NETSCOUT Research Shows Issues with Unified Communications and Collaboration Tools are Responsible for Over 50% of All Helpdesk Tickets

WESTFORD, Mass., December 13, 2021 – NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of cybersecurity, service assurance, and business analytics solutions, today released new research that shows 93% of enterprise-level organizations have increased their use of unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) platforms since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the additional usage and increased performance problems has also created a flood of employee-generated IT helpdesk requests driving concerns around employee productivity.

Comparing results to similar research conducted last year, NETSCOUT found that 72% of enterprises currently support between three and nine UC&C tools, increasing 9% since 2020. Meanwhile, 98% said collaboration software is essential to their organizations' hybrid work policies.

UC&C-related helpdesk tickets are rising, representing a growing strain on IT and employee productivity. Among 43% of the organizations surveyed, over half of all helpdesk tickets relate to UC&C issues. Furthermore, 93% of senior IT leaders say they are concerned technical challenges with UC&C platforms, including tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, Cisco Webex, and Google Meet, may temporarily impact productivity within their organizations.

Additional findings from the research include:

• Most UC&C helpdesk tickets (56%) take a few hours to resolve, and one-in-four organizations troubleshoot multiple UC&C-related tickets per day.
• When IT departments receive UC&C tickets, device configuration, screen sharing challenges, and maintenance/updates are the most common. In addition, about one-third of organizations frequently get reports of poor video quality, delays, poor audio quality, and inability to log into UCaaS services.
• IT professionals using tools, applications, and software to pinpoint potential network issues or security problems impacting UC&C applications have doubled year over year.
• Microsoft Teams is the preferred UC&C platform by IT leaders (42%), followed by Zoom (25%), Webex (17%), Google Meet (9%), and Slack (6%).
• After increasing tools during the pandemic, 86% of enterprises plan to consolidate the number of UC&C platforms used by employees in the next year

"The research shows that while UC&C platforms remain critical for organizations, growing pains continue.” said Michael Szabados, chief operating officer, NETSCOUT. “Employees remain plagued with technical challenges that limit their productivity even as IT teams are under additional strain to diagnose and resolve these issues in a timely fashion. Organizations need intelligent, packet-based monitoring solutions that allows IT teams to see performance problems across complex hybrid work environments to better triage, support, and quickly extinguish root causes."

The survey was conducted in October 2021 among 300 IT decision-makers in the United States and Canada at companies with more than $1 billion in revenue. Visit our website to download a PDF of the research findings .