The requirement to reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency could be the driving force behind unified communications adoption, a telecommunications analyst group has suggested.

A recently published report from Frost & Sullivan suggests that organisations will see the potential of technologies such as web-conferencing and telepresence as a catalyst for reducing air travel and enabling home-based working.

“Unified communication applications enable remote workers to work with the same efficiency as they would in an office by providing a full range of communications tools and giving secure access to company networks,” said Dorota Oviedo, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan’s Unified Communications and Collaboration group.

Figures published by the company show that use of web-conferencing technology grew by almost a fifth (19.3%) last year, although it conceded that economic factors had slowed adoption to some extent.