Unison aims for the UK

Local enterprise communications management company Unison will target the UK for international expansion this year.

Director of strategic business development Keith Jones says 2012 will be a pivotal year for the company.

“The communications market has been evolving at breakneck speed for the last five years, and 2011 saw the explosion of the tablet market and saw smartphone sales eclipse PC sales for the first time. It is a very exciting time for us and we feel 2012 will be one of the most important years in the company's 28-year history.”

Jones says the shift in the communications market from fixed-line to voice over Internet Protocol and to mobile has been remarkable and happened quickly.

“Our development team in Cape Town has spent the last two years redeveloping our whole platform to cater for these shifts and 2012 will see these plans come to fruition.”

The director says the company already has a strong international footprint, with sites deployed in over 20 countries.

He explains that there is little time zone difference, no language barrier, it is an easy overnight flight, a relatively strong currency and most of the target customers are easily accessible in and around the London area.

“The market is not booming, but it remains economically sound and businesses there are generally trading well. All the businesses there have the same brief: drive down costs and drive up productivity. We can do both and have a... solution that will allow us to scale to service the largest customers.”

Unison has also found less resistance to the adoption of hosted or cloud offerings there.

At the same time, the company aims to grow its local market share.

“The market has shifted and the voice portion of the unified communications (UC) bill now accounts for less than 20% of the bill. Mobile accounts currently from anywhere between 40% to 60% and the mail less than 20%.

“What we see happening as the market mobilises is the shift towards mobile traffic accounting for up to as much as 80% of the UC bill,” says Jones.

He explains that the UC bill is typically the third largest single expense item a company has and it is not managed or controlled in a holistic or cohesive manner.

“In the current economic climate this is just not on. The explosion of the smartphone and tablet market is going have far-reaching effects for most businesses as they see data traffic explode, and see huge shifts in both staff and consumer behaviour.”