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To Lure India SMBs, Unified Communication Providers Must Develop Comprehensive SolutionsMUMBAI, India --(Business Wire)-- India SMBs spent approximately $165 million on unified communications (UC) in 2010, with close to three fourths of all businesses deploying UC applications. Instant messaging applications are ubiquitous and hosted audio & web conferencing applications show significant usage among businesses having 10+ employees, says AMI-Partners. The need for collaboration between employees and branch offices is a major driver, as is the promise of reduced costs. With the majority of India SMBs planning to hire additional employees, and 15 - 20% planning to open new branches, unified communications applications are poised for significant growth in the next five years. "Although India SMBs, especially SBs, still believe in the value of face-to-face meetings with partners & collaborators," says Neha Jalan, Senior Associate at AMI, "they are increasingly aware of the advantages of adopting unified communication applications such as web, audio and video conferencing to assist in closing the deal. By using these types of applications, businesses are able to cut travel time, manage expenses and increase productivity." Many India SMBs use a combination of pay-per-use and fixed monthly fee solutions. "Often," notes Jalan, "sophisticated solutions such as web/video conferencing are deployed by senior management primarily, on a pay-per-use basis, to interact with larger partners or foreign collaborators while audio conferencing solutions are used internally within branches at fixed monthly rates." Presently in India, no single vendor provides all of the UC elements for a complete UC solution. AMI-Partners' latest study, the "India SMB Cloud Playbook," notes high levels of interest in a complete integrated UC solution bundled with remotely managed services, or with productivity/collaboration suites. "There is considerable potential for incremental revenues and increased purchase probability with the introduction of such bundles at a fixed monthly cost," notes Jalan. About the Study AMI's 2011 SMB Cloud Playbook - Strategic and Tactical GTM Planning Guides provide vendors with a tactical framework for architecting cloud-based services offerings to meet the growing demand for cloud services "bundles" and a perspective on cloud-related dynamics shaping up in the SMB space, including:
For more information about these studies, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, please call 212-944-5100, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.ami-partners.com. About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence - with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and "go-to-market" solutions. AMI was founded in 1996. Since its inception, the firm has built a world-class management team, each with ten to fifteen years' experience in IT, telecom, online communications or multimedia. AMI has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 23 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs, Cloud services studies and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.
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