As if there were any doubt as to the opportunity for channel partners in cloud services, new research has revealed that the global unified communications as-a-service (UCaaS) market is expected to grow from $2.52 billion in 2013 to $7.62 billion by 2018, at an estimated CAGR of 24.8 percent from 2013 to 2018.
According to a fresh report from Markets and Markets, telephony is the most used technology for now and will remain so in coming few years as well. The global UCaaS telephony market is expected to grow from $0.87 billion in 2013 to $2.48 billion by 2018, at an estimated CAGR of 23.3% from 2013 to 2018.
But even though telephony will be the most used technology for the years to come, going forward, UCaaS market growth is driven by the emergence of video technology and collaboration solutions.
Meanwhile, the UCaaS collaboration application market revenue is expected to grow from $540.74 million in 2013 to $1.75 billion by 2018, at an estimated CAGR of 26.5% from 2013 to 2018. Companies across all sectors are using UCaaS, cloud based unified communication which integrates web conferencing, video conferencing, messaging, VoIP and presence over cloud that helps to decrease front load capital cost as they are offered on a per seat basis, enabling businesses to scale communications easily and effectively, thereby reducing travel time and leaner business processes.
There are architectural evolutions at foot as well: Enterprises want to deploy UCaaS on their existing infrastructure, the firm noted. This results in hybrid UCaaS, which allows many cloud providers to integrate their services with UCaaS service providers. Companies are shifting from on premise to cloud-based UC, which is largely driving adoption. With enterprise mobility on the rise, the opportunity for UCaaS can prove lucrative market for the vendor ecosystem.
In light of all of these trends, investment in cloud services is a must for vendors to maintain their viability, according to IDC.
By 2016, IDC predicts, hosted private cloud (HPC) services will be worth over $24 billion yearly worldwide. From 2012 to 2016, a compound yearly growth rate of over 50 percent is also predicted for HPC services, which is described by IDC to include both dedicated and virtual private clouds.
“IDC anticipates that virtual private cloud will be the predominant operational model for companies wanting to take advantage of the speed and lower capital costs associated with cloud computing while cloud service providers will welcome the move away from the expense of dedicated 1:1 physical systems for delivering their business process and datacenter outsourcing and other services,” said Robert Mahowald, research vice president of SaaS and Cloud Services at IDC. “Quite simply, vendor failure in cloud services will mean stagnation. Vendors need to be doing everything they can – today – to develop a full range of competitive cloud offerings and operating models optimized around those offerings.”
