Unified Communications: The Market Will Experience Strong Growth

Sept. 3, 2009 - PRLog -- Stuttgart, Germany - According to InfoCom, the Unified Communications (UC) market will experience a very strong growth reaching a value of €2.7bn worldwide by 2013, with the US market growing over 30%. Western Europe will represent some 34% of the World market while the US alone will represent a 37% share.

The main market drivers relate to improving productivity and cost savings, in particular as increasing globalisation and mobility means employees are less and less likely to work always in their office. InfoCom expects also increasing average prices per user as the systems’ complexity is due to increase significantly, as more and more functionalities will be added in the Unified Communications concept, for instance integration of fixed and mobile communications, video and web conferencing, collaboration tools etc. Apart from productivity and cost savings, relevant drivers are also improved customer satisfaction and improved cooperation with remote offices (and thus improved mobility). InfoCom’s Chief Research Analyst stated: “In a world without Unified Communications, communication is organised and segmented like in containers and users have to switch between applications and devices depending on the communication channel they want or need to use”.

Major UC providers are forcefully driving this business, especially PBX vendors, software vendors and system integrators, whether more focussed on PBX/telecom, on IT or both. PBX vendors offer solutions that combine hardware and software, whereby software has steadily grown in importance over the last years. System integrators’ and software vendors’ strategy - especially IBM and Microsoft - is very similar: leverage their strength with e-mail/messaging servers and clients to expand on UC, by integrating with existing PBX but also by taking share away from traditional PBX vendors.

As of network operators, those who push Unified Communications, clearly position themselves as system integrators, offering advise and design, supply of hardware and software (from PBX and software vendors), support for the system integration, and also offering to develop extra software and customisation if necessary. Of course, carriers’ advantage is the fact that they can provide “everywhere connectivity” or else Centrex or managed PBX and other managed services. In other words carriers leverage their network expertise developing network-based UC solutions while complementing PBX and software vendors UC solutions with network based value added services, in particular providing everywhere network connectivity.

About this research: This research highlights the different UC solutions, with drivers and main benefits, the providers and their offers, with strategies and the different business models; and the market shares in the UC market by geographical region. The research includes a market model, which estimates revenues from hardware equipment (PCs, servers, telephones, fax machines etc.) as well as revenues from services (consulting, design, installation, management, maintenance etc.) with forecasts until 2013.

About InfoCom: InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with over 20 years experience providing strategic analyses and planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications, IT and multimedia industries. InfoCom’s independent and fact-based analyses highlight trends and opportunities, supporting decision makers to understand market dynamics in order to improve their competitive advantage.

# # #

InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with almost 20 years experience providing strategic analyses and planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications, IT and multimedia industries.