Over the last 6 months there has been a lot of activity in the market with cloud-based offerings from players such as Microsoft, IBM and Cisco. Microsoft & IBM are bringing their collaboration & productivity suites online with Microsoft Online services and LotusLive services. Both players are making investments in infrastructure as well as channel & support readiness to push these solutions to the market and slowly bringing them to the different markets in Asia Pacific. In November 2009, Cisco announced their decision to play in the Email market with a cloud-based solution called Webex Mail (based on the PostPath acquisition).
Enterprise communications moving to the cloud is a clear trend in the industry, as demonstrated by the fast growth of conferencing services industry in Asia Pacific (the market is over $340 million in 2009, and growing at healthy double digit growth rates, based of Frost & Sullivan) and also discussed in my previous blog post on UC trends in 2010, and also . Driven by the larger trend of cloud services & renewed interest in opex models and lower TCO propositions (thanks to the economic recession), the Hosted Email market is rejuvenating and looking ready for a second innings.
In the past the Hosted Email market has been dominated by local service providers, internet service providers and web-hosting players. The local SPs & ISPs would host an email system (either MS Exchange, or some Unix-based system) in their data center, and offer a hosted email service to their SMB customers. The web-hosting players really targeting the small-end of the market (less than 50 mailboxes) would see success by throwing in mailboxes with website hosting services for free or minimal cost. The price points for Hosted Email were very competitive when compared the on-premise options of Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes. Despite this, Hosted mailboxes as a % of total mailboxes in Asia Pacific is less than 10%. The Hosted Email services offered by the SPs, ISPs & Web-hosting players were not regarded as enterprise-grade. Issues with data security, reliability of the the service, and loss of control with an outsourced model were top challenges that led to the limited growth in the past. Large enterprises were rarely even considering Hosted email as an option and continued to invest in on-premise email solutions.
With the entry of Microsoft, IBM and Cisco in the Hosted email services market, one can expect the consideration rate for Hosted Email by large enterprises to increase substantially. The impact of Google's launch of Gmail in 2004-05 with an infinite mailbox starting at 1 GB for consumers is being felt now in enterprise email user requirements. Enterprise users like the larger mailbox sizes, and IT teams are looking for ways to reduce software license, maintenance & support costs.
Based on some recent interactions with enterprise CIOs, it is clear that if there is a smooth migration path that can be offered to take their On-premise Email to a Hosted model in a secure and reliable manner then many enterprises would be willing to make a switch. Microsoft & IBM dominate more than 75% of the CPE email market in Asia Pacific, and hence having a cloud services option by these two vendors would definitely help drive this market. Apart from these two biggies, networking & telephony giant Cisco is also offering Hosted email service called Webex Mail. Cisco has a large installed base of large enterprise customers that use Cisco's Unified Communications applications as well as Webex conferencing service. Having a Hosted email option bundled as part of the larger UC deal could be considered by some enterprises. All this will not happen in 2010, and it is also clear that not all large enterprises and not all users (within a large enterprise) would migrate to the Hosted option, but one can definitely expect the penetration of Hosted Email in the large enterprise segment to grow strongly in the next 2-3 years. Vertical industries such as Education, Manufacturing, Professional Services & Hi-Tech are possibly the early adopters. Many of these verticals have deskless workers and part-time workers and these would be sweetspot for deploying a cost-efficient, scalable & flexible Hosted email solution, before rolling it out within the larger enterprise. Cisco, Microsoft & IBM can be expected to drive market education efforts to increase the awareness of Hosted Email services and its benefits, and help clear some of the perceived concerns about reliability, security & control.
In 2009, more than 500 mailboxes segment contributed less than 10% of the total Hosted Email opportunity in Asia Pacific in 2009, with most of the action happening in the 100 - 250 mailbox segment. Microsoft, IBM and Cisco are focused across all horizontal market segments for their Hosted Email offerings, however, one can expect Microsoft, IBM, Cisco to drive adoption from mid-to-large enterprises, while players like Google and Zimbra drive the mid-market enterprise (100-500 mailboxes) segment, except the Government & Education vertical. The small end of the market will continue to be dominated by web-hosting players, local SPs & ISPs.
