NETSCOUT SYSTEMS INC., a provider of cybersecurity, service assurance, and business analytics solutions, released research highlighting the importance of unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) platforms to the post-pandemic future of hybrid work.
In its third annual survey of 300 IT decision-makers at organizations with more than $1 billion in revenue, NETSCOUT found the majority (69 percent) increased the number of UC&C tools used, with 75 percent expected to support more platforms over the next 12 months. The need to take advantage of new features and functions (89 percent) or better support employee collaboration (67 percent) was cited most often in driving these decisions.
A majority (60 percent) of respondents say collaboration platforms, applications, and tools are critical to their organization’s current work environment, compared with 49 percent last year – a more than 20 percent increase year-over-year.
Additional findings from the research include:
- Most enterprise-level organizations support 1-4 unified communication and collaboration tools and applications. Over one-third support 5-9 tools and applications, while 15% use ten or more.
- Microsoft Teams and Zoom remain the most used platforms by 86 percent and 78 percent of those surveyed, respectively. Respondents were more likely to say their organizations previously used Webex, Slack, or Google Meet.
- 52 percent said that multiple platforms used across different departments/teams in their organization negatively impacted their ability to respond to UC&C-related challenges.
- 29 percent of companies stated that UC&C-related issues continue to make up most IT help desk requests.
- 54 percent report that it still takes a few hours to resolve UC&C-related issues.
- Only 23 percent are using an independent tool leveraging packet analysis to monitor the performance and experience of remote workers.
Finally, examining the importance of UC&C platforms within call centers for the first time, this year’s survey found that 86 percent of enterprises are operating remote or hybrid call centers. However, more than 70 percent of IT leaders feel that call quality, dropped calls, delayed connection times, and troubleshooting are challenging for their organization due to the remote work of contact center employees.
Using NETSCOUT nGenius Enterprise Performance Management, IT organizations can standardize operations around a single platform, foster greater productivity, address remote client edge blind spots, and minimize time to resolution as issues arise.
