Unified communications (UC) news gets a lot of play in the communications technology space, but often the focus is on the worldwide market as a whole or “Western” regions of the world like Europe and the U.S. It’s not everyday that a magnifying glass is applied “down under” in Australia, examining the UC market there. That is, however, exactly what Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) did recently.

 

In a Tuesday report, “Australia Unified Communications Services Report 2008,” the research firm forecasted impact of the global economic crisis on this particular UC market, and highlighted recent growth.

 

During 2007, Frost & Sullivan said, the UC services market in Australia brought in roughly AU$340.2 million. Of that revenue, 55.7 percent came from various hosted UC services like e-mail, conferencing and accounting.

 

The research firm was cautiously optimistic about the outlook for Australia’s UC services market during the next two years. While the global economic turmoil will no doubt have an effect, Frost & Sullivan still thinks revenues for this market will double by 2014, at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7 percent (2007-2014).

 

Service providers and systems integrators are the main beneficiaries of Australian interest in UC, Frost & Sullivan said. That’s because UC inherently requires integrating a variety of applications and business processes — resulting in projects that are often quite complex and can’t succeed without solid understanding of the voice, network and desktop components being used.

 

Integration and implementation services, therefore, are the second biggest contributors to UC revenue in Australia — adding up to 16.2 percent. Companies dominating the market include IBM (News - Alert) Global Technology Services, Dimension Data, HP, Optus/Alphawest and Telstra.

 

Contributors to UC services growth in Australia include (as noted) maintenance services (14.9 percent for 2007) as well as consulting services (4.8 percent) and managed services (6.8 percent).  Frost & Sullivan said that the first of these will decline over time as “system integrators innovate their offerings to deliver higher-margin services in the hosted, consulting, integration and managed services segments.” Growth will also be somewhat slow for consulting, in large part because organizations tend to be reluctant to invest in “the costly pre-sales process of building a UC strategy to integrate into the overall business processes.”

 

The market for managed UC services in Australia, Frost & Sullivan said, “is in the early stages of development, it will become an important growth area as system integrators bundle the offering with other add-on features to help drive revenues further.”

 

Ultimately, the report said, a variety of factors combined — economic situation, desire for simple technology, natural price sensitivity for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) — likely will create additional Australian interest in hosted UC solutions.

 

“Currently there are not many system integrators in Australia that have attained the prerequisite level of expertise in complex integration projects encompassing network, voice and desktop components,” said Frost & Sullivan analyst Audrey William, in a statement.

 

William continued: “This shortage of UC skills will create significant opportunities for system integrators and service providers in the next few years. To capitalize on those opportunities, services organizations need to start developing the appropriate skills now. It's going to require investment and a commitment to training and certification over the next 12 to 18 months.”