UC and collaboration market in India battled with marginal growth of 3.8% in 2H13: IDC

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) the Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) market in India saw a marginal growth of 3.8% in 2H 2013 as compared to 2H 2012. The modest growth was partially due to the shift from hardware-based to software-based unified communication solutions to help organisations get out of vendor lock-ins for hardware infrastructure. The revenue generating industry segments for this market, including finance, telecom and manufacturing, restricted growth as they curtailed spend due to their own lackluster performance. UC&C spending in the government segment was also low due to the uncertainty and delayed spending due to the 2014 India elections.

Source: IDC 2H 2013 APJ Collaboration and Video Tracker

Key Market Segments:

The Enterprise Telephony market in India recovered slightly by 2.9% in 2H 2013 as compared to 2H 2012. After a significant decline of 10% in 1H 2013, the market marginally recovered due to the uptake of Pure IP Telephony (Pure IP PBX, IP Phones and Voice Gateways). However shortfall continued in traditional systems such as PBX/Key systems and AD phones as enterprises prefer IP-based products rather than traditional PBX systems.

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The Enterprise Collaboration market in India saw a 3% growth in 2H 2013 as against 2H 2012. In Enterprise Collaboration solutions, significant growth was witnessed in the unified messaging, team collaboration, mobility, social media tools and web & voice conferencing solutions. Increased adoption of bring your own device (BYOD) policies resulted in the growth of mobility and conferencing specifically to improve productivity and break down communication barriers. IDC observed that desktop and mobile video solutions had a greater demand as compared to room based video solutions.

The Contact Center market in India saw a growth of 6.5% in 2H 2013 as compared to 2H 2012. The India contact center market recovered due to the adoption in Ecommerce and Media & Communications segments. Also due to upsurge in the small to medium business (SMB) market, the number of the SMB businesses deploying contact center applications also increased. To address this demand, most of the vendors launched SMB specific solutions. IDC observed the traction for mobile customer care applications, analytics as well as back office process optimisation tools in the contact center. Across organisations the demand for cloud based contact center solutions continues, driven by the need to compete more effectively with less capital expenditure.

Across the verticals, need for business collaboration fuelsthe UC&C market. Proliferation of mobile UC&C, increased emphasis on the contact center customer experience, and the interest in Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is another revenue driver for the UC&C market.

IDC India Forecasts:

Dileep Nadimpalli, Senior Market Analyst, Unified Communications at IDC India says, “IDC expects the SMB market to adopt standalone UC solutions, this would be primarily a web or video conferencing solution. Deployment of bundled UC solutions are expected to evolve in SMB Segment.”

Nadimpalli further adds, “Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is expected to be a hot segment, as organisations move to cloud based solutions. It is very attractive to many to have full access to the suite of best in class technology with little or no initial investment and reduced cost of managing the infrastructure.”