With the contribution from the large enterprise segment expected to increase while the rest of market continues to grow, the Hosted Email market in Asia Pacific is set to see a strong CAGR of close to 20% over the next 4-5 years.
Showing posts with label Trends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trends. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
UC Trends in 2010
Unified Communications (UC) entails unifying the different communication applications such as voice, email, instant messaging, conferencing & collaboration to deliver productivity gains for the users, better team collaboration and increased agility for the enterprise.
The ultimate aim of unified communications is to embed communications into business processes to deliver quicker and better decision making, enhanced collaboration across geographically diverse teams, and to improve overall efficiency in the business process to make the enterprise more agile and competitive. In order to achieve this, the multiple communication applications that operate in complete silos need to be integrated with one another, and also integrated with business applications.
Key Highlights for UC Market in 2009
From the get-go it was clear that 2009 was going to be a tough year for most industries, and the Unified Communications market was no exception. Given the recession and lower IT spending by enterprises, the Unified Communications market expecting a decline of 6.6 percent over 2008.
2009 saw a significant drop in spending on telephony infrastructure, with the telephony market expected to decline by over 30 percent over 2008. Apart from a slowdown in spending, price erosion also contributed to the overall revenue decline in that market.
The year saw creative financing schemes, attractive migration programs, aggressive application bundling and competitive pricing in the market. While many enterprises did bite into these vendor initiatives, others decided to put some of their infrastructure decisions on hold or delay them by a few quarters.
The silver lining for the Unified Communications industry was the Conferencing & Collaboration market is expected to see a strong growth of 13.1 percent in 2009. The recession brought along with it travel budget cuts which meant more investment in collaboration software and services.
As predicted last year, consolidation in the vendor landscape continued in 2009 with Avaya acquiring Nortel Enterprise, and more recently Logitech-LifeSize, and Cisco-Tandberg. The impact of all of these acquisitions will be felt in 2010.
Predictions for UC Market in 2010
2010 is expected to show some recovery and enterprises are expected to refresh their communications infrastructure and adopt Unified Communications. Frost & Sullivan expects the Unified Communications market in Asia Pacific to grow by 4.4 percent in 2010.
We believe that communications in 2010 and beyond will be increasingly:-
•Rich Communications – Communications in 2010 will be increasingly rich with Video. Growth in Video is expected to be in excess of 16 percent in 2010. Adoption of video conferencing has been on the rise in the Asia Pacific region. TelePresence market has shown good take-up from large enterprises, while boardroom and desktop video solutions are also seeing penetration across enterprises.
•Collaborative Communications – Collaboration is a top-of-mind priority for most CIOs and investments in technology that enables their enterprise to be more collaborative, and agile are of high interest. Web conferencing has seen strong growth over the last few years, and is expected to see a growth over 25 percent in 2010. For most enterprises, moving towards Unified Communications entails embracing a more collaborative communications environment, be it via audio conferencing, web conferencing or simple the ability to connect with the person at the right time on the right device through their Presence status. Enterprise Instant Messaging application is also expected to see continued growth in 2010. Solutions such as Google Wave, which brings together elements of Email, Instant Messaging and Collaboration, will make some impact on the market in 2010, although mainstream adoption of such solutions would only be in a 2011-2012 time frame.
•Social Communications – A more recent trend driven by consumer adoption of web 2.0 applications such as social networking. The idea of having a Facebook-like application for the enterprise was being discussed for the last 12-18 months, and in recent weeks we have seen announcements by vendors such as Cisco and Salesforce.com to offer enterprise social networking based collaboration platforms. Players such as IBM, Cisco and Salesforce.com, as well as other niche players are participating in this new market place.
Using social media for customer communications and customer service is expected to gain traction in 2010. Given the nascent stage of the market, the adoption of enterprise social collaboration platforms might be limited in 2010, however awareness and education amongst enterprises is expected to increase. Leveraging social media for customer service is expected to see some traction in 2010.
