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Seventy-five percent of companies estimate that a quarter of their network traffic over the last three months consisted of unified communications-related applications (VoIP, unified messaging, instant messaging), according to a survey from Network General Corporation.

Unified Communications Bring Network Traffic

Forty percent of companies polled said they use integrated voice, video and Web conferencing, and close to 70 percent have used VoIP, but only 12 percent cite voice communication as responsible for additional network traffic. Around 80 percent of respondents believe the network traffic from all their communications applications will increase over the next 12 months.

"With the growth of unified communications and additional new applications, IT departments are finding that their environments are becoming increasingly complex, as each new service often comes with unique management tools," said James Messer, Director of Technical Marketing at Network General.

Close to 40 percent of companies have dealt with application performance problems because of the convergence of communication applications on their IP network, and almost twenty percent were not sure if their performance problems were related to the convergence of communications.

"The increasing mobility of the workplace is driving unified communications to a new usage level," says James Messer. "Additionally, it is through implementing unified communications - and streamlining business processes to support those communications - that IT managers will be able to help their companies communicate more effectively."