New Wainhouse Research Survey of Channel Partners Shows Strong Interest in Unified Communications and Telepresence

Market Wire, May, 2008

With its second annual survey of conferencing and collaboration channel partners, Wainhouse Research has published a report documenting attitudes, interests, and opinions of resellers and channel partners. Highlights of the online survey filled out by 151 channel partner employees include:

-- While the relative interest in many product categories appears to be unchanged since October 2006, interest is much stronger in specific categories including Telepresence (+22%), Presence/IM (+16%), Telephony/PBX systems (+15%), and Unified Messaging (+14%).

-- Interest in integrating video with telephony systems is only slightly stronger than integrating collaboration solutions with Microsoft OCS (83% interest vs 80% interest); while integrating collaboration solutions with Lotus Sametime ranks lower (58% interest).

-- Cisco, Tandberg, Polycom, Microsoft, and IBM Lotus are the top-ranked suppliers on key channel program parameters including reliability, account management, technical support, partner training, discount plans, and co-marketing programs.

These findings along with many others on videoconferencing and collaboration are in the full report "Rich Media Metrics: Unified Communications and Videoconferencing Channel Partners" which is available now at http://www.wainhouse.com/reports . The 26-page report in pdf format is $2,495.

The Wainhouse Research Rich Media Metrics program is a series of surveys intended to measure customer attitudes, preferences, and buying/deployment trends across a wide variety of conferencing and collaboration issues with channel partners (Q1), unified communications users (Q2), service provider customers (Q3), and videoconferencing users (Q4).

Contacts:

-- Editorial: Andy Nilssen, Senior Analyst and Partner, andyn@wainhouse.com

-- Report sales: Sara Fargo, Client Services Manager, sfargo@wainhouse.com

-- Press: Heather Fiedler, Marketing Assistant, hfiedler@wainhouse.com

About Wainhouse Research

Wainhouse Research ( http://www.wainhouse.com ) provides strategic guidance and insight on products & services for Real-Time Unified Communications. The global client base includes established and new technology suppliers and service providers as well as enterprise users of voice, video, streaming, distance education, and web collaboration solutions.

URL http://www.wainhouse.com/prrmm08a.html

Contacts: Editorial: Andy Nilssen Senior Analyst and Partner Email Contact Report sales: Sara Fargo Client Services Manager Email Contact Press: Heather Fiedler Marketing Assistant Email Contact