By Lilia Guan

 

iVision has released research into business adoption of UC in Australia, revealing that despite strong uptake of the solutions within government departments, many businesses were failing to implement unified services in a strategic manner and squandered potential productivity gains.

UC technologies referred to video conferencing, IP telephony, instant messaging and related platforms that are integrated – allowing users to communicate when, how and wherever they want.
 

The report found that government had a higher adoption rate for UC with 39 percent of the organisations saying that 100 percent of their staff had access to UC, while 30 percent of enterprise staff had access to UC.   
 

iVision's managing director, Graham Williams  told Government News this could be the result of government typically having very clear objectives for UC technology.

 

“Upon further investigation, this could be for a variety of reasons. Most government organisations are part of a larger network or are linked into centralised state or federal government networks where the decision for IP Telephony is made outside of their organisation and within the network,” Mr Williams said. 

He said government  investment in UC was based on very clear programs that they need to deliver on such as using tele-health to support improved healthcare to remote regions or for education organisations using distance learning to deliver on consistent curriculum to students regardless of their location.
 

"For example in healthcare, there's a directive to improve healthcare to regional areas where doctors and expertise are less available.  With telehealth initiatives this objective/directive can be met. Another example is the requirement of accessibility and transparency of government, again there is clear alignment of this directive and UC technology," Mr Williams.

 

iVision found that only 18 percent of government organisations had a full deployment of IP Telephony with 42 percent saying that they have no plans to deploy IP Telephony. 
  

According to the integrator only five percent of government organisations interviewed said they didn’t have any plans for UC and 31 percent said that plan on doing some sort of UC technology refresh in the next 12 months.
 
The report was commissioned by iVsion and carried out by Green Hat Marketing. The marketing company surveyed 120 CIOs, IT and Business Managers (with 38 of these respondents from state government, universities and health care organisations).

 

Government agencies interviewed included; Department of Health and Ageing; TAFE SA Learning Consortium; Australian Transport & Safety Bureau; and Grampians Rural Health Alliance (GRHA).