Majority of firms are enthusiastic about new technologies that promise productivity gains, but they are cautious about being first to deploy, says a new study.

Firms prefer to wait until the solutions have moved towards more mainstream adoption, said the Motorola-sponsored white paper by IDC into “The Future Usage of Communication Technologies in EMEA”.

Just 19 per cent of firms claimed to be innovators – in other words the first in their sector to deploy new technologies. About 22 per cent are early adopters (22 per cent) and just 7 per cent admit to being laggards, the report said.

Regarding where businesses look for inspiration as regards technology solutions, the media and telecoms sector is seen as the most innovative (37 per cent), followed by manufacturing (28 per cent), transport and logistics (23 per cent).
While the findings point towards a cautious approach towards technology investments, there are some interesting statistics around specific technology deployments:

• The vast majority of organizations in EMEA use WLAN (84%), mobile computers (81%) and VoIP (69%). Around half of respondents (52%) stated that their organization used wireless outdoor internet access.
 
• Surprisingly, for a relatively new technology, RFID equipment is used by nearly a quarter of all organizations which were questioned for the survey (23%).

• Broad uptake of new technologies with 49% of respondent using unified communications technologies. 47% using cloud computing and 40% using high quality video. Interestingly, 40% of companies use corporate social networking and 27% use voice controlled devices.

• Of the companies currently not deploying these solutions, 33% were not interested in using cloud computing in the next five years and 22% were not going to deploy unified communications. This speaks to the wait and see headline trend.

• Different drivers for different markets. In Saudi Arabia, almost half of respondents cited increased business productivity as the single greatest benefit. For Dutch companies, enhanced environmental efficiency is a key deliverable.

• Regional variations: The country samples suggested higher utilisation of unified communications in Italy (63% usage), in Saudi Arabia (64%) and in Spain (61%). There was the suggestion of lower usage in the Netherlands (26%) and in France (35%).

• High levels of social media deployments. 40% of respondents are using corporate social media technologies suggesting that these are moving from the social side of computing to have a real impact in the workplace.

Marco Landi, corporate vice president EMEA Channel, Motorola Solutions, said: “The report’s findings suggest that technology vendors need to focus on proving the business case for new deployments rather than simply highlighting features and benefits. Given the current economic climate there is an understandable air of caution around investments which is undoubtedly leading to reluctance to be the first to adopt. However, advancements in mobile computing, wireless networking, VoIP and cloud computing can offer significant, immediate benefits to organizations that have the confidence to invest but they must be assured that their commitment will realize a substantial return on investment.” – TradeArabia News Service