Enterprises turn to new UC technologies

The need to leverage unified communications and collaboration (UC-C) to boost efficiency, productivity and competitiveness is encouraging businesses to adopt new enterprise communications technologies.

This includes messaging platforms, communications endpoints, media gateways and session border controllers (SBCs).

Vendors are further attracting customer investments by offering incentives such as price reductions, promotions and discounts, as well as options to migrate/upgrade to the latest premises-based platform releases.

New analysis from Frost - Sullivan, Global Enterprise Communications Platforms and Endpoints Market, finds the market earned revenues of $11.67 billion in 2014 and estimates this will grow to revenues of $11.99 billion by 2021.

Frost and Sullivan says businesses continue to rely on legacy premises-based assets as challenging economic conditions, combined with the success of subscription-based hosted/cloud communications solutions, has reduced the number of new on-premises communications systems being deployed.

The Asia-Pacific region is a significant mid-market segment and is expected to experience considerable growth, with more companies looking to adopt open-standards communications platforms.

"Apart from the lower prices, the availability of more telephony platform options, architectural models, and communications endpoints that address the needs of all types of businesses will lure customers," says Alaa Saayed, Frost - Sullivan UC-C industry manager.

"A growing number of organisations with ageing communication systems perceive value in new systems as vendors wrap more UC-C capabilities around the IP private branch exchange (IP PBX) platforms," he says.

IP line licence will grow not only from replacements of legacy communications platforms, but also from the replacement of first-generation IP PBXs with advanced architectures based on session initiation protocol (SIP) technologies, new middleware infrastructure, and collaborative apps, says Frost and Sullivan.

"While enterprise communications vendors should focus considerable attention on the hosted/cloud communications space, they must also adapt their on-premises offerings and market strategies to the challenging market conditions," says Michael Brandenburg, Frost - Sullivan UC-C industry analyst .

"There are many businesses that will persist with on-premises equipment, as well as many others that desire a hybrid communications model," he says.