Brief

High returns on UC&C deployment for Indian companies: F&S study

Indian organizations spend less than other countries on unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) technologies, but they are seeing the highest return on their investment, stated the Meetings Around the World II study conducted by Frost and Sullivan (F&S) and sponsored by Verizon and Cisco.

F&S in May 2009 conducted an online survey of 3,662 information technology (IT) or line-of-business decision-makers in organizations in 10 countries in Asia-Pacific, Europe and the United States. The survey gauged attitudes and practices within small and medium-sized businesses (50 to 999 employees) and enterprises (1,000 or more employees) in the financial services, government, healthcare, high technology, professional services, manufacturing and retail industries.

Compared with all other countries studied for the survey, Indian organizations are second only to companies in China in terms of deploying more sophisticated technologies. Indian companies have leaped into advanced communications rapidly, with 58% of them deploying UC&C solutions during the past 12 months.

Most Indian organizations have traditional UC&C tools: 77% have integrated voice/e-mail/instant messaging, and 61% have audio, Web and video conferencing capabilities. However, a relatively large number of Indian organizations also have deployed advanced, IP-based technology, such as presence-enabled applications (45%)—which allow users to view others’ availability status and readiness to communicate, integrated soft-phones (41%), and immersive video (36%).

Indian organizations in the study spent the equivalent of Rs 42.97 million ($888,000) on UC&C technologies in 2008. The amount spent by Indian groups is by far the least on unified communications and collaboration technologies in the study. They spent nearly a third as much as Japan, and less than half of what many other countries spend. Yet, Indian organizations are achieving more than a six-fold Return on Collaboration (ROC) with an average overall ROC score of 6.7. These results demonstrate that Indian organizations are using unified communications and collaboration technologies to the maximum effect.