Enterprise UC&C Use to Soar in This Year

NETSCOUT has released new research highlighting the ongoing importance of unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) platforms to the post-pandemic future of hybrid work.

In its third annual survey of 300 IT decision-makers at organizations with more than $1 billion in revenue, NETSCOUT found that the vast majority (69 percent) increased the number of UC&C tools used over this past year, with 75 percent expected to support more platforms over the next 12 months. The desire to take advantage of new features and functions (89 percent) or better support employee collaboration (67 percent) were cited most often as driving these decisions.

A majority (60 percent) of respondents say collaboration platforms, applications, and tools are critical to their organization’s current work environment, compared with 49 percent last year—a more than 20 percent increase year over year. 

Additional findings from the research include:

• Most enterprise-level organizations support between one and four UC&C tools and applications. More than one-third support between 5 and 9 tools and applications, while 15 percent use 10 or more.
• Microsoft Teams and Zoom remain the most commonly used platforms (86 percent and 78 percent of those surveyed, respectively). Respondents were more likely to say that their organizations previously used Webex, Slack, or Google Meet. 
• 52 percent said that multiple platforms used across different departments/teams in their organization negatively impacted their ability to respond to UC&C-related challenges.
• 29 percent of companies stated that UC&C-related issues continue to make up most IT help desk requests.
• 54 percent reported that it still takes a few hours to resolve UC&C-related issues.
• Only 23 percent are using an independent tool leveraging packet analysis to monitor the performance and experience of remote workers.

Finally, examining the importance of UC&C platforms within call centers for the first time, this year’s survey found that 86 percent of enterprises are operating remote or hybrid call centers. However, more than 70 percent of IT leaders feel that call quality, dropped calls, delayed connection times, and troubleshooting are challenging for their organization due to the remote work of contact center employees.

“Hybrid work models have added complexity to the UC&C platforms used by large enterprises and call centers,” said Michael Szabados, chief operating officer at NETSCOUT. “They have become reliant on these platforms to keep their businesses running. To keep ahead of these challenges, NETSCOUT continually invests in its solutions to address complexity and provide visibility across multiple platforms to ensure the best quality user experience.”

Using NETSCOUT nGenius Enterprise Performance Management, IT organizations can standardize operations around a single platform, foster greater productivity, address remote client edge blind spots, and minimize time to resolution as issues arise.

The survey was conducted in November 2022 among 300 IT decision-makers in the United States and Canada. Visit our website to download a PDF of the research findings or to learn more about our UC&C solutions. To read the press release, visit netscout-research-reveals-75-enterprises-plan-grow-use.

Learn more in the “Unified Communication & IT: Platform Use Soars as Enterprises Adapt to the Hybrid Future” report.