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Follow UsAs SMBs are emerging in the Indian
business landscape and the recessionary dust is settling down,
unified communications solutions are poised to grow. But
unfortunately, organizational pain points and lack of awareness and
vendor's enterprise-friendly initiatives leads to ambiguity in the
marketplace. As vendors are yet to offer a complete end-to-end
on-premise solution, budget-constrained businesses hold the key for
growth of the UC market. The integrated solutions portfolio is being
widely sought by the enterprise sector with a focus to cut
operational costs, utilize resources and enhance productivity. The
study by Frost & Sullivan reveals that the total size of the UC
market in India is likely to grow more than $1 billion by the end of
2010.
"The evolution of Unified
Communications tools have seen a tremendous growth in the past one
year. With the constantly changing economic conditions, enterprises
have realized various benefits that UC provides. Hence, Indian
organizations have realized the benefits that UC tools provides
vis-à-vis the one time cost of deployment it needs," said
Shivashankar K, Country Manager, LifeSize Communications India.
Speaking on the key challenges for the adoption of UC solutions in
India, he said that SMBs have budget constraints and therefore, it
acts as a major hindrance in the adoption of UC tools.
"Interoperability is another major reason due to which Indian
organizations have restricted themselves from adopting UC tools. But
with the development in portable technologies, which can be used in a
single platform, such issues are taken care of," said
Shivashankar.
LifeSize Communications delivers
high-definition video communications products. It offers HD video
conferencing solutions to government, enterprise, education and
healthcare sectors. "The integrated unified platform is emerging
as the need of the hour now. The most important contributor to this
is the current economic condition that has fueled to the adoption of
UC tools and solutions due its ability to cut cost yet be efficient.
Since UC is an integration of various technologies of communication
in one platform, technologies like high-definition video conferencing
and tele-presence are also adding to the benefits of UC as a whole,"
he said.
According to the Frost & Sullivan
study, India leads the
region's UC market in terms of total
spending and better overall awareness. The report suggests that India
has a good potential for the growth of UC applications. It is growing
at the
of 7.9 percent, currently. "Also, the individual
components of unified communications are already witnessing healthy
double digit growth numbers, which is encouraging too. For instance,
while the audio video conferencing market is estimated to grow at 60
percent, e-mailing and IP telephony is growing at 20 percent and 30
percent CAGR respectively," Shivashankar added.
There has been a significant increase
in the adoption of unified collaboration solutions in the past few
years across various verticals like government, enterprise and
healthcare and it is likely to grow in India in the next few years.
"Enterprises are adopting technologies like tele-presence and
high-definition video communications as they are well aware of the
broader UC benefits. LifeSize delivers solutions that seamlessly
integrate into existing network environments and deliver an
impressive and natural communications experience. We deliver a rich
communications experience that connects globally dispersed teams,"
he said.
Unified communications environments
typically consist of different vendors resellers and SIs, who
interpolate in a broader environment. Collaboration and convergence
have become imperatives for CIOs in the current business model. "The
organizations should enable users to instantly collaborate using
their device of choice, and it is a key to the success of a UC
strategy. The challenge, however is the cost of an immediate and full
end-to-end UC implementation, which is prohibitive, and may require
an expensive and disruptive 'rip-and-replace' approach. Visual
communication is becoming a business need as it provides a rapid and
quantifiable RoI that can help cost-justify UC deployments. Global
organizations are continuing to focus on travel reduction as a way to
significantly cut costs," said Shivashankar.