Telcos set to play key role in UC space
Tan Ee Sze
22/09/2007

With the unified communications market poised for growth, telecom service providers will have a very important role to play in the enterprise communications space.

Unified communications is the ability to integrate the silo applications that currently exist in organisations, and to do it in a real-time manner. For example, the ability to see presence information in ay Word document can help to enhance and simplify business processes.

Speaking at the Frost & Sullivan Unified Communications 2007 forum, Manoj Menon, partner with Frost & Sullivan Singapore, noted that telcos are in a strong position to assist enterprises which are deploying unified communications solutions in offices across the globe. “When you deploy unified communications on one side it is simple, but if have 300, 400 or 500 offices within a country or across the globe, that’s where the telecom service providers come into the picture” he said.

According to Manoj, telcos are able to address security and bandwidth issues, and have unique access to information. For example, they have the ability to leverage on presence information through the mobile network. There are some information points that only a telecom service provider has access to, for example: Is your mobile phone turned on? What is your location? “This is very valuable information that only the telco can provide,” he said.

At the end of the day, however, it is not likely that one vendor or one type of vendor will be able to provide a complete unified communications solution today.

Within the unified communications framework, the existing spend is around enterprise telephony equipment, the fundamental building blocks, as well as contact management solutions, directories, messaging applications and conferencing applications.

Vertical, industry-specific applications are also emerging, for instance, recording applications that are used in banks and financial institutions to meet the requirements of compliance, and billing applications for the hospitality industry.

At the same time, solutions that have traditionally been focused on the contact centre, such as ACD and CTI, are now being brought into the larger enterprise.

The market for telepresence – high-end video conferencing – is also expected to grow by up to 10 times in the next three to four years. According to Menon, 200 units were shipped in the Asia Pacific last year.

According to Menon, conferencing itself is one of the highest growth segments in the industry as teams get globalised. It is potentially one of the easiest points to integrate into the enterprise telephony infrastructure under the unified communications umbrella.

Another key factor driving the growth in unified communications is mobility, with “pushmail” emerging as the killer application for the mobile worker and more and more enterprises realising the value of mobile devices and infesting in them.

To address these opportunities, companies such as Microsoft are trying to commoditise what was a fragmented market, combining enterprise telephony with information worker applications and delivering these solutions at an easily absorbed price point.

On the other hand, traditional vendors from the TDM world are taking their value proposition beyond telephony and horizontal applications, and embedding communications into business applications.

With these different players coming into the picture, the integration piece becomes very important – delivering platforms for integrating desktops with PBXs and other applications.
At the same time, consolidation is expected because the arena is too fragmented, with too many players in the marketplace today. “The unified communications market is poised for growth, but there will be some bloodshed,” said Menon.

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