The market for Unified Communications is in a constant state of flux as new trends and development push for evolutions in the industry. Vendors are consolidating, service providers are gradually moving towards the Clouds, and customers are on the look-out for partners that can help them to achieve the best success in a digitally-transforming world.
Since there seems to be no single, established pace for every country in today's UC space, we spoke to leading consulting and research company Cavell, about how they think the market is evolving. Dominic Black, Senior Market Analyst at Cavell Group, provided his insights in a brief international overview.
How Is the Market Changing Internationally?
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Dom Black, Senior Market Analyst at Cavell Group[/caption]
Starting from a European perspective, Dominic told me that different countries are currently moving at different paces. For instance, the UK and Dutch markets are making the move to cloud communications, with a lot of focus on PBX replacements. On the other hand, the Nordic markets are very mobile-focused, and there's a lot of interesting developments happening around the potential of mobile.
"Where we're really seeing Growth markets emerge is around France, Germany, and Italy. All these spaces are primed for exceptional growth - particularly Germany as it embraces the "All IP" strategy with Deutsche Telecom. Italy also has a great deal of opportunity around it, but it's been held back by a lack of affordable, and reliable access - something that we think SD-Wan has the power to overcome."
Black noted that SD-WAN will be important across the board when it comes to helping service providers deliver new cloud communication services in spaces that were inaccessible before.
How Important is Consolidation?
Consolidation has been a significant trend for UC in the last year or so. Dominic noted that many US vendors are beginning to move into the UK with new partnerships and cross-border transactions, something that the Cavell group expects to see more of in the future. For instance, Star2Star and BlueFace completed their merger at the beginning of this year.
