In Africa, SA is the leader in unified communications (UC), with an estimated $75 million in vendor revenues, compared to $32.2 million in Nigeria and $14 million in Kenya.
This is according to Frost and Sullivan analyst, Jiaqi Sun, who opened the ITWeb Business Comms event, at The Forum, in Bryanston.
Voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and unified messaging are two key components of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions, and represent 85% of the total revenues of integrated UC solutions, Sun highlighted.
The public sector leads the VOIP market in SA, with the retail and tourism industries seeing strong growth between 2008 and 2010. This growth rate, of about 30%, will continue for the next five years, notes Sun.
“Regulatory restrictions placed on VOIP inhibited the uptake of UC; this is changing, with increasing numbers of contact centres and business process organisations driving UC,” Sun said.
“Improving network capacity is a key driver for UCC solutions, as it improves workplace efficiency and reduces bandwidth costs, which improve network capacity,” Sun said.
For the SME, budgetary constraints are still a huge factor, as is limited interoperability of different systems and applications, when considering UCC solutions, he emphasised.
“A value-added unified communications solution should be simple to implement, easy for customers to exploit, and interoperable across networks and devices.”
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