Australian unified comms market valued at $609m, with 5.7 percent CAGR

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 18 November 2009 00:44

IT Industry - Strategy

Frost & Sullivan has estimated that the Australian market for unified communication services reached a record value of $608.7 million in 2008, driven by increased demand for cost-saving technologies such as video and collaboration, but has warned that the market is getting tougher for systems integrators as a result of mergers and acquisitions among major players.

According to F&S - in its Australia Unified Communications Services Report 2009 - "Government, education, healthcare, 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."

F&S is forecasting compound annual growth rate for the sector of 5.7 percent between 2009 and 2015, thanks in part to the complexity of interconnecting UC technologies. As UC technologies are increasingly integrated with video, social networking and web 2.0 applications, mobility, contact centre and business process applications, F&S predicts a corresponding increase in demand for consulting, design and managed service capabilities.
 
However it says that systems integrators playing in the market are likely to find the going getting tougher. According to Audrey William, F&S's research director, ICT, "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. 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."

F&S says that, at present consulting services account for seven percent of total UC services revenues, with other offerings in the category including network and infrastructure assessment and voice and wireless assessment.

It expects managed services 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."