Video conferencing is evolving rapidly – how it’s used, where it’s used, by whom and for what – and its use as an enterprise productivity tool is also growing rapidly, says a new survey of almost 5,000 enterprise video end-users around the world, fielded by Wainhouse Research and Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open, standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C). The survey results, published under the name “End-User Survey: The ‘Real’ Benefits of Video,” reveal some notable insights into the business benefits of video conferencing, deployment trends, use cases, adoption and insights for future growth. These include:

• The top benefit of video conferencing is increased efficiency/productivity (94 percent), followed by increased impact of discussions (88 percent), expedited decision making (87 percent), and reduced travel costs (87 percent).
• When asked how their companies are using video conferencing today for specific, newly emerging use cases, “Meet with Customers and Partners” is the top response (71 percent).
• Quarter of respondents say they video conference daily, 39 percent weekly, 21 percent monthly, and 14 percent every few months.
• Multivendor environments are the norm, so interoperability is critical – 60 percent say they “primarily use” more than one vendor’s equipment or software to videoconference; 32 percent use three or more.
• Video helps remote workers feel more connected to their colleagues. Of the total respondents who work from home, 87 percent strongly agree or agree that the use of video conferencing allows them to work from home without feeling disconnected.

“This comprehensive study validates what we’ve been seeing from our customers for years. In or out of the office, employees do their best work when they are empowered to meet and collaborate, face-to-face, over virtually any device,” said Andy Miller, President and CEO, Polycom. “In addition to helping foster a more productive and engaged workforce, video collaboration helps enterprises and organizations thrive by enabling more effective sales and engineering teams, better customer service, and stronger partner relationships. The world is on a path to ubiquitous video, and Polycom’s goal is to drive that ubiquity by making video easy to use, secure and affordable for all, across the widest range of devices and environments, ranging from immersive theatres to conference rooms, desktop systems, laptops, PCs, browsers, tablets and smart phones.”

Key Findings by Wainhouse Research and Polycom

In December 2012, Wainhouse Research, underwritten by Polycom, surveyed 4,737 end-users of video conferencing systems. The survey respondents represent all global regions, with 63 percent from North America, 27 percent from Asia/Pacific, 9 percent from EMEA, and 1 percent from Latin America. All company sizes are represented, from small businesses with 1-49 employees (20 percent of respondents) to very large companies with more than 10,000 employees (17 percent) and all points in-between. Vertical industries are also well represented. Click here to download a copy of the full report.

Video Anywhere: Users leveraging video conferencing across devices, environments – in the office in conference rooms and on PCs, and increasingly at home or remotely on mobile devices

• Desktop PCs and laptops are the most common device used for video conferencing (71 percent of respondents), followed by room/group video systems (65 percent), tablets (34 percent) and smartphones (33 percent).
• Conference rooms are the most popular environments for video conferencing today. 79 percent of respondents use video in conference rooms, 69 percent use video in offices.
• The fastest growing video conferencing environment is “on the road” – which includes airports, hotels and client sites.
• PCs are the #1 device for video, but the age of mobile has clearly arrived. Over 90 percent of respondents have a Smartphone, and 75 percent have a tablet. More than 77 percent of respondents use their smartphone for business, and 50 percent use their tablet for business.
• Respondents expect the use of mobile devices for video collaboration will continue to surge over the next year.

For video to grow, it needs to be available to more people, and integrated into business processes.

• Leading drivers for increasing use of video conferencing include equipping more people with video (94 percent of respondents), more accessibility of video (85 percent of respondents), more integration of video in business software (83 percent of respondents) and availability in IM/UC clients such as Microsoft® Lync™ (80 percent).

“The longstanding misconception is that travel reduction is the only ‘real’ driver of video conferencing. This survey, however, shows that soft benefits including improved efficiency and productivity and increased impact during discussions play a prominent role in the video conferencing value proposition,” said Ira M. Weinstein, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research. “In addition, the survey highlights the value that end-users place on several of Polycom’s focus areas including ease of use, integration with presence and IM, and support for video on mobile devices. By focusing its efforts on these hot spots, Polycom continues to make video easier to buy, easier to deploy, easier to manage, and easier to use.”

Learn More at Enterprise Connect 2013, March 18-20

At Enterprise Connect 2013, attendees can visit Polycom in booth #1719 to discover how Polycom® RealPresence® Platform® solutions are improving the way people connect, collaborate and work, and experience live demonstrations of the new RealPresence CloudAXIS™ Suite, RealPresence Mobile and Polycom® VVX® Business Media phones. Polycom solutions will also be showcased in booths of key partners including AT&T, Comcast, Microsoft and Verizon. Attendees can learn more about Polycom’s open, standards-based RealPresence solutions in multiple Enterprise Connect conference sessions hosted by Polycom UC&C experts.

About Polycom

Polycom is the global leader in open, standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) solutions for voice and video collaboration, trusted by more than 415,000 customers around the world. Polycom solutions are powered by the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform, comprehensive software infrastructure and rich APIs that interoperate with the broadest set of communication, business, mobile and cloud applications and devices to deliver secure face-to-face video collaboration in any environment. Polycom and its ecosystem of over 7,000 partners provide truly unified communications solutions that deliver the best user experience, highest multi-vendor interoperability, and lowest TCO. Visit www.polycom.com or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to learn how we’re pushing the greatness of human collaboration forward.

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