Yesterday, we discussed the “At Home” or residential services category of our Cisco Connected Life User Experience (CLUE) Index findings. Today, we’ll focus on the “At Work” or business services category of our CLUE research. The At Work portion of the CLUE Index grew 14.17 points, from the baseline 100 index points value (based on 2008 global service adoption data) to 114.17 (based on 2009 global service adoption data). Globally, businesses are supporting telecommuting employees, remote workforces, and improved communication with partners and customers through network systems and resources. As businesses have had to re-evaluate their travel policies and budgets, video conferencing and other web-based collaboration services have been adopted as cost-effective alternatives. Here’s a graphic summary of business services global growth:

We tracked global penetration of the following business services as part of our CLUE research:

• Business instant messaging: fixed-line business instant messaging, including all business users of on-premises and hosted email
• Business IP telephony: IP telephony lines or end points that are attached to a dedicated IP-enabled or a dedicated IP phone system, not including shared or multitenant solutions
• Business audio conferencing: phone-based conferencing with no video
• Business web conferencing without video: collaborative sessions that use a standard web browser or downloaded client to share an application or to make a remote presentation over the Internet
• Business personal video conferencing: includes client-server PC-software-based desktop conferencing, video telephony, web conferencing with video, and executive video conferencing
• Business room-based video conferencing: group video conferencing that includes Cisco TelePresence® systems and multicodec and single codec conferencing systems
• Mobile business email: mobile business email for users on an enterprise mobile account; this is considered an extension of office email service
• Mobile business messaging: messaging for users on an enterprise mobile account; this is considered an extension of the office messaging service
• Mobile business location-based services (LBS): business LBS for mobile employees such as the salesforce, and other location-tracking services for industries such as transportation, health, and security

Here’s how those services ranked and grew from our initial CLUE report in March 2010:

As you can see, video is really making its mark on the business world, with business room-based video conferencing and business personal video conferencing being two of the fastest growing services, even though business room-based video conferencing is working off of a relatively high base. 

It’s also of interest that the Internet and web-based services are closing the gap between the communication/collaboration capabilities of enterprises and small-to-medium businesses. Based on our findings, for every business IP telephony user, there are two business Internet subscribers. Business mobility (smartphones with business applications) is also helping to keep employees in-touch and productive no matter where they happen to be working. For every business mobile email user, there are 3.8 mobile business SMS users. Being connected via a fixed or mobile network is now a business constant (if not an imperative) for many employees across a broad range of industries. Service providers continue to enhance their service portfolios to meet business users’ needs -- here are just a few examples.

• Cbeyond’s BeyondMobile Service for Small Businesses
• Optimum Lightpath (Cablevision) Healthcare Services

You can read more about our residential CLUE findings and see more innovative service examples in the complete report. If you’d like to learn more about the devices and services that are shaping the Connected Life for consumers around the world, check out our interactive My CLUE video.

Come back tomorrow, when we’ll take a look at the mobile services portion of the CLUE study, in our fourth and final installment.

Tags: advanced services, bandwidtch gauge, bandwidth calculator, CLUE, Connected Life, Connected Life User Experience, global internet data, research, service adoption, service delivery, Service Provider