•Cloud-based Communications – Communications is increasingly moving to the cloud. Adoption of UC-as-a-Service picked up steam in 2009. Local as well as Global Service Providers have become aggressive with their hosted communications service offerings such as Hosted PBX, Hosted Conferencing and Hosted Messaging. Pure play conferencing service providers such as Intercall, Cisco Webex, Premier Global Services have seen good growth in 2009, and are continuing to see interest from enterprises. Hybrid deployment models of On-Premise and In-the-Cloud will emerge in 2010 and enterprises will choose which applications will be on-premise and which ones should be in the cloud. Vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Mitel are working with service providers to deliver their solutions on a hosted basis. Microsoft is expected to launch Microsoft Online in Asia Pacific in 2010, further spurring the market place.
•On-the-go Communications – Mobility continues to be a business need and adoption of mobility solutions is expected to continue in 2010. Solutions that provide the ability to access all forms of communications from the mobile device are expected to grow in 2010. Soft phone clients on mobile devices, to mobile collaboration clients and mobile email are seeing good traction in the market. As the end-point evolution continues from analog phones to digital phones to IP phones, today the user has the option for a hard IP phone on the desk, soft phone on the desktop and soft phone client on the mobile. While the hard phone on the desk might still be prevalent for the next 2-3 years, the adoption of soft phones is seeing strong growth in Asia Pacific.
Core communication applications such as IP telephony and Email will see flat to marginal growth in 2010. IP migration projects will renew in 2010, and growth is expected to return to the IP telephony market, but price points would still be under pressure. Commoditization of these core communication applications will continue in 2010, and focus on applications will be important.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the Unified Communications Market Opportunity* in 2010 is expected to be worth slightly over US $4.45 Billion, growing at 4.4 % over 2009.
*Note: UC Market Opportunity includes Enterprise Telephony, Email, Instant Messaging (Unified Client), Unified Messaging, Conferencing & Collaboration (Audio, Video & Web), Mobility, Presence & Integrated UC Applications, and Core Contact Center Applications.
The ultimate aim of unified communications is to embed communications into business processes to deliver quicker and better decision making, enhanced collaboration across geographically diverse teams, and to improve overall efficiency in the business process to make the enterprise more agile and competitive. In order to achieve this, the multiple communication applications that operate in complete silos need to be integrated with one another, and also integrated with business applications.
Key Highlights for UC Market in 2009
From the get-go it was clear that 2009 was going to be a tough year for most industries, and the Unified Communications market was no exception. Given the recession and lower IT spending by enterprises, the Unified Communications market expecting a decline of 6.6 percent over 2008.
2009 saw a significant drop in spending on telephony infrastructure, with the telephony market expected to decline by over 30 percent over 2008. Apart from a slowdown in spending, price erosion also contributed to the overall revenue decline in that market.
The year saw creative financing schemes, attractive migration programs, aggressive application bundling and competitive pricing in the market. While many enterprises did bite into these vendor initiatives, others decided to put some of their infrastructure decisions on hold or delay them by a few quarters.
The silver lining for the Unified Communications industry was the Conferencing & Collaboration market is expected to see a strong growth of 13.1 percent in 2009. The recession brought along with it travel budget cuts which meant more investment in collaboration software and services.
As predicted last year, consolidation in the vendor landscape continued in 2009 with Avaya acquiring Nortel Enterprise, and more recently Logitech-LifeSize, and Cisco-Tandberg. The impact of all of these acquisitions will be felt in 2010.
Predictions for UC Market in 2010
2010 is expected to show some recovery and enterprises are expected to refresh their communications infrastructure and adopt Unified Communications. Frost & Sullivan expects the Unified Communications market in Asia Pacific to grow by 4.4 percent in 2010.
We believe that communications in 2010 and beyond will be increasingly:-
•Rich Communications – Communications in 2010 will be increasingly rich with Video. Growth in Video is expected to be in excess of 16 percent in 2010. Adoption of video conferencing has been on the rise in the Asia Pacific region. TelePresence market has shown good take-up from large enterprises, while boardroom and desktop video solutions are also seeing penetration across enterprises.
