Unified Communications:

Transcription

1 A Frost & Sullivan White Paper 2014 Frost & Sullivan India ICT Awards: Unified Communications Application Vendor of the Year

2 SIGNIFICANCE OF UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS The business landscape in India has changed considerably over the last few years and Unified Communications (UC) has become an important component across organizations. Today s workforce is highly distributed and mobile, and the tools and devices that they seek are further driven by the consumerization of IT. Collaboration has extended not only to employees at headquarters, regional centers, branch offices, and remote workers, but also to the enterprise ecosystem inclusive of supply chain, service providers, channels, and customers. UC solutions are aimed at strengthening employees to communicate and collaborate using any modality, independent of location, network, or device. Ideally these solutions should run on an enterprise-grade platform that is highly open, reliable, scalable, and secure. Currently, there is a pressing demand to provide a full stack of UC architecture as a single stand-alone solution using an open platform, to facilitate interoperability with other standard third party applications/ solutions. KEY TRENDS SHAPING THE UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS APPLICATION MARKET 1 IP Telephony The growing importance of UC applications is expected to promote an increase in the adoption rate of Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange (IP-PBX), as it acts as the platform for any UC deployment. Uptake of the virtualized server for telephony as well as collaboration is expected to increase in the short to medium term. 2 Consumeratization of IT Consumer technologies are increasingly migrating to the working environment. The use of video in the enterprise is moving away from being limited to management meetings. Consumer technologies and devices now being introduced in the professional setting and seamless multimedia communication is expected to become popular. 3 WebRTC Based on Web Real-Time Communication, this technology is likely to make video conferencing as easy as clicking on a website. Anyone with a PC will be able to leverage video conferencing without the need for a special client. WebRTC standards work seamlessly across multiple channels, platforms, and devices. This platform is aimed to provide real time collaboration anytime, anywhere. 4 UC as a Service UC vendors have recognized the unprecedented opportunity to address the needs of mid-market enterprises across India, or the companies reserved to become The New Big enterprises of tomorrow. As companies struggle to reduce costs, and decision makers are unsure about the tangible benefits of UC, cloud based UC services are expected to gain traction in the mid-to-long term. Source: Frost & Sullivan 2

3 BUSINESS DRIVERS FOR HIGHER ADOPTION Increasing investments to enhance the communication infrastructure, desire to reduce travelling costs, SMB adoption of UC, and a shift towards mobile applications were found to be the key drivers for the Indian UC market. Increasingly, UC applications are being perceived as a strategic investment rather than just a cost center. End users are increasingly demanding advanced applications and more customized solutions from vendors and their partners. This is expected to drive the adoption of complex channels such as Web chat/voice/video/im and presence. IP migration and upgrades from legacy systems, coupled with network consolidation, are also expected to drive the demand for UC adoption in the short to medium terms. High Mature High Growth Emerging High Growth IP Telephony Market Share Traditional Telephony Conferencing Contact Center IM/ Presence Low Mature Low Growth Unifed Messaging Emerging Low Growth Mobility CAGR ( ) WAY FORWARD Source: Frost & Sullivan The major challenges in the UC market place are associated with the rapidly changing needs of users. In the current context, the business landscape is rapidly changing in terms of the way IT competencies are developed and delivered. Convergence of technologies is changing the ways in which businesses are carried out all across the globe. Businesses have become more agile and moving forward; new technologies such as analytics, internet of things (IOT), social media, and cloud services are going to be the game changers in the medium to long term. These technologies will enable a more cost-effective and user friendly solution, for an integrated and optimized collaborative experience. The earlier model of accessing data via Local Area Network (LAN) and internal data centers is anticipated to get replaced by the rapid growth of cloud services and consumerization of IT. Although hardware remains an important part of the overall UC architecture, vendors are likely to envisage more of a hybrid approach that will have a maxi of both software and hardware as the way forward for mid-sized as well as large enterprises. 3

