Dell'Oro Group: Unified Communications Market Saw Modest Gain in 2Q09

Market research firm Dell’Oro Group’s Enterprise Telephony Quarterly Report shows that the unified communications solutions market rebounded slightly in the second quarter of 2009 -- gaining 3 percent over the first quarter of 2009. According to the firm this was the first quarter of growth since the third quarter of 2008.

 

The top four UC vendors based on second quarter revenues were Avaya, Cisco (News - Alert), Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent.

“Although many customers are delaying spending, we have begun to see a faster turnaround in purchases of IP equipment than their older-TDM counterparts,” said Alan Weckel, director at Dell’ (News - Alert)Oro Group, in a release. “Over the short term, we believe many customers are extending the life of their PBXs with software upgrades to call control in order to reduce budget outflows.”

The report shows that IP PBX (News - Alert) shipments in North America improved during the second quarter over the prior quarter’s decline, while shipments to Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific declined sequentially due to downward pressure from the weakened economy.

A lot of companies in the U.S. were looking at unified communications just prior to the economic downturn and many of them postponed upgrading their telephone systems to UC due to the cost involved. It could be that some of them are now starting to invest in UC systems after concluding that they can save on communications costs, long term, while at the same time improving employee productivity and enhancing collaboration.

Unified communications is the integration of multiple communications systems on a single platform. A UC platform, for example, might combine telephony, email, Web chat, SMS and audio/video conferencing on a single platform -- and utilizes more sophisticated and intelligent routing schemes than traditional PBXs/ACDs (automated call distributors). UC adds other productivity enhancing features as well – including presence, which is the ability to view the availability status of other users on the same network. In addition, UC enables users to set their personal preferences for the modes of communication they prefer to use – in fact most UC systems let users define how, when and where they can be contacted, as well as by whom. Most UC vendors typically take a hardware-centric approach -- but software arguably plays an equally important role in facilitating UC features and capabilities.

 

Dell’Oro Group’s Enterprise Telephony Quarterly Report offers in-depth coverage of the market with tables covering manufacturers’ revenue, average selling prices, line (analog/digital and IP) and unit shipments for PBX (IP, hybrid, traditional PBX, traditional key) and telephones (IP and legacy business phones). The report also includes tables covering manufacturers’ revenue for unified communications and enterprise voice applications.