In a recent survey conducted by IDC that show that almost 80 percent of U.S. firms surveyed lack open communications capabilities needed for greater productivity and competitiveness with lower IT and communications costs.

These findings are intriguing in light of the fact that 62 percent of respondents (CIOs and IT Directors) predict a marked increase in the number of mobile and distributed workers that will require open communications capability in order maintain or increase productivity. Mark Winther from IDC indicates that "what's needed is an open communications environment that combines unified communications with IT platforms and business process integration along with other streamlining capabilities."

It's no secret that I'm a Siemens fan. The Siemens Open Communications strategy addresses this demand by enabling knowledge workers to collaborate much more quickly and effectively, find information and experts rapidly, and get much more done in shorter amounts of time, virtually any place, any time and across whatever device best suits their preference or situation. Its Open Communications portfolio is standards-based to enable integration and interoperability within any IT and communications infrastructure.

It's take a couple of weeks of coordination, but this morning I had the opportunity to chat on the phone with Dan Bieler from IDC and Mark Straton from Siemens Communications. This discussion really circles around what I believe with be the single hottest success factor for companies in the unified communications space for the next year. Integration of services with applications through the adoption and support of open standards is going to be vital to the industry.

Mark was gracious enough to share a Powerpoint file that pretty clearly demonstrates the evolution and just how vital this shift is. Here's a timeline that really provides some perspective looking at some notable names in the Internet market.

What's clear is that the evolution and emergence of new technologies is increasing at a fast pace. Change isn't simply here, it's coming faster every day.

Here's another way to look at the evolution of technologies -

POTS is a legacy technology. It isn't on the rise. There's nothing new there. Converged VoIP began really emerging in 1999, but 2001 was a banner year. That's when VoIP really got hot. But in the past year, unified communications, open  communications and complete collaboration and sharing have become key business drivers. In short, VoIP isn't enough to hold a competitive edge any longer. Businesses need to compete at higher levels and they have to have the enhanced productivity that can only be found by leveraging every possible tool.

Please join me and listen in on my conversation with Dan and Mark.

Technorati Tags: Siemens, IDC, unified communications, VoIP, Dan Bieler, Mark Straton, Ken Camp, podcast