualization will
take on more importance in business' networks, according to survey
results taken by business communications and collaboration software and
services provider Mitel Networks. The survey found 53 percent of
respondents felt that, in the future, mobile phones would become the
dominant communication device in the workplace. These same responders
also stated that their organizations would move to a "bring-your-own-device" strategy in the future.
In addition, 90 percent of respondents said that virtualization will
take on greater importance in their network in 2011, with 34 percent of
these saying that voice virtualization will take on the greatest level
of importance. Cloud virtualization and desktop virtualization followed
in priority at 31 and 25 percent respectively, while 74 percent of
respondents said they believed they could achieve a stronger ROI using
a best-of-breed network approach versus a single vendor.
"These survey results demonstrate that the Mitel Freedom architecture
is in direct correlation with addressing the communications needs of
customers," said Stephen Beamish, vice-president of marketing and
business development for Mitel. "With Mitel Freedom, organizations have
the flexibility to break free from the 'walled garden' vendor model and
design a communications network based on best-in-class technologies. It
also allows organizations to deliver a tailored, in-office experience
to all employees, extending UC features to any device, enabling the
'bring your own device' approach which we believe will become more
prevalent in the future."
Frost & Sullivan's recently released survey on mobility usage
supports the Mitel survey findings. It showed that 49 percent of
respondents identify mobile phones as primary endpoints used for
business communications. Frost & Sullivan further reported that
more than 90 percent of large and 75 percent of small/midsize
companies would describe their communications infrastructure as
multi-vendor as opposed to end-to-end single vendor. According to the
survey, this trend will continue over the next 24 months with the
majority of businesses shifting to more tightly integrated multi-vendor
environments.
"Organizations are driving the use of mobile unified communications
applications to help reduce cost, enhance mobile worker productivity,
enable work/life balance, provide better customer service, reduce
travel, and increase collaboration across distributed teams," said Elka
Popova, North American program director of unified communications and
collaboration for Frost & Sullivan. "Survey participants indicated
that in 2011 they intend to increase their spending across a broad set
of communications and collaboration technologies, including mobile
devices and applications. Mitel's Freedom architecture provides
flexible, easy-to-manage solutions to address the trend toward
increased mobile integration."
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