A recent study from Siemens Enterprise (News - Alert) Communications found that pure IP communications gives enterprises a 43 percent savings over legacy PBX (News - Alert).

"The findings of this study echo what our customers have been telling us: that IP-based unified communications not only simplifies productivity for end users, but it also saves companies money," said Chris Hummel, president, North America and CMO, Siemens Enterprise Communications, in a statement.

According to the study, enterprise communications is undergoing transition – from PBX to IP and from premise to cloud. It also mentioned that while in the process of moving to a pure IP environment, a hybrid environment helps mitigate risk and protect existing investments.

The study revealed that running IP communications next to legacy PBX is the most common approach, with 91 percent of respondents reporting this method.

“Siemens Enterprise Communications (News - Alert) is dedicated to providing our customers with flexible, open, enterprise communications solutions that adapt to their business needs, helping mitigate IT complexity, support a mobile workforce and facilitate this shift," Hummel added.

The study examines enterprise communications practices worldwide, including the influences of cloud computing and mobility on communications infrastructures, as well as cost-savings realization from deploying IP communications versus traditional PBX.

 With enterprises becoming increasingly mobile, cloud adoption is on the rise. This is because of the de-centralization made possible by advancements in enterprise communications. While only 16 percent of those surveyed currently had cloud services in place, 45 percent of respondents have included it in their 2012 communications plan, with respondents favoring private cloud to public cloud at a nearly three to one ratio.

Web collaboration, unified communications (UC) and video conferencing score as the top applications that enterprises plan to deploy, with at least 90 percent of respondents discussing these technologies as a possibility in 2012, while more than half of them already using them. 

However, despite the popularity of UC, enterprises face several challenges associated with UC migration. A major hurdle to this migration is lack of skilled staff. More than half of respondents feel that the IT landscape has become too complex, which, combined with narrow skill sets and high turnover rates, can easily hamper cloud and UC adoption.

The study recommends that enterprises adopt IP-based communications through native SIP-based software architecture and platform that centrally enables and manages conferencing, collaboration and messaging across voice, video, text and social media.  

Cloud-based UC solution will reduce staffing issues and help them handle the complexity associated with these technologies. Enterprises should consider a centralized session management server to help mitigate the cost of running a combined PBX and IP infrastructure.

Enterprises should also maintain a centralized session management server which can unify network management, provide least cost wide-area IP routing. They should address mobility needs with the flexibility and full feature set in mind.

Recently Strategy Analytics (News - Alert) revealed that global market for mobile unified communication (UC) technologies grew to $4.4 billion in 2011, up 17 percent from the previous year. The growth was powered mostly by the implementation of a greater number of workforce mobilization and Bring-Your-Own-Device strategies.