•Collaborative Communications – Collaboration is a top-of-mind priority for most CIOs and investments in technology that enables their enterprise to be more collaborative, and agile are of high interest. Web conferencing has seen strong growth over the last few years, and is expected to see a growth over 25 percent in 2010. For most enterprises, moving towards Unified Communications entails embracing a more collaborative communications environment, be it via audio conferencing, web conferencing or simple the ability to connect with the person at the right time on the right device through their Presence status. Enterprise Instant Messaging application is also expected to see continued growth in 2010. Solutions such as Google Wave, which brings together elements of Email, Instant Messaging and Collaboration, will make some impact on the market in 2010, although mainstream adoption of such solutions would only be in a 2011-2012 time frame.
•Social Communications – A more recent trend driven by consumer adoption of web 2.0 applications such as social networking. The idea of having a Facebook-like application for the enterprise was being discussed for the last 12-18 months, and in recent weeks we have seen announcements by vendors such as Cisco and Salesforce.com to offer enterprise social networking based collaboration platforms. Players such as IBM, Cisco and Salesforce.com, as well as other niche players are participating in this new market place.
Using social media for customer communications and customer service is expected to gain traction in 2010. Given the nascent stage of the market, the adoption of enterprise social collaboration platforms might be limited in 2010, however awareness and education amongst enterprises is expected to increase. Leveraging social media for customer service is expected to see some traction in 2010.
•Cloud-based Communications – Communications is increasingly moving to the cloud. Adoption of UC-as-a-Service picked up steam in 2009. Local as well as Global Service Providers have become aggressive with their hosted communications service offerings such as Hosted PBX, Hosted Conferencing and Hosted Messaging. Pure play conferencing service providers such as Intercall, Cisco Webex, Premier Global Services have seen good growth in 2009, and are continuing to see interest from enterprises. Hybrid deployment models of On-Premise and In-the-Cloud will emerge in 2010 and enterprises will choose which applications will be on-premise and which ones should be in the cloud. Vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Mitel are working with service providers to deliver their solutions on a hosted basis. Microsoft is expected to launch Microsoft Online in Asia Pacific in 2010, further spurring the market place.
•On-the-go Communications – Mobility continues to be a business need and adoption of mobility solutions is expected to continue in 2010. Solutions that provide the ability to access all forms of communications from the mobile device are expected to grow in 2010. Soft phone clients on mobile devices, to mobile collaboration clients and mobile email are seeing good traction in the market. As the end-point evolution continues from analog phones to digital phones to IP phones, today the user has the option for a hard IP phone on the desk, soft phone on the desktop and soft phone client on the mobile. While the hard phone on the desk might still be prevalent for the next 2-3 years, the adoption of soft phones is seeing strong growth in Asia Pacific.
Core communication applications such as IP telephony and Email will see flat to marginal growth in 2010. IP migration projects will renew in 2010, and growth is expected to return to the IP telephony market, but price points would still be under pressure. Commoditization of these core communication applications will continue in 2010, and focus on applications will be important.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the Unified Communications Market Opportunity* in 2010 is expected to be worth slightly over US $4.45 Billion, growing at 4.4 % over 2009.
*Note: UC Market Opportunity includes Enterprise Telephony, Email, Instant Messaging (Unified Client), Unified Messaging, Conferencing & Collaboration (Audio, Video & Web), Mobility, Presence & Integrated UC Applications, and Core Contact Center Applications.
Friday, January 22, 2010
EnterpriseBook - Facebook for the Enterprise?
Imagine that a Sales Manager gets a notification that says "Opportunity X has moved to the next level. $250K". The Sales Manager "comments" on that update asking for some details. The "comment" gets sent to the sales person who entered that opportunity X, and can then address those questions. Based on the responses, the sales manager also "recommends" a "group" that focuses on such specific deals. The Country Manager "likes" the update to keep the sales person motivated and also subtly informing him that he is aware and can make himself available if the need arises. The Country Manager can also "follow" this opportunity so that he gets any updates to this particular deal.
