IR Survey Reveals More Than One-Third of IT Decision Makers Doubt Their Organizations Are Ready for Digital Transformation wi...

Respondents say UC productivity and collaboration initiatives hampered by weak infrastructure and lack of testing ability

IR, the leading global provider of experience management solutions for unified communications and contact centers, today announced the results of its independent survey of 511 U.S. senior decision makers on their IT-related purchases specific to unified communications (UC) and its role in digital transformation of their organizations1. According to the survey, more than one-third of IT decision makers don’t believe their existing infrastructures are ready to support high traffic from the new productivity and collaboration tools that will drive this digital transformation.

While sometimes overlooked by IT, UC is key to digital transformation. For example, UC solutions like Microsoft Skype for Business allow employees to easily share presentations across global offices. Companies are using video more to interact with their customers, giving the conversations a more personal feeling. With mobile devices, meetings can happen anywhere, anytime.

The challenge is that all of these choices make for a very complex digital ecosystem in which problems can come from any direction into a UC environment. Imagine you can't connect to your conference call or video chat. Then when you get connected, the quality is poor, or it gets dropped, or your files won’t transfer. According to Epson Centre for Economics & Business Research, workers believe that of every hour spent in a meeting, half of their time is wasted.2 Multiply that by each worker in the meeting and that lost time adds up.

The lost productivity and money that organizations can face due to these new UC systems cause IT decision makers to doubt in their investment and here are the reasons. According to the survey, of those who doubt that their organizations would be able to deliver these UC productivity and collaboration projects on time and to budget, the top reasons cited were failure to do a pilot and insufficient training (30 percent), along with the belief that their infrastructure can’t handle the necessary requirements (30 percent). Additionally, one out of four respondents selected lack of support from executive team and the concern that the technology wouldn’t deliver as promised as key reasons.

Industry experts agree that organizations need to invest in the right tools to ensure successful UC deployments. According to Gartner, “Regardless of whether a VoIP/UC environment is self-managed or maintained via a third party, VoIP/UC-specific monitoring tools are a fundamental prerequisite to the success of any VoIP/UC project.”3

UC vendors are also recommending better deployment planning. Recently, Microsoft announced its Skype Operations Framework (SOF), a comprehensive guide and toolset for implementing and managing a reliable communications service. The SOF recommends a network readiness assessment and has certified IR Prognosis UC Assessor to ensure Microsoft minimum requirements for a successful Skype for Business deployment.

“In order to drive digital transformation through UC, it is important to remove the doubt caused by the previously unknown issues lurking in that environment,” said Darc Rasmussen, managing director and chief executive officer, IR. “Organizations need executive commitment to deliver an optimal user experience and must invest in a performance management solution that can assess network readiness and be able to troubleshoot and remediate problems quickly.”

About IR

IR is the corporate brand name of Integrated Research Limited (ASX:IRI), the leading global provider of experience management solutions for critical IT infrastructure, payments and communications ecosystems. More than 1000 organizations in over 60 countries—including some of the world’s largest banks, airlines and telecommunication companies rely on IR Prognosis to provide business critical insights and ensure continuity-critical systems deliver high availability and performance for millions of their customers across the globe. For further information on IR, visit www.ir.com.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

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1 Survey of 511 US senior decision makers conducted by Finn Partners in September 20162 Source: Opinion Matters, for Epson and the Centre for Economics & Business Research: http://www.keyorganization.com/time-management-statistics.php3 Gartner “Hype Cycle for IT Infrastructure Availability and Performance Management, 2016”, by Gary Spivak and Sanjit Ganguli, July 30, 2016.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161102005082/en/

IRKevin Ryder, +61 2 9966 [e-mail] Partners for IRMichelle Sieling, +1 415 541 [e-mail]