4 2014 FROST & SULLIVAN UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS APPLICATION VENDOR OF THE YEAR AWARD AWARD DESCRIPTION The Frost & Sullivan Award for Unified Communications Application Vendor of the year has been conferred upon the company which has excelled in terms of market share and stupendous revenue growth, developed a broad product portfolio and has been successful in translating its customer insights into strong product lines and subsequently expanding its customer base. The winner of the 2014 award has been a model of growth and innovation and hence has been selected as the Unified Communications Applications Vendor of the year. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The award recipient was judged on the basis of several parameters, which involved in-depth primary interviews of various industry participants and secondary research conducted by Frost & Sullivan analysts. To incorporate the end-user perspective, the data was then presented to an elite panel of jury members comprising some of the most prominent CIOs/CTOs from the industry. Frost & Sullivan then presented the award to the company that achieved the number one industry rank. MEASUREMENT CRITERIA In addition to the methodology described above, specific criteria were followed to ascertain the final competitor ranking in the industry. The award winner has excelled in one or more of the following criteria: Revenue growth Market share Product portfolio diversity Key achievements Technology Roadmap and Vision AWARD RECIPIENT: Cisco Cisco achieved a robust growth and maintained its market leadership position in The vendor offered full UC suite with a large data infrastructure client base. It also has very strong channel, services, and system integration partners in the country. Cisco s UC suite includes Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Jabber, Cisco Unity Connection, Cisco WebEx (now also available as an on-premises server), multiple video options, and a broad range of fixed and mobile client and device options. Client virtualization options were introduced, that offer additional integrated communications and collaboration functionality, including its contact center and Cisco WebEx conferencing products. In addition, Cisco offered distinct editions of contact center solutions for the large and mid-sized segment gaining high mind share amongst enterprises. Cisco s ability to offer a broad range of unified communications applications in conjunction with its high corporate brand visibility makes the vendor a preferred supplier for the unified communications market. 4

5 HIGHLIGHTS FOR Cisco IN 2013 v Cisco s UC suite includes Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Jabber, Cisco Unity Connection, Cisco WebEx, multiple video options, and a broad range of fixed and mobile client and device options. v Owing to its high-end appliances and hardware engineering capability, Cisco has been successful in offering an exceptional level of performance, deployment flexibility, and interoperability in its UC solutions for large as well as SMBs. v By addressing aspects of threat vectors including , Web, Cloud considerations as well as perimeters (both the traditional kind as well as virtual perimeters), Cisco offers its customer a comprehensive set of one stop shop UC solution. v Due to the close synchronization between R&D and marketing efforts, Cisco has been successful in translating its customer insights into strong product lines and subsequently expanding its customer base in the large and mid-sized enterprise segments. v Cisco offers extensive global network and highly scalable solutions. The vendor has strategic partnerships with key system integrators and channel partners that have strong unified communications consulting and system integration skills to deliver highly customized and complex solutions across the entire UC stack. v In 2013, Cisco's Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX) was successful in targeting the SMB market and gained high enterprise mindshare market share by bundling this solution with its telephony solution and adding more features, such desktop and third-party integration, multimedia routing and network level routing. v Cisco also offered a service to assist enterprises in measuring and increasing end user adoption of UC tools, and in developing best practices called Collaboration Change Management Services (CCMS). v The vendor leveraged its UC software into a cloud portfolio, Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS), which allowed Cisco HCS partners to create UC as a service (UCaaS) offering. The vendor made progress in simplifying and unifying its pricing model and massive communications portfolio. Therefore, Frost & Sullivan is honored to recognize Cisco as the recipient of Unified Communications Application Vendor of the Year, Mr. Raja Lakshmipathy, Regional Manager- Collaboration, CISCO India receiving award from Mr. Benoy CS, Director, ICT, South Asia Middle East, Frost & Sullivan 5

6 Unified Auckland Communications: Dubai A Bahrain Paradigm Shift in the Way Frankfurt Enterprises Communicate Bangkok Iskander Malaysia/Johor Bahru Beijing Istanbul Text Bengaluru Jakarta Bogotá Kolkata Buenos Aires Kuala Lumpur Cape Town London Chennai Manhattan Colombo Mexico City Delhi/NCR Miami Detroit Milan Mumbai Moscow Oxford Paris Pune Rockville Centre San Antonio São Paulo Seoul Shanghai Shenzhen Silicon Valley Singapore Sophia Antipolis Sydney Taipei Tel Aviv Tokyo Toronto Warsaw Washington, DC Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make orbreak today s market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the Global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasingcompetitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? For information regarding permission, write to: Frost & Sullivan LLC #210, EIB - 4, BT Building, Dubai Internet City PO Box: , Dubai, U.A.E. 6