The global market for unified communications as-a-service is expected to grow from $2.52 billion in 2013 to $7.62 billion by 2018, at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 24.8%.
A recent study conducted by MarketsandMarkets shows that UCaaS will be one of the key enabling factors that will drive the market for unified communications. The emergence of video technology and collaboration solutions has been driving the market, although telephony will be the most used technology in coming years.
Another important factor in the market is collaboration application, with revenue for that segment expected to grow from $540.74 million in 2013 to $1.75 billion by 2018, at an estimated CAGR of 26.5%.
UCaaS is a rapidly growing market that is generating a lot of interest among enterprises. As Gartner Research principal analyst Elia San Miguel noted, carriers are looking to add communication as a service and unified communications to their portfolios to enhance their presence in the corporate market.
Currently, the major players in this market are Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Mitel, CSC, Panterra Networks, Interactive Intelligence and NEC. “With enterprise mobility on the rise, the opportunity for UCaaS can prove a lucrative market for the vendor ecosystem,” the MarketsandMarkets study states.
Highlights of the study include:
- Companies across all sectors are using UCaaS, cloud based unified communication which integrates Web conferencing, video conferencing, messaging, VoIP and presence over cloud.
- Enterprises want to deploy UCaaS on their existing infrastructure.
- Hybrid UCaaS is emerging as many cloud providers look to integrate their services with UCaaS service providers.
In a recent interview, Leslie Ferry, Broadsoft’s VP of marketing, said that LTE services enable greater adoption of UC tools. As new LTE networks provide more bandwidth, they can help improve the customer experience, increasing enterprise UC adoption.
