Government initiatives to spur unified communications market growth in India

Indian Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) market in H2 2014 was nearly flat (0.1 percent) as compared to a year ago, however, the market showed a decent growth of 6.3 percent over H1 2014, according to an IDC study. With the government initiatives for decreasing the digital divide and increasing financial inclusion on the cards, the UC&C spending is expected to grow from various verticals (directly or indirectly) going forward.  At the same time, the increasing adoption of software-based unified solutions is chipping away the share of their hardware-based counterparts, as demand is gravitating towards more vendor-independent infrastructure. [caption id=“attachment_2386396” align=“alignleft” width=“396”] IDC[/caption] The enterprise telephony sub-market in India witnessed the highest decline in UC&C market, with 7.9 percent decline year on year. However, the segment witnessed a considerable growth of 4.7 percent over H1 2014. The market during H2 2014 marginally recovered due to the uptake of Pure IP Telephony (Pure IP PBX, IP Phones and Voice Gateways). With the same shift from traditional telephony such as PBX/Key systems and AD phones to IP based telephony, the share of the former segment is on a declining trend. The enterprise collaboration market in India witnessed growth during H2 2015 as compared to the market year-on-year. With the increasing demand for work force optimisation and interaction, the segments such as mobility, unified messaging, social media, web & voice conferencing and team collaboration have become more important than ever. Further, the increasing penetration of BYOD (i.e. Bring your own device) is driving the growth in mobility and conferencing solutions. Room based video solutions still remain to be an elite category with more and more desktop and mobility video solutions carving niche in the market. The contact centre market in India saw a decline of 2.3 percent in H2 2014 as compared to H2 2013. The segment is very much dependent for growth on the new announcements by the government and expansions/plans by the telecom operators. Though still in nascent stage, the cloud based contact centre solutions, are seeing traction across the enterprises, big or small, with the advantages of low initial expenditure. Upcoming verticals like e-commerce, healthcare and hospitality along with traditional ones are expected to drive future investments. “With the advent of 3rd platform based solutions (Ex: UC as a Service), UC&C spending is all set to see an incremental growth. New partnerships and alliances with regional and local players will define the next wave of UC&C investments and market shares in India in the coming quarters,” Gaurav Sharma, research manager, enterprise, IDC, said. India forecast Adoption of UC solutions in SMBs is sure to boost incremental revenues in the coming quarters along with the traditional verticals. UCaaS is also expected to gain traction as anytime/anywhere access to the technology with relatively low CAPEX and OPEX (as compared to traditional solutions) would find interest from the market.