UC still limited by bandwidth

The South African unified communications (UC) market is expected to reach projected revenues of $63 million by 2013, despite bandwidth limitations restricting the potential growth of UC.

According to a statement released by Louis Helmbold, Axiz, business development manager, HP Networking, says in a statement that bandwidth limitations are hindering organisations from deploying UC strategies.

“Organisations continue to use the Internet as a primary business tool and when considering voice and data convergence, bandwidth costs and limitations are affecting adoption rates of video,” says Helmbold.

Helmbold states, as the unified communications market evolves, the biggest challenge that will face South African organisations is whether the workforce is ready for the change that the technology will deliver.

“A highly skilled and self-disciplined workforce is required for unified communications to be successful. Never mind a dynamic management team that is receptive to a new working style.”

Scott Cory, Jabra business unit manager, says SA as an early technology adopter, is one of the emerging countries where UC is going to take off. “UC in SA is currently experiencing a 40% year-on-year growth.

“Employee collaboration and productivity is driving the demand for unified communications. SA has traditionally been challenged by bandwidth restrictions and costs and is still not the cheapest market in terms of bandwidth, but high-speed bandwidth is here.”

However, Cory agrees with Helmbold and points out that UC will change the way South African businesses traditionally work. He says UC is driving the growth of the mobile workforce.

In addition, employees are driving the adoption of mobile consumer devices. “The amount of time mobile workers are spending outside of the office is increasing on a daily basis. UC is being driven by the user, especially by the younger generation. Around 40% of knowledge workers will give up their desktop office phones in 2014.

“The second interesting trend,” says Cory, “is that a lot of companies sweated their assets during the recession and we are now starting to see them spend again. By 2013, it's expected that the UC spend will be 17.7% of a company's annual budget.”

Cory predicts, in the near future, UC giants will be snapping up smaller companies as the number of mergers and acquisitions rises.

“The effect of this,” explains Cory, “is that the midsize UC companies will not be able to compete against the giants. We've already seen this happening with last year's Tandberg acquisition made by Cisco.”

According to global research firm Gartner, by 2014, 90% of organisations will support corporate applications on personal devices.

Gartner explains unified communications is seeing a shift from devices to information and interaction with peers. It says this change will herald the start of the post-consumerisation era.

By 2013, Gartner says 80% of businesses will support a workforce using tablets. The firm states: “The Apple iPad is the first of what promises to be a huge wave of media tablets focused largely on content consumption, and to some extent communications, rather than content creation.”