Market Overview

The unified communications and collaboration market is expected to register a CAGR of over 8% over the forecast period 2020 - 2025. Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC &C) have fundamentally changed how organisations manage internal and external communications.

  • Growing penetration of mobile devices and increasing adoption of BYOD trend across enterprises is driving the market’s growth positively. For instance, A survey by Cisco reported that 69% of the IT decision-makers favor BYOD as an optimistic addition to workplace policy as it saves workers time
  • Enterprises are increasingly accepting BYOD to improve employee productivity. UCC technology leverages this BYOD eco-system to enable efficient communication with mobile resources.
  • Th growing trend to reduce IT infrastructure costs and a reduction in capital expenditures is pushing the orgnanisations to implement cloud services for their enterprise communications requirements. For instance, An growing number of enterprises are considering pay-as-you-go communications models built on Software-as-Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service delivery models.
  • According to Ribbon Communications, Inc. UC Study, 68% of large (more than 1,000 employees) companies and 46% of small (1-20 employees) companies planned to adopt some form of UC in the next two years.
  • Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises are also adopting Unified Communications. The major factor driving UC adoption in SME’s is the need to improve collaboration, especially among remote and mobile workers, and boost productivity.
  • According to a survey conducted by Plantronics, 54% of small businesses were utilizing UC or planning to implement the technology platform which integrates desk phones, PCs and mobile devices into one data and voice network so that these devices can talk to each digitally.



Scope of the Report

Unified Communications encompasses a wide array of solutions and tools that a business needs to effectively communicate and collaborate, combined within one single unified application. UC&C integrates communication tools such as IP Telephony Calling, Instant Messaging, Voice, Web Conferencing, Audio Conferencing, and Video Conferencing, among others, to interact together in a virtually seamless way.

Key Market Trends

Growing Adoption of UC &C Solutions in Retail Driving the Market’s Growth

  • The retail industry has transformed dramatically over the past few years, laying new demands on stores of all sizes. Offering a wide range of products at lower costs is no longer considered as a unique advantage for vendors in the retail sector.
  • Retailers are heavily investing in store-level communication technologies to ensure there is a smooth flow of information. They are adopting UCaaS as a way to enhance omnichannel marketing and deliver a more seamless buyer experience as they move between brick-and-mortar and e-commerce market spaces.
  • By implementing unified communications capabilities, retailers can focus on longer-term strategy. Additionally, they can more easily expand and grow, and profits can enhance as communications costs decline. The growth of the retail industry is expected to drive the market’s growth further.
  • Moreover, Vendors are introducing solutions in specific to the retail industry. For instance, In December 2018, Avaya Holdings Corporation expanded cloud communications offerings for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) through a new storefront enabling simple online purchase and fulfillment. The company is offering this breadth of cloud solutions through a simple storefront, for retail customers in conjunction with its trusted agent and partner channel.



North America is Expected to Hold the Major Share

  • North America is expected to hold the highest share owing to technological improvements, increasing cloud adoption, and growing adoption of UC &C by enterprise-level companies.
  • Moreover, the region has a strong foothold of UC & C vendors which contributes to the region’s growth. Some of them include Cisco Systems, Inc., Mitel Networks Communication, Avaya, Inc., West Corporation and RingCentral, Inc. among others.
  • The shift in delivering the access of business-critical information to the employees, regardless of their geographical location, has pushed the rapid adoption of BYOD in the region. Many Canadian companies use BYOD, not for cost savings but more to boost employee productivity and retain talent. As BYOD heightens, a surge in mobile devices is also expected to contribute to the expansion of the market.
  • With the growing demand for cloud communications in the region, there has been a surge in collaboration among platform and device vendors, services providers, technology developers, and others to introduce feature-rich, reliable and secure hosted internet protocol (IP) telephony and Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) offerings. This is expected to offer opportunities for innovative communication service providers in the region to target larger organizations which have complex IT and communications requirements.
  • The organisation in the United States are focusing on meeting the expectations and demands of an increasingly digital customer base, asking for better co-operation and communication between the staff to provide seamless services to the customers.
  • Further, Amazon USA has released Chime, a cloud-based UCaaS, hosted in Amazon Web Service’s cloud. It provides video conferencing service to enterprises and works on both desktop and mobile phones. It was deployed in retailer Brooks Brothers stores as a pilot project.



Competitive Landscape

In 2018, the unified communications and collaboration market witnessed rapid innovation, industry consolidation, and a shift toward team and workstream collaboration. In recent years, the need to have a full UC & C platform caused many vendors to consolidate because the fastest way to accomplish this was to acquire the customer base. The key players operating in the market are focusing on new product development strategies to strengthen their product portfolio and increase customer acquisition.

  • January 2019 - Mitel Network Communications, a global vendor in business communications, announced updates to the company’s flagship unified communications (UC) solutions to provide businesses more advanced voice, collaboration and contact center features for driving productivity and offering better customer experiences.
  • October 2018 - RingCentral, Inc., a provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions, announced that it had completed its acquisition of Dimelo, a cloud-based digital customer engagement platform. With this acquisition, the company wants to strengthen the product portfolio of next-generation customer engagement solutions to meet customers’ preferences for interacting with businesses using digital channels.



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