2012 State of Enterprise CommunicationsGlobal Findings

Siemens Enterprise Communicationswww.siemens-enterprise.com

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Executive Summary

Enterprise communications is in transition – from PBX to IP, from premises to cloud, and from voice to video to web collaboration. With the vast majority of global enterprises right in the middle of transitioning from legacy PBX to pure IP-based communications, Siemens Enterprise Communications decided to commission ReRez Research of Dallas, Texas, to take a sounding of the state of enterprise communications as of the beginning of 2012.

We found that global organizations are in a state of flux. Lured by potential cost savings of IP-based communications – our study showed an average of 43 percent in annual OpEx costs alone – nearly all respondents reported they were in transition. As they make this transition, they are running their PBX solutions alongside the new IP system, to make the change more smoothly.

Further, we found evidence that the distributed nature of business is driving adoption of cloud communications. Respondents told us their organizations are highly distributed – with 4 of 5 endpoints outside the main headquarters and 3 of 10 call center operators working from home. This is driving strong interest in moving their communications to the cloud, with nearly half having plans to do so in 2012.

Finally, we found that staff-related issues are hindering communications efforts. Gaps in critical skills areas, such as cloud, are combining with chronic understaffing and high turnover to hinder the transition to IP-based communications.

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APJChina............................. 102India .............................. 108

EMEAUnited Kingdom............. 200Germany........................ 200Sweden ......................... 100Russia ............................ 100

Latin AmericaBrazil ............................. 100

North AmericaUnited States ................. 210

“We’re going to run our legacy system while we’re implementing our

new system.”

—Information system manager for a large

chemical manufacturing enterprise

Siemens Enterprise Communications commissioned ReRez to field the survey in January 2012. They contacted a total of 1,120 companies, representing the United States, the UK, Germany, China, India, Brazil, Russia and Sweden. Each organization contacted had at least 500 employees; the mean was 7,304 employees, and the median was 2,200.

The respondents for the survey were from a panel composed of pre-screened individuals, who are “significantly involved in the evaluation process” of enterprise communications, defined as follows:

By Enterprise Communications we mean everything involved in facilitating communications between your employees, customers, partners and other stakeholders. By communications we mean phone calls, conference calls, video conferencing, web collaboration (like WebEx or LiveMeeting), and the unification of all kinds of communications into a single platform.

The survey has an accuracy of 95 percent, with a +/- of 3 percent, meaning that if the response to a question is 52 percent, we can be 95 percent confident that it is in the range of 49–55 percent.

Methodology

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Finding 1

IP-based communications save money; most companies leverage a mixed IP/PBX environment

“We are utilizing VoIP for cost savings,

both for telephone and the network.”

—CIO for a large manufacturing enterprise

First, we asked respondents who only use IP-based communications to tell us about their costs in several areas:

Line charges (including IP) Staffing costs Training & support Hosted solutions Miscellaneous costs

By totaling these costs and dividing it among their users, we arrived at a number representing the cost per employee. We then compared this with those still using PBX-based communications platforms. In the end, those organizations that have already made the switch are experiencing significant savings, paying 43 percent less on average than those using legacy systems.

While this is a significant benefit, most organizations are adopting a cautious approach as they make the transition. Nine out of ten organizations are choosing to continue running their PBX equipment alongside their IP-based system, in order to lower risks in making the full transition immediately and protect their current investments.

Next we examine the current trend of a mobile workforce and the effect it has on communications.

$248 43%PBX is

more than IP only

IP OnlyPBX Only

$434

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Finding 2

Mobile and distributed workforce is fueling cloud-based UC adoption

“We have about 3,200 stores… It’s a

little challenging because not everything is at our

headquarters.”

—Senior communications administrator for a large

retail enterprise

The increasingly distributed global workforce means that more endpoints exist in geographically separate locations. This is now affecting the majority of endpoints, with a full 80 percent of them residing outside of corporate headquarters – 39 percent in remote offices, 33 percent are mobile devices and 8 percent are in homes. Of particular note are call center operators, with 32 percent of them working from home offices.

These changes are being made possible by the evolution of enterprise communications. And, in turn, the increasingly mobile workforce is being driven by the emergence of cloud computing. Cloud-based unified

communications systems may currently be a minority (present in only 16 percent of enterprises), but this is going to increase this year – nearly half of organizations (45 percent) are planning to deploy these systems in 2012. These are more likely to be private cloud deployments than public cloud, at a ratio of 2.8 to 1.

In terms of the applications being leveraged, the most common is Web collaboration. Unified communications and voice conferencing were the next most common.

