New Global Survey by Wainhouse Research and Polycom Finds That the Use of Video Conferencing as an Enterprise Productivity Tool is Growing, Especially on PCs and Mobile Devices
Video conferencing is evolving rapidly – how it’s used, where it’s used,
by whom and for what – and its use as an enterprise productivity tool is
also growing rapidly, says a new survey of almost 5,000 enterprise video
end-users around the world, fielded by Wainhouse Research and Polycom,
Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open, standards-based
unified communications and collaboration (UC&C). The survey results,
published under the name “End-User Survey: The ‘Real’ Benefits of
Video,” reveal some notable insights into the business benefits of video
conferencing, deployment trends, use cases, adoption and insights for
future growth. These include:
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The top benefit of video conferencing is increased
efficiency/productivity (94 percent), followed by increased impact
of discussions (88 percent), expedited decision making (87 percent),
and reduced travel costs (87 percent).
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When asked how their companies are using video conferencing today for
specific, newly emerging use cases, “Meet with Customers and
Partners” is the top response (71 percent).
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Quarter of respondents say they video conference daily, 39 percent
weekly, 21 percent monthly, and 14 percent every few months.
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Multivendor environments are the norm, so interoperability is
critical – 60 percent say they “primarily use” more than one
vendor’s equipment or software to videoconference; 32 percent use
three or more.
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Video helps remote workers feel more connected to their colleagues. Of
the total respondents who work from home, 87 percent strongly agree or
agree that the use of video conferencing allows them to work from home
without feeling disconnected.
“This comprehensive study validates what we’ve been seeing from our
customers for years. In or out of the office, employees do their best
work when they are empowered to meet and collaborate, face-to-face, over
virtually any device,” said Andy Miller, President and CEO, Polycom. “In
addition to helping foster a more productive and engaged workforce,
video collaboration helps enterprises and organizations thrive by
enabling more effective sales and engineering teams, better customer
service, and stronger partner relationships. The world is on a path to
ubiquitous video, and Polycom’s goal is to drive that ubiquity by making
video easy to use, secure and affordable for all, across the widest
range of devices and environments, ranging from immersive theatres to
conference rooms, desktop systems, laptops, PCs, browsers, tablets and
smart phones.”
Key Findings by Wainhouse Research and Polycom
In December 2012, Wainhouse Research, underwritten by Polycom, surveyed
4,737 end-users of video conferencing systems. The survey respondents
represent all global regions, with 63 percent from North America, 27
percent from Asia/Pacific, 9 percent from EMEA, and 1 percent from Latin
America. All company sizes are represented, from small businesses with
1-49 employees (20 percent of respondents) to very large companies with
more than 10,000 employees (17 percent) and all points in-between.
Vertical industries are also well represented. Click
here to download a copy of the full report.
Video Anywhere: Users leveraging video conferencing across devices,
environments – in the office in conference rooms and on PCs, and
increasingly at home or remotely on mobile devices
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Desktop PCs and laptops are the most common device used for video
conferencing (71 percent of respondents), followed by room/group video
systems (65 percent), tablets (34 percent) and smartphones (33
percent).
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Conference rooms are the most popular environments for video
conferencing today. 79 percent of respondents use video in conference
rooms, 69 percent use video in offices.
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The fastest growing video conferencing environment is “on the road” –
which includes airports, hotels and client sites.
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PCs are the #1 device for video, but the age of mobile has clearly
arrived. Over 90 percent of respondents have a Smartphone, and 75
percent have a tablet. More than 77 percent of respondents use their
smartphone for business, and 50 percent use their tablet for business.
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Respondents expect the use of mobile devices for video collaboration
will continue to surge over the next year.
For video to grow, it needs to be available to more people, and
integrated into business processes.
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Leading drivers for increasing use of video conferencing include
equipping more people with video (94 percent of respondents), more
accessibility of video (85 percent of respondents), more integration
of video in business software (83 percent of respondents) and
availability in IM/UC clients such as Microsoft® Lync™ (80 percent).
“The longstanding misconception is that travel reduction is the only
‘real’ driver of video conferencing. This survey, however, shows that
soft benefits including improved efficiency and productivity and
increased impact during discussions play a prominent role in the video
conferencing value proposition,” said Ira M. Weinstein, senior analyst
and partner at Wainhouse Research. “In addition, the survey highlights
the value that end-users place on several of Polycom’s focus areas
including ease of use, integration with presence and IM, and support for
video on mobile devices. By focusing its efforts on these hot spots,
Polycom continues to make video easier to buy, easier to deploy, easier
to manage, and easier to use.”
Learn More at Enterprise Connect 2013, March 18-20
At Enterprise Connect 2013, attendees can visit Polycom in booth #1719
to discover how Polycom® RealPresence® Platform® solutions are improving
the way people connect, collaborate and work, and experience live
demonstrations of the new RealPresence CloudAXIS™ Suite, RealPresence
Mobile and Polycom® VVX® Business Media phones. Polycom solutions will
also be showcased in booths of key partners including AT&T, Comcast,
Microsoft and Verizon. Attendees can learn more about Polycom’s open,
standards-based RealPresence solutions in multiple Enterprise Connect
conference sessions hosted by Polycom UC&C experts.
About Polycom
Polycom is the global leader in open, standards-based unified
communications and collaboration (UC&C) solutions for voice and video
collaboration, trusted by more than 415,000 customers around the world.
Polycom solutions are powered by the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform,
comprehensive software infrastructure and rich APIs that interoperate
with the broadest set of communication, business, mobile and cloud
applications and devices to deliver secure face-to-face video
collaboration in any environment. Polycom and its ecosystem of over
7,000 partners provide truly unified communications solutions that
deliver the best user experience, highest multi-vendor interoperability,
and lowest TCO. Visit www.polycom.com
or connect with us on Twitter,
Facebook,
and LinkedIn
to learn how we’re pushing the greatness of human collaboration forward.
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