NETSCOUT Research Finds 97% of Enterprises Experienced Major UCaaS-related Outages in 2023

NETSCOUT today released research that analyzes the challenges IT teams face in monitoring and troubleshooting unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) tools as the need to support more software-as-service (SaaS) applications grows.

One significant finding is that nearly all enterprises (97 percent) experienced at least one major UCaaS incident or outage in 2023, lasting at least a few hours and affecting broad functionality, with 64 percent of respondents estimating associated losses of at least $10,000 in sales and productivity. Forty-seven percent of enterprises with annual revenue over $10 billion estimated losses of $100,000 to $1 million or more.

Additional findings include:

• Enterprises with remote sites like branch offices, warehouses, factories, satellite campuses, healthcare clinics, and retail locations are more heavily impacted by increased complexity, with more than 75 percent of help desk tickets requiring at least a few hours to resolve
• Artificial intelligence (AI) features are important to IT decision-makers when selecting new UCaaS platforms, especially AI prioritization of messages by urgency, AI editing for spelling and grammar, and AI-generated text summaries of voice messages/calls
• 51 percent of enterprises experienced at least four major UCaaS-related outages in the past year
• UCaaS platforms were responsible for most help desk tickets among 37 percent of those surveyed, with 55 percent of respondents stating that it typically takes their IT organization a few hours to resolve issues
• UCaaS platforms represent a significant percentage of overall SaaS adoption, with most organizations (59 percent) now supporting at least six or more UCaaS tools and applications and 10 or more SaaS tools and applications
• 76 percent of companies increased the number of SaaS tools and applications they used over the past year

“When essential platforms experience widespread and persistent outages, the ensuing disruption interrupts critical business operations and can easily lead to substantial financial losses,” said Michael Szabados, chief operating officer, of NETSCOUT. “As IT teams continue to face visibility issues, especially in large enterprises with multiple remote sites where in-person troubleshooting isn’t practical, they need independent monitoring solutions that simplify operations, quickly identify the root causes of performance problems, and limit the impact of expensive outages to keep employees online and the business running smoothly.”

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

Between January and February 2024, the survey was conducted among 300 IT decision-makers in the United States and Canada. To learn more, about the research findings or to learn more about our UCaaS solutions.    

To learn more visit the research findings and our UCaaS solutions.