Despite limited bandwidth, unified communications solutions are heading for a boom, according to research house Frost & Sullivan's latest analysis, which looks at the local collaborative tools market.
Research analyst Spiwe Chireka says collaboration is becoming increasing popular.
"Rising uptake among small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and the advent of Web-based solutions, will continue to promote this growth," she says.
"While collaboration was traditionally for large enterprises with an extensive geographical presence, there are now a growing number of solutions tailored to SMEs."
The popularity of unified communications will support the expansion of integrated collaborative solutions and vice versa, maintains Chireka.
An uptake in collaboration, according to her, also has implications for the traditional big players in the software arena.
"The advent of vendor-developed (as opposed to community-developed) open source solutions, and the increasing uptake of Web-based solutions, are becoming more prevalent," she notes.
"Desktop solutions are projected to decline and open source solutions will become formidable substitutes to proprietary software."
Frost & Sullivan says management collaborative tools will experience the highest growth levels in the corporate market, and vendors need to start marketing these in terms of a good balance between relevance and operations, as well as cost and ease of use.
"Unfortunately, it seems some vendors are simply rolling out their solutions and expecting them to sell themselves," says Chireka.
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