Just like the dinosaurs, the traditional, legacy PBX system is going extinct. Unlike the dinosaurs, it’s been a long, slow death instead of a sudden catastrophic event.
Regardless, the writing is on the wall – with unified communications statistics from a study in 2018 finding that 61% of businesses then planned to transition to VoIP at the end of their current contract with their legacy PBX. With the massive switch to digital communications during the pandemic that replaced the traditional in-person, face-to-face interactions, the IDC found that the overall unified communications market grew almost 30% last year compared to 2019. Senior Research Analyst with IDC, Rich Costello, is quoted as saying “In 2020, COVID-19 caused many businesses and organizations to re-think their plans for leveraging digital technologies and accelerated interest in and adoption of solutions such as team collaboration, team messaging, videoconferencing, and UCaaS, among other technologies. In 2021, IDC expects positive growth numbers across these key UC&C segments to continue, albeit at slightly more modest rates.” While we don’t know the rate at which businesses are moving at yet, we do know there is a massive shift occurring, as a result of increasing restrictions on workplaces to maintain the safety of all, businesses are looking for ways to remain connected without significant investment and many are turning to Unified Communications to meet that need.
Unified Communications – The Stats
2020 was the year that unified communications made the biggest strides in the history of the communications tool. IDC reported that revenue for unified communications was up by 24.9% worldwide and for the North American market, it was up 26.1%. What is driving such strong growth? Let’s take a look at some of the recent Unified Communications Statistics.
- UCaaS was up to nearly $4.6 billion in revenue, and for the full 2020, increased by 21%. Telecompetitor
- Collaboration solutions, such as video conferencing and cloud services, went up 48% year over year. Telecompetitor
- A strong driver of the demand for UC aside from the push for hybrid work is BYOD and this is anticipated to continue until 2023. Allied Market Research
- A whopping 67% of organizations are moving substantial portions of their unified communications solutions to the cloud. Nemertes Research
- By 2022, Smartphone traffic will exceed desktop PC traffic. Cisco
- Organizations adopting cloud applications and unified communications increased by 42%. Nemertes Research
- Legacy phone systems are on their way out as 61% of businesses with the traditional phone system plan to adopt VoIP and cloud communications at the end of their contract. Blueface Business Communications
- One-third (33%) of participants and IT leaders are fully on-premise for UC. The remaining are all cloud (29%) or hybrid (38%). Nemertes Research
- Telepresence accounted for 40% of the global video conferencing market share in 2019. Obviously, that percentage grew significantly over 2020. Global Market Insights
- Since April of 2020, 34% of workers that were previously commuting now work from home using telepresence. MIT
- Video conferencing will consume 80% of all internet traffic by 2021 based on current estimates. Cisco
- 76% of workers using video conferences during remote work report experiencing a greater work-life balance. Lifesize
- According to Aberdeen, organizations that are considered trendsetters are 150% more likely to use mobile communications solutions than follower organizations who tend to play catch up. Aberdeen
- Want to more than double your customer service experience? Aberdeen says you need to include mobile video in a unified communications solution. Aberdeen
- Mobile video is 2.5 times more likely to reduce travel costs for employees. Aberdeen
- Gartner’s research found that 70% of organizations will rely on team communications tools like Slack or UCFone by 2022. Gartner
- Just behind in-person meetings, video conferencing is the second most preferred method of communication between teams. Owl Labs
- 34.3% of businesses have saved an average of $161k a year in IT expenses by eliminating redundant apps and shifting to cloud-based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions. Nemertes Research
- The need to hold in-person meetings fell by an average of 30% thanks to the widespread use of collaboration tools. Nemertes Research
- Over 70% of employees are working remotely for a day a week or more. CNBC
- Huddle-room meetings will account for 70% of all online conferencing meetings by the year 2022. Frost and Sullivan
- Surveys show that 81% of employees feel that collaboration apps improve the productivity of the company. Bradio
- An effective communications system can reduce employee turnover by 50%. Clear Company
- 86% of business owners attribute workplace issues to be the result of inadequate communications tools. Salesforce
Unified Communications Moving Forward
2020 was transformational in many ways, both good and bad. We learned working remotely was not as bad of a thing as many thought, that we can be productive and, for many of us, work-life balance is enhanced, and the unified communications statistics prove it. We recognize that this may not have been everyone’s experience as to how you work is highly reliant on who you are – just like what unified communications provider, or UC set up, is best for your business. Regardless, one thing is clear – the Covid-19 pandemic changed the course of how businesses communicate and collaborate. Today is a new day, and with every new day comes new opportunity. Seize it.
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