Business Communication and Collaboration in 2010: Messaging Applications Customer Behaviors and Use Cases

This IDC study presents survey findings from IDC's Business Collaboration Survey, 1Q10, which was conducted in February 2010 and was designed to gauge the technologies, vendors, and opinions of IT departments in North America utilizing collaborative applications. To take the pulse of the collaborative applications market and evaluate where IT departments stand today in terms of current product and vendor mix, IDC surveyed 400 IT and line-of-business professionals across all company sizes. Findings from this study can be used by ISVs and service providers to better understand product utilization and portfolio mixes, evaluate current and future partnerships, and anticipate plans for change.

"According to survey responses, consumer-like experiences such as real-time collaboration and the ability to create social networking profiles are two key features IT departments want in their messaging applications," said Erin Traudt, research director for IDC's Enterprise Collaboration and Social Solutions program. "We believe that these features are important to a variety of collaborative applications and anticipate that they will quickly become part of standard functionality."