In a recent webinar, UK-based IP-migration-focused research and consulting business, Cavell, revealed some exciting updates regarding their extensive, ongoing studies of current trends and services in the cloud communications market.
For the last 12-13 years, Cavell have been working with service providers and vendors, supplying them with valuable information on what markets are peaking and dipping in the present, and what markets are expected to grow/decline in the future.
In order to give our readership an overview of what Cavell have predicted will happen in the cloud communications market over the next few years, UC Today has written a detailed report that summarises everything that was discussed.
Cloud Communication Market & Trends
Cavell opened with the news that, for the first time in the UK, the cloud communications market has broken 3 million users with a growth rate of 300,000 in the last 6 months and just under 600,000 over the past year.
This rapid growth, they added, is the fastest they’ve ever recorded over such a period and is a clear indication of the impact cloud is having on the world of business as more and more companies embark on their digital transformation.
Driven largely by SMEs, the growth of cloud communications is mostly down to the vast number of providers successfully operating in that space and it is expected that 40% of seats in the market will be cloud users that have moved away from on-premises PBX services by 2022.
Another interesting point raised was that, in the UK market, BroadSoft has had the most success at securing seats in the SME market, while Cisco is leading the way up at large enterprise level. For the mid-markets, however, it was said that growth is nowhere near as high as the former two as the channels targeting it are still comfortable selling on-premises PBXs.
Future Development
Cavell then went on to explain what features are currently available from vendors on the market and how they are predicted to perform over the next 12 months.
First up were team collaboration apps that, rather surprisingly, are expected to remain fairly low on service providers offerings over the next year and aren’t expected to grow much at all. Though, they added, there are many reports of vendors building their own team collaboration tools for the future, a lack of certainty on their value in the current market appears to have put vendors off trying to sell them now.
The contact centre market, however, has grown rapidly with a high percentage of vendors bundling advanced contact centre solutions into their value-added services and Cavell predicts that it will play a significant role in the development of cloud communications over the next few years. Of the vendors reviewed during Cavell’s research, it was revealed as much as 15% of customers demanded contact centre solutions and that number is expected to keep on rising as we move forward into the future.
Next, Cavell informed us that the SIP Trunking market has grown at a stronger rate in 2017 than it has done for the last few years and it is mainly driven by a few key providers targeting the larger enterprise.
Though Britain opted out of the review for IP migration, it was revealed that the number of businesses across Europe that are switching out their ISDN/PSTN lines for SIP is rising dramatically and Britain is expected to follow this trend.
Moreover, following on from BT’s announcement of their plan to close down their ISDN network by 2025, Cavell stated that, though the set date hasn’t driven as much movement in the market as they expected so far, if BT starts to proactively migrate their base to IP, the SIP Trunking market quickly will pick up speed.