You get the idea. Taking Facebook & Twitter and creating an Enterprise focused social networking solution. There are many questions that come to mind when you think of such a solution -
does it replace email, instant messaging or team workspaces or is it a new medium altogether?,
will it improve productivity or reduce it?,
with so many emails to respond to already does this application require me to update-on/respond to/take-note-of all "updates" and activities?,
would this only be restricted to the enterprise, or can partner companies also join the network?,
what impact does it have on storage needs, security needs, content management, etc?
Instead of trying to address all these questions, lets evaluate the potential benefits of such an application. In order to do that, let's analyze what happened in the consumer world with Facebook & Twitter. What benefits did Facebook bring to consumers, what existing communication channels did it replace? I don't think Facebook replaced Email but yes, it definitely would have replaced the number of emails that people sent to their friends & family. I don't think Facebook replaced Instant Messaging, but Facebook realized that it is a complimentary communication channel and it has added that capability to its website. Facebook did definitely challenge a Flickr, as many people just upload their photos to Facebook now instead of doing it separately to Picassa or Flickr. Facebook improved our ability to "connect" with our friends, even though we could not meet often in the real world. Facebook gave users the ability to know what was happening in their friends life, and they could just share their life-happenings on Facebook knowing that their family & friends would get to see/read about it (maybe reducing some IDD phone calls here). Facebook didn't replace blogs, but made it a feature for users to be able to share "notes". In a nutshell, Facebook did a bit of everything and provided a single platform that was social in nature, and could be viewed by friends & family.
If we take this to the Enterprise, a Facebook-like application or what we might call an Enterprise Social Networking solution would not necessarily replace Email, Instant Messaging or Workspace. But it could become either a platform through which all these can either be accessed and complimented by the features such as status updates, rating/tagging, etc. or a platform that can be used to offer a Email-like, IM-like, Workspace-like environment. The important thing in both scenarios will be that this platform will be a "social" platform.
The obvious benefits of such a solution would be better information sharing across teams in the enterprise, better knowledge of what's happening in the enterprise, better connect with employees (especially in geographically dispersed teams) improving collaboration amongst teams, and providing a communications platform that is social, increasingly popular and partly informal.
An Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) solution could possibly be an addition to the existing communication channels that exist within an enterprise. What I believe will become important for ESN is that it could become an integration portal or access portal for other communication channels, a bit like IM on Facebook, Messages (Email) on Facebook, etc. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that you could add voice capability & web conferencing as an application to ESN as well. What could start as a new communication channel, eventually has the potential to be a communication platform that can truly connect the other communication channels and deliver a quasi-UC (Unified Communications) experience.
Whether or not ESN will become popular in the enterprise can only be decided once the solutions from players such as Cisco, Salesforce.com, IBM, etc. get into the market, and how enterprise CIOs react to these. There is a bit of a precedence for ESN in the way Instant Messaging is becoming popular in the enterprise now. Starting as a consumer communication channel, IM has now become an enterprise solution, and it took a good 3-5 years after IM was already in the consumer world, that it reached the enterprise, and another 3-4 years before it became mainstream. Even if you improve that rate of adoption, one should not expect ESN to become popular before 2012.
My biggest worry is what will happen when my boss "pokes" me about some deliverables? Is "Super Poke" the new micro-managing tool?
You get the idea. Taking Facebook & Twitter and creating an Enterprise focused social networking solution. There are many questions that come to mind when you think of such a solution -
does it replace email, instant messaging or team workspaces or is it a new medium altogether?,
will it improve productivity or reduce it?,
with so many emails to respond to already does this application require me to update-on/respond to/take-note-of all "updates" and activities?,
would this only be restricted to the enterprise, or can partner companies also join the network?,
what impact does it have on storage needs, security needs, content management, etc?
