While it's clear that enterprises see value in cloud-based services, concerns over quality of service guarantees and security remain top of mind. A new IHS study revealed that the majority of businesses they surveyed will put some applications in the cloud while keeping other mission critical pieces on their own premises. Diane Myers, Senior Research Director, VoIP, UC and IMS for IHS, said that "businesses want to ensure there is no disruption of service and that it is being done in a secure environment."
According to the research firm, 27 percent of respondents implement their unified communications (UC) solutions within a private cloud, 23 percent deploy UC as a service (UCaaS), and the rest keep UC on their own LAN. From a cloud provider perspective, businesses cited Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) as the leading premises-based and cloud UC supplier, with Cisco a strong challenger.
Regardless of the challenges with going to the cloud, companies are deploying UC to improve employee productivity and response times and reduce operational costs. Likewise, the research firm noted that the use of collaboration tools continues to rise, including the arrival of team collaboration, which has gained momentum from startup companies such as Slack and established vendors like Cisco with Spark. Release