Study from Siemens Enterprise Communications Shows Pure IP Communications Gives Enterprises a 43 Percent Savings over Legacy PBX

RESTON, Va., March 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Siemens Enterprise Communications today announced the results of its State of Enterprise Communications 2012 Study, which found that pure IP infrastructures save enterprises 43 percent over traditional PBX systems. The study also found that an increasingly mobile workforce is forcing more enterprises to adapt cloud technology, and that staff training and headcount issues often delay a company's migration to a unified communications (UC) platform.

The study examines enterprise communications practices worldwide, including the influences of cloud computing and mobility on communications infrastructures, as well as cost-savings realization from deploying IP communications versus traditional PBX.

View an infographic of the results.

"The findings of this study echo what our customers have been telling us: that IP-based unified communications not only simplifies productivity for end users, but it also saves companies money," said Chris Hummel, President, North America and CMO. "Enterprise communications is in transition – from PBX to IP and from premise to cloud. Siemens Enterprise Communications is dedicated to providing our customers with flexible, open, enterprise communications solutions that adapt to their business needs, helping mitigate IT complexity, support a mobile workforce and facilitate this shift."

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IP Communications Saves Money; Most Companies Leverage a Mixed IP/PBX Environment

Most notably, the study revealed that pure IP-communications offers enterprises a 43 percent annual savings over traditional PBX infrastructures. While in the process of moving to a pure IP environment, a hybrid environment helps mitigate risk and protect existing investments. Running IP communications next to legacy PBX is the most common approach, with 91 percent of respondents reporting this method.

A Mobile and Distributed Workforce Fuels Cloud Adoption

The enterprise workforce has become increasingly mobile, with most enterprises having just 20 percent of endpoints dedicated to phones at headquarters locations. The greatest number of endpoints, according to the study, were dedicated to remote/branch phones (39 percent), followed by mobile phones (33 percent). In addition, one in three call center operators now work from home.

This de-centralization, made possible by advancements in enterprise communications, is driving enterprises toward cloud deployments. While only 16 percent of those surveyed currently had cloud services in place, 45 percent of respondents reported that cloud was part of their 2012 communications plan, with respondents favoring private cloud to public cloud at a nearly three to one ratio. The top applications that enterprises plan to deploy in the cloud are web collaboration, UC and video conferencing, the survey showed.

"We've got a few hundred people who do at-home work," said a technical advisor for a large transportation enterprise, in a focus group.

Unified Communications Is A Priority; Skills Gaps Cause Problems

At least 90 percent of respondents listed IP web collaboration, UC and IP video conferencing as technologies they are discussing for 2012, and more than half of respondents are already using these.

Although UC is a priority for the majority of enterprises, staffing issues often plague its migration. Respondents have found that IT staff often lacks the skills necessary to deploy newer technologies, especially cloud computing. More than half of respondents feel that the IT landscape has become too complex, which, combined with narrow skill sets and high turnover rates, can easily hamper cloud and UC adoption.

"The biggest thing we run into is getting new employees trained on our system," said a senior communications administrator for a large retail enterprise, in a focus group. "It's costly; we've had a high turnover rate."

When asked to rate their staff's readiness for UC, from extremely unprepared to extremely prepared, the top three areas where the respondents rated their staffs less prepared were private cloud communications, public cloud communications and private WAN-based video conferencing.

Study Recommendations:

• Embrace IP-based enterprise communications. Look for a native SIP-based software architecture and platform that centrally enables and manages conferencing, collaboration and messaging across voice, video, text and social media. This approach is more likely to provide a harmonized user experience, reduced complexity and lower cost of ownership compared to stitching together point solutions or 'bolting-on' capabilities to legacy architectures.
• Consider cloud to help lessen staffing issues and complexity. Cloud solutions have proven to provide rapid and flexible access to new technologies and capabilities, with fewer burdens on IT, management overhead and CAPEX budgets. Although premise-based communications solutions still dominate, we expect to see a greater proportion of enterprises deploying 'hybrid' solutions that overlay existing systems with complementary new cloud-based capabilities. Look for a supplier that can provide complete objectivity to recommend and provide premise, private, hybrid or public cloud solutions.
• Consider a centralized session management server to help mitigate the cost of running a combined PBX and IP infrastructure. Maintaining a mixture of old and new technology may have a role in transition plans, protecting existing investments or integrating organizations, however managing them in-house can burden IT staff and create complexity. A centralized session management server which can unify network management, provide least cost wide-area IP routing and common dialing plans in centralized applications can help mitigate this cost, as can managed services – use pooled resources and skill sets to lower overall TCO.
• Consider managed services to help mitigate staffing issues. Managed services and pay-as-you-go cloud services are valid options to address the ever-changing and expanding range of staffing and skills resource demands on your IT and communications departments. Many customers find that the economies of having a provider manage and/or host their environment for them not only saves on operating costs and lessens recruiting and training demands, but also allows the organization to spend more time and resources on their core business.
• Address mobility needs with flexibility and a full feature set in mind. The distributed and virtualized enterprise is now a dominant organization model. However, there are significant TCO savings and functional advantages in centralizing UC from either private or public cloud, or from a server-based data center deployment – not to mention uniform provisioning of security, reliability, conferencing and collaboration provisioning. Further, this finding underscores the need for rich and flexible mobility solutions for a range of voice, messaging, conferencing and collaboration that are 'open' and can run on all the major mobile smart phone and tablets.

The State of Enterprise Communications 2012 Study was conducted by ReRez Research in January 2012. More than 1,100 respondents from enterprises with more than 500 employees in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, India, Brazil, Russia and Sweden were surveyed.

Additional Resources

State of Enterprise Communications 2012

Siemens Enterprise Communications on Twitter

Siemens Enterprise Communications on LinkedIn

About Siemens Enterprise Communications

Siemens Enterprise Communications is a premier provider of end-to-end enterprise communications, including voice, network infrastructure and security solutions that use open, standards-based unified communications and business applications for a seamless collaboration experience. This award-winning "Open Communications" approach enables organizations to improve productivity and reduce costs through easy-to-deploy solutions that work within existing IT environments, delivering operational efficiencies. It is the foundation for the company's OpenPath® commitment that enables customers to mitigate risk and cost-effectively adopt unified communications. Jointly owned by The Gores Group and Siemens AG, Siemens Enterprise Communications includes Cycos and Enterasys Networks. For more information about Siemens Enterprise Communications or Enterasys please visit www.siemens-enterprise.com or www.enterasys.com.

Note: Siemens Enterprise Communications & Co K.G. is a trademark licensee of Siemens AG. HiPath, OpenOffice, OpenScape and OpenStage, are registered trademarks of Siemens Enterprise Communications & Co K.G. or its affiliates. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Siemens' management. The words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "plan," "should," and "project" are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Siemens does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Siemens Enterprise Communications