Today, most businesses will agree that private communications is beginning to shift towards a cloud-based Unified Communications (UC) model. Private communications systems such as premise-based PBXs made sense when work was conducted at fixed locations and the worker was at the desktop. Today, business is conducted both face-to-face and remotely using a wide variety of voice, web and video conferencing tools as well as mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Mobility is not really a choice any more—it’s a fact of business life. Traditionally, the desktop was king (hence the PBX was the core element of the service delivery), but today mobility in its many forms (smartphones and tablets and handheld devices running on either public, cellular or WiFi networks) has taken center stage. In fact, a Cohen Research Group survey found that 44% of enterprises have at least a quarter of their workforce operating solely using a mobile phone, and that 25% of IT decision makers believe desk phones will be displaced by mobile phones within two years.
For enterprises, it makes financial sense to centralize their communication applications and distribute these over private, public and hybrid cloud communication infrastructures. An enterprise can significantly improve productivity and save up to 40% by moving communications to network-based cloud solutions, which allows workers (and customers) to access communication applications from any location on any device.