Percent of Endpoints by Location

Remote/branch office phones 39%

HQ phones 20%

Mobile phones 33%

Phones at employee homes 8%

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Finding 3

Unified communications are a priority; skill gaps causing problems

“Whenever we have a position open, we’re

having trouble filling it with experienced personnel.”

—Desktop administrator for a large furniture retailer

Because to us “unified communications” means more than just an inbox for email and voicemail, we asked survey respondents to tell us how their organizations are doing with the adoption of a variety of communications media. These include not just these well-established methods of interaction, but also more recent developments in business such as video conferencing and web collaboration.

We found that nearly all businesses (more than 90 percent) are at least discussing these initiatives, while more than half are already implementing unified communications (53 percent), Web collaboration (59 percent) and video conferencing (63 percent).

Once again, however, there is a catch. This time, however, the problem lies with the IT staff – specifically, their skills are not current enough to manage these emerging

technologies. The top areas in which the staff members were rated as less than somewhat prepared were:

1. Private cloud communications (35 percent)

2. Public cloud communications (35 percent)

3. Private, WAN-based video conferencing (31 percent)

We asked about the significant factors in these staffing issues, and the two most-cited reasons were that enterprise communications are too complex to easily manage (55 percent) and that they have insufficient staff (also stated by 55 percent).

It’s clear that moving to IP-based communications is ideal. The question is what organizations can do to make the transition easier.

35%35%

31%30%30%

29%27%27%

26%26%26%26%

25%23%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Public cloud communications

Private cloud communications

Private WAN-based video conferencing

IP web collaboration

Traditional PBX-based web collaboration

IP call center applications

Software-based communications platform

IP unified communications

IP voice conferencing

IP video conferencing

Traditional PBX-based voice conferencing

Traditional PBX-based call center applications

Traditional PBX-based voice

IP voice

Please rate your staff’s current level of readiness for each of the following enterprise communications areas: (Less than somewhat adequate)

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Recommendations

In order to help businesses make a smooth transition to a more efficient, IP-based communications system, we have developed four simple recommendations.

“We’ve been trying to put more and more into our

private cloud.”

—Desktop administrator for a large furniture retailer

Get started today

Beyond the cost efficiencies of having one network to install and manage (rather than two) – moving to an IP infrastructure that is software-based, easily scalable and open standards-based allows ongoing communications-related cost savings in multiple areas, including:

Consolidating multiple location-based PBXs to a centralized data center for lower administrative, trunking, electrical and hardware expenses

Avoiding long distance and toll charges by leveraging your wide-area IP network (WAN) regionally, nationally or globally

Enabling lower cost (and simpler to administer) consolidated SIP trunking

Less complex, less expensive and more functional branch, remote and teleworker deployment

The ability to move conferencing “in-house” rather than paying external conferencing service providers on a per-minute, per-user basis

Be sensible about hybrid systems

Maintaining a mix of old and new technologies has a place in easing transitions, but proceed with caution to avoid overspending.

Several approaches to consider are:

Centralized session management server which can unify network management, provide least cost wide-area IP routing and common dialing plans and centralized applications.

Managed services and cloud deployments to leverage the economies of scale of a provider who can use pooled resources and skill sets to lower your overall TCO

Consider managed services

Our survey showed significant staffing issues with skills gaps in critical areas such as cloud and IP web collaboration. Bringing in a managed services organization (MSO) is a great way to get the skills you need quickly without the high fixed costs of permanent employees. Further, MSOs can scale to meet the peak demands you’ll have during transition.

Embrace Cloud

This recommendation helps in several key areas. First, it offers another way to mitigate staffing skills gaps because the cloud vendor absorbs the activities that would ordinarily be left to your staff. Second, it reduces fixed investments, which can help keep costs down. Third, with the ability to overlay existing on-premise systems with complementary new cloud-based capabilities, it is faster and easier to deploy new applications.

Siemens Enterprise Communications:

Siemens Enterprise Communications is a premier provider of end-to-end enterprise communications solutions that use open, standards-based architectures to unify 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. This promise is underwritten through our OpenScale service portfolio, which includes international, managed and outsource capability. Siemens Enterprise Communications is owned by a joint venture of The Gores Group and Siemens AG. The joint venture also encompasses Enterasys Networks, which provides network infrastructure and security systems, delivering a perfect basis for joint communications solutions.

The information provided in this brochure contains merely general descriptions or characteristics of performance which in case of actual use do not always apply as described or which may change as a result of further development of the products. An obligation to provide the respective characteristics shall only exist if expressly agreed in the terms of contract. Availability and technical specifications are subject to change without notice. OpenScape, OpenStage and HiPath are registered trademarks of Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

© 2012 Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG.

Status (03/2012)

Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG is a Trademark Licensee of Siemens AG.

Siemens Enterprise Communicationswww.siemens-enterprise.com