Voice and IT Strategy
Posted by Campbell Williams | 05 Jul 2010
Category: Cloud Communicating
I read some interesting statistics last week. They were taken from Barclays Capital Enterprise Chief Information Officer Survey 2010 and are provided courtesy of Mitel. This is going to read a bit like "IT Family Fortunes", but in a good way.
The first question is simple: what are the biggest trends driving spending decisions in 2010?
(Queue Vernon: "our survey says"...)
Top answer: server virtualisation, with nearly 60% of respondents having this as their top priority.
2nd answer: cloud computing, retaining its second position from last year.
Second question: what are your networking priorities for 2010?
Top answer: IP telephony (with layer 2-3 Ethernet switching and WAN optimisation closely behind).
So on one hand, senior IT management are being driven by virtualisation and exploring cloud-centric technologies. And on the other hand, they're preparing their LAN/WAN for convergence and IP telephony. Are they looking to combine the two? Nobody knows, definitively.
There's no definitive survey answer because no surveys are asking two simple questions:
- What is your strategy for voice virtualisation?
- What is your strategy for cloud communicating?
I would argue that they're not asking the questions because they don't even know that there are answers. There are, and we have them. Right now, cloud and virtualisation are data-only areas for IT management yet they're investing in voice technologies too. It's time to combine the two, or at least to have a strategy for doing so.
Other blogs and other content on this site have more information on these hot topics. If you're a CIO, IT Director or IT Manager who is looking at both the strategic direction of your company and at technologies like virtualisation, cloud and unified communications, we'd love to get your thoughts on the services we're bringing to market and see if there's a fit with your plans.
