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INTERNATIONAL AGENTs
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ings from major communications service providers in
the market. This growing preference for digitalization will
spur the adoption of cloud-based services, which in turn
will necessitate the utilization of data center services
and high-speed connectivity.
Meanwhile, the unified communications market size
is forecast to reach a healthy $96 billion by 2023, ac-
cording to Global Market Insights. While the developed
markets of the U.S. and Europe will continue witness-
ing steady demand, the market will largely be driven by
Asia Pacific. The region’s market share is expected to
reach more than 29 percent by 2023. Growing emphasis
on cost cutting as well as demand for collaboration is
expected to drive regional demand over the next seven
years, according to GMI.
Steady proliferation of hosted products will be one of the
key unified communications market trends, with more than
$14 billion in revenue last year forecasted to grow to $49
billion by 2023. And GMI also noted that enterprises ac-
counted for more than 60 percent of the UC market share in
2015. This can be primarily attributed to rising adoption of
video conferencing and web-based collaboration.
In other words, there’s a clear and growing opportu-
nity for channel partners in the region.
Suppliers Help Partners
Heading East
One of the suppliers looking to channel partners to help
it grow in Asia is Telstra, whose acquisition of Pacnet has
allowed it to tap the connections between the United States
and China to support U.S.-based multinationals in that
region, especially through Pacnet Business Services (PBS),
which has been operating in China since 2008.
China is the fastest-growing emerging market in the
world and offers vast prospects for expanding business-
es. Over the past 25 years, China has experienced big
changes. It has transformed from a market with a limited
private sector into the manufacturing base of the world.
This has opened the doors for vast opportunities for busi-
nesses across the nation in all major sectors including
energy, technology, engineering, healthcare and finance.
“If your clients are not already doing business in
China, they most certainly are considering how to – and
there is opportunity for channel partners to support
them on that journey,” the company noted.
Through PBS, Telstra offers IP VPN across 23 prov-
inces, data center services in six cities and Internet ser-
vices in 10. It has an established network of 25 points
of presence in mainland China, located in 20 cities and
covering major IT hubs.
Telstra’s partner program is based on in-region sup-
port to help channel partners navigate the complex nu-
ances of Asia, with support personnel on the ground that
understand the local markets, culture and complex local
processes. California-based master agency Intelisys was
one of the first to add Pacnet services to its Supplier
Partner program. Intelisys sub-agents can sell Pacnet’s
data center, MPLS, Ethernet private line, IP transit, dedi-
cated Internet access and content delivery network ser-
vices throughout the Asia-Pacific region, including China,
Australia and India.
“The Asia-Pacific region has seen explosive growth
over the past several years, and more and more US-
Top 10 UC Trends
in Asia-Pac
According to Frost & Sullivan, the UC industry in the Asia-Pacific
region is nicely balanced, with newer fast-growing segments and older,
consolidating sub-markets.
“We also expect service providers to form alliances or acquire
companies, such as channel partners or small emerging solution vendors,
to increase their reach and offering,” said Shailendra Soni, industry
principal for ICT at Frost & Sullivan Asia-Pacific.
According to the report, the top 10 UC trends in Asia-Pacific through
2015 will be:
1. UC on-premises market to migrate to UCaaS – UC on-premises
customers, particularly large enterprises, will migrate to UCaaS at a
fast pace. The flexibility of deployment from on-premises to hybrid
to cloud will put UCaaS solutions ahead of UC on-premises solutions.
2.Third-party vendors will play a pivotal role – As the UC industry is expected
to move to the cloud, third-party vendors will increasingly provide solutions
that enable integration and growth for the UCaaS market.
3. UC R&D investment to decline – UC investment on R&D is expected
to decrease, forcing UC vendors to pick and choose specific UC
segments for R&D investment.
4. Mid-market is a new green field – Vendors will strengthen their GTM
for the mid-market leading to higher growth in this segment. Vendors’
focus will move from just recruiting to recruiting and sustaining
channel partners.
5. Video conferencing – Will continue to move from the conference
rooms to desktops, and from hardware to software solution. WebRTC
will see growth in the SMB and education sectors.
6. Google’s ‘Apps for Work’ and Microsoft’s ‘Skype for Business’ will
further disrupt the UC market – Microsoft will be more aggressive with
Office 365 and Skype for Business, and increase its penetration in
large and mid-sized enterprises. Google’s ‘Apps for Work’ has entered
enterprises in Asia-Pacific, especially in the education sector and will
break into mid-sized and small enterprises.
7. Wearables will continue to enter the enterprise – Smartwatches
might monitor employee activity, manage schedules and help to push
notifications and communications to customers. Wearables are also
expected to popularize the use of ‘speech to text’.
8. Communications will continue to drift away from the desktop – Asia-
Pacific is rapidly catching up with the trend of working from remote
locations, from home, and while in transit. Many offices will migrate
away from fixed desks, reducing the need for hard endpoints and
boosting sales of softphones, and UC and mobile clients. As a result,
IP phones and digital phone sales will decline.
9. Headset sales to go up – Softphones, and UC and mobile clients will
see accelerated adoption. In addition, ‘Skype for Business’ will create
a strong business proposition for the enterprise headset market. As a
result, market leaders, such as Plantronics and Jabra, will experience
high growth in enterprise headset products. Wireless headsets will
have faster growth than wired as employee usage moves from one
device to many devices.
10. Resurgence in hosted telephony market – Service providers will
attack the hosted telephony market with new offerings and with new
vigour, as telecommunications infrastructure across the Asia-Pacific
region is expected to continue improving in the future. Enterprises
will adopt hosted telephony as a part of UCaaS solutions, or as a
part of their future roadmap in UCaaS adoption.
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Channel
Vision
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May - June 2016