In the future, mobile phones will dominate, with businesses moving to a 'bring your own device' strategy, and voice virtualisation will take on more importance in business' networks, according to survey results(1) taken by Mitel (Nasdaq:MITL).
These results further align with the company's Mitel Freedom architecture that was announced late last year.
Highlights of the survey include:
* Fifty-three 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 organisations would move to a 'bring your own device' strategy in the future.
* Ninety percent of respondents said virtualisation will take on greater importance in their network in 2011, with 34% of these saying that voice virtualisation will take on the greatest level of importance. Cloud virtualisation and desktop virtualisation followed in priority, at 31% and 25% respectively.
* Seventy-four percent of respondents 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 Andy Bull, managing director for Mitel South Africa.
"With Mitel Freedom, organisations 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 organisations 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(2) on mobility usage supports the Mitel survey findings. It showed that 49% of respondents identify mobile phones as primary endpoints used for business communications.
"Organisations 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, unified communications and collaboration, 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."
Frost & Sullivan further reported that more than 90% of large and 75% of small/mid-sized 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.
(1) Mitel survey conducted during the Mitel Freedom Webcast on November 15, 2010.
(2) Enterprise Communications in 2011: Buyers Reveal their Top Priorities, Frost & Sullivan, December 2010.
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