Published on the 03/12/2009 | Written by Newsdesk
Research firm Frost & Sullivan says cost saving technologies are driving demand for UC…
Increased demand for cost-saving technologies such as video and collaboration helped to drive the Australian unified communications (UC) services market to a record high in 2008, reaching a total estimated value of $608.7 million according to the latest UC analysis released by consulting company Frost & Sullivan.
In its study entitled ‘Australia Unified Communications Services Report 2009,’ Frost & Sullivan says government, education, health care, retail and financial services organisations led demand while several large multinationals also significantly reduced travel expenditure and are now encouraging the use of videoconferencing solutions.
The complexity of interconnecting UC technologies is expected to ensure solid growth for the UC services sector in the medium term, delivering an estimated compound annual growth rate for the sector of 5.7% between 2009 and 2015.
As UC technologies are increasingly integrated with video, social networking and web 2.0 applications, mobility, contact centre and business process applications, the report predicts a corresponding increase in demand for consulting, design and managed service capabilities.
At present consulting services account for 7% of total UC services revenues, with other offerings in the category including network and infrastructure assessment, and voice and wireless assessment. Managed services is expected to be an important growth area with large and medium sized organisations looking for external parties to manage all UC applications, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These organisations will also require easy accessibility to technologies such as telepresence and videoconferencing, both of which will further drive demand for end-to-end managed services.
“The UC services market saw some very high profile mergers and acquisitions during 2008. This has caused a narrowing of market participants and as a result, is heightening the competition,” says Audrey William, Frost & Sullivan’s ICT research director.
“We expect that some systems integrators will find this newly-reduced environment challenging, especially as they are called upon to compete with more established UC services players.”