Instead of trying to address all these questions, lets evaluate the potential benefits of such an application. In order to do that, let's analyze what happened in the consumer world with Facebook & Twitter. What benefits did Facebook bring to consumers, what existing communication channels did it replace? I don't think Facebook replaced Email but yes, it definitely would have replaced the number of emails that people sent to their friends & family. I don't think Facebook replaced Instant Messaging, but Facebook realized that it is a complimentary communication channel and it has added that capability to its website. Facebook did definitely challenge a Flickr, as many people just upload their photos to Facebook now instead of doing it separately to Picassa or Flickr. Facebook improved our ability to "connect" with our friends, even though we could not meet often in the real world. Facebook gave users the ability to know what was happening in their friends life, and they could just share their life-happenings on Facebook knowing that their family & friends would get to see/read about it (maybe reducing some IDD phone calls here). Facebook didn't replace blogs, but made it a feature for users to be able to share "notes". In a nutshell, Facebook did a bit of everything and provided a single platform that was social in nature, and could be viewed by friends & family.
If we take this to the Enterprise, a Facebook-like application or what we might call an Enterprise Social Networking solution would not necessarily replace Email, Instant Messaging or Workspace. But it could become either a platform through which all these can either be accessed and complimented by the features such as status updates, rating/tagging, etc. or a platform that can be used to offer a Email-like, IM-like, Workspace-like environment. The important thing in both scenarios will be that this platform will be a "social" platform.
The obvious benefits of such a solution would be better information sharing across teams in the enterprise, better knowledge of what's happening in the enterprise, better connect with employees (especially in geographically dispersed teams) improving collaboration amongst teams, and providing a communications platform that is social, increasingly popular and partly informal.
An Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) solution could possibly be an addition to the existing communication channels that exist within an enterprise. What I believe will become important for ESN is that it could become an integration portal or access portal for other communication channels, a bit like IM on Facebook, Messages (Email) on Facebook, etc. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that you could add voice capability & web conferencing as an application to ESN as well. What could start as a new communication channel, eventually has the potential to be a communication platform that can truly connect the other communication channels and deliver a quasi-UC (Unified Communications) experience.
Whether or not ESN will become popular in the enterprise can only be decided once the solutions from players such as Cisco, Salesforce.com, IBM, etc. get into the market, and how enterprise CIOs react to these. There is a bit of a precedence for ESN in the way Instant Messaging is becoming popular in the enterprise now. Starting as a consumer communication channel, IM has now become an enterprise solution, and it took a good 3-5 years after IM was already in the consumer world, that it reached the enterprise, and another 3-4 years before it became mainstream. Even if you improve that rate of adoption, one should not expect ESN to become popular before 2012.
My biggest worry is what will happen when my boss "pokes" me about some deliverables? Is "Super Poke" the new micro-managing tool?
Collaboration = UC
The Unified Communications (UC) market has now been around for 4 years, since the term became popular in 2006. I can safely say that the UC market has not lived upto its promise of delivering a seamless communications experience through the unification of different communication media and devices. The promise of that seamless experience improving user productivity, which would improve the ability to respond quicker, and ultimately embedding that communication capability into key business processes to make the enterprise more agile.
The problem never was the technology, but the deployment of the technology. The biggest competitor for the UC market was the existing communications market. Heterogeneity is many a times underestimated by our industry. Heterogeneous environments created significant barrier for the adoption of UC. To create that seamless communications experience enterprises needed to change/upgrade/migrate their existing investments into a UC-ready environment, and do that for all communication devices at the same time. That clearly did not happen.
We are in 2010, and we still see adoption of UC as a silo-ed & phased approach towards building a UC infrastructure. Enterprises chose to change/upgrade/migrate in phases, starting either with their telephony infrastructure or Email infrastructure, then adding applications that can integrate with these systems. So in effect, today, UC is no longer "a thing" enterprises are buying and deploying, but it is a "journey" that IT teams are embarking on, checking milestones one after one.
