According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the unified communications and collaboration (UCC) market in EMEA will be worth $16.6bn by 2015.
"IDC predicts a compound annual growth rate of around 23.7 per cent·in the next five years and believes that the impact of the credit crunch and rumors of a double-dip recession make enterprises more cautious when deciding whether or not to invest in new IT equipment across the EMEA region," said Isabel Montero, senior research analyst, unified communications and collaboration, IDC EMEA. "Budgets in this region will continue to be more closely monitored and unemployment levels continue to increase across the region."
IDC also suggests that:
The impact of the credit crunch across EMEA will continue to make enterprises more cautious and lead companies to review ICT budgets closely prior to investing in new IT solutions.
UC hosted services will be on the rise and will become more predominant late in the forecast period. This trend will be more notable within the small and midsize business community. Businesses looking to outsource UCC solutions as a service instead of managing solutions in-house will primarily do so to reduce the cost of network management and maintenance.
SIP will the most dominant protocol used by vendors in the UCC and VoIP market, as it provides a common platform for system, handset, and application development and compatibility. Demands for new communications functionality will be driven by innovation on the consumer side; new collaboration efforts will include major vendors, partners, and customers; and the increasing maturity of products will drive native IP communications and SIP proliferation.
The increased complexity of a company's network infrastructure will drive businesses to have their converged networks and related services managed for them. Managed services of CPE equipment will be driven by a company's need for external expertise and move from a capex-based model to an opex-based model.