From that promise of UC in 2006, where click-to-call was the big buzz application, enterprises and vendors have come to realize the importance of the larger underlying market need of Collaboration. The promise of UC is beginning to take shape in the form a real market need of Collaboration. As enterprises embark on their UC "journey", and they already have Telephony systems and Email infrastructure. The next application that majority of enterprises are interested in is Conferencing & Collaboration.
Based on a survey of CIOs in Asia conducted by Frost & Sullivan, Collaboration ranked as the top application enterprises are looking to invest in as part of their UC deployments in the next 12-24 months. This is a significant insight. The insight is that for enterprises who already have telephony & email (which is a vast majority), the next step towards UC for them is Collaboration; which means that for these set of enterprises, moving to UC is equivalent to deploying Collaboration technologies i.e. Collaboration = UC.
Please note that I am not saying that UC = Collaboration. There is a slight difference. UC = Collaboration would mean that UC is only about Collaboration, but that is not true. UC has an even higher purpose, of collaboration, of mobility, of communication-enabling the business.
But from the enterprise-view, if Collaboration = UC is true, it means that vendors need to direct their efforts accordingly. We already see Cisco doing that in a big way. Cisco's acquisition over the last 2-3 years have demonstrated their seriousness about this market, their focus on completing a true UC portfolio, and their understanding of the larger Collaboration opportunity.
IBM has always talked about UC as UC squared i.e. UC & Collaboration. Microsoft also had a Collaboration-centric message. But other vendors such as Avaya, Siemens, Mitel, NEC, Aastra need to get their messages and importantly their solutions aligned as well.
Collaboration = UC would be the mega trend in the communications industry for atleast the next 24-36 months. Now, that's not a promise.
The problem never was the technology, but the deployment of the technology. The biggest competitor for the UC market was the existing communications market. Heterogeneity is many a times underestimated by our industry. Heterogeneous environments created significant barrier for the adoption of UC. To create that seamless communications experience enterprises needed to change/upgrade/migrate their existing investments into a UC-ready environment, and do that for all communication devices at the same time. That clearly did not happen.
We are in 2010, and we still see adoption of UC as a silo-ed & phased approach towards building a UC infrastructure. Enterprises chose to change/upgrade/migrate in phases, starting either with their telephony infrastructure or Email infrastructure, then adding applications that can integrate with these systems. So in effect, today, UC is no longer "a thing" enterprises are buying and deploying, but it is a "journey" that IT teams are embarking on, checking milestones one after one.
From that promise of UC in 2006, where click-to-call was the big buzz application, enterprises and vendors have come to realize the importance of the larger underlying market need of Collaboration. The promise of UC is beginning to take shape in the form a real market need of Collaboration. As enterprises embark on their UC "journey", and they already have Telephony systems and Email infrastructure. The next application that majority of enterprises are interested in is Conferencing & Collaboration.
Based on a survey of CIOs in Asia conducted by Frost & Sullivan, Collaboration ranked as the top application enterprises are looking to invest in as part of their UC deployments in the next 12-24 months. This is a significant insight. The insight is that for enterprises who already have telephony & email (which is a vast majority), the next step towards UC for them is Collaboration; which means that for these set of enterprises, moving to UC is equivalent to deploying Collaboration technologies i.e. Collaboration = UC.
Please note that I am not saying that UC = Collaboration. There is a slight difference. UC = Collaboration would mean that UC is only about Collaboration, but that is not true. UC has an even higher purpose, of collaboration, of mobility, of communication-enabling the business.
But from the enterprise-view, if Collaboration = UC is true, it means that vendors need to direct their efforts accordingly. We already see Cisco doing that in a big way. Cisco's acquisition over the last 2-3 years have demonstrated their seriousness about this market, their focus on completing a true UC portfolio, and their understanding of the larger Collaboration opportunity.
IBM has always talked about UC as UC squared i.e. UC & Collaboration. Microsoft also had a Collaboration-centric message. But other vendors such as Avaya, Siemens, Mitel, NEC, Aastra need to get their messages and importantly their solutions aligned as well.
Collaboration = UC would be the mega trend in the communications industry for atleast the next 24-36 months. Now, that's not a promise.
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