UC Today recently attended the European VoIP Summit held in Amsterdam this October to catch up on the latest news from the industry.
Organised by research and consultancy group, Cavell, the European VoIP Summit conference brought together numerous representatives from key brands within the industry such as BroadSoft, Cisco, Polycom and Nuvias to deliver an in-depth review of all the latest trends and predictions of where the European VoIP marketplace currently is and where it is heading over the next 12months.
In the opening keynote presentation, senior analysts at Cavell, Rob Kurver and Dominic Black, gave an overview on the current state of the European markets, informing attendees that the age of ISDN is coming to an end in Europe with KPN terminating their support in the Netherlands for the channel in 2019, followed by BT in 2020 and others expected to follow the trend in the future.
Though cloud adoption in the German market is currently way behind the UK and Benelux, it was revealed that the country is expected to experience a huge 21% year on year growth over the next five years, with France rising at 20% and Southern Europe trailing behind at 13.5%.
In contrast to the decline of ISDN, we are now facing a huge increase in SME and enterprise cloud adoption throughout Europe, with the market expected to grow from $21.2 billion in 2015 to $33.7 billion in 2018 at a CAGR of 16.7%, thus creating a fantastic opportunity for service providers to branch out into new markets that extend beyond traditional voice and connectivity alone.
Leading this growth, we can see that IaaS (3 Year CAGR 15%) and collaboration apps (3 year CAGR 20%) will play a crucial part in the future of business communications and service providers must recognise and incorporate these services into their propositions if they want to stay competitive and relevant in the future.
However, now that we are seeing big brands moving in to SME markets to capitalise on this growth, with the launch of Microsoft Teams, Workplace by Facebook and RingCentral’s purchasing of Glip, there is a rising concern for what kind of role the service provider will have in the future of the market and whether or not they will be able to compete with these huge enterprises going direct to the customer.
Service Providers Vs Large Valued Business
In the opening panel session, there was a discussion on how big vendors, particularly Microsoft, have changed the game considerably within the industry by focussing their attention on the desktop and driving the idea of the complete, unified digital workspace.
If we were to look at Microsoft Teams, for example, and its recent take-over of Skype for Business, we can see how the application has evolved from a collaboration tool alone and repositioned itself as a centralised communications hub for all of Microsoft Office’s functions.
With this service, businesses can now easily access multiple channels (voice, video, conferencing, IM), from a single application that’s delivered to them directly by a single vendor – and the convenience and efficiency it offers, along with the world-class, industry-leading technology, is very concerning for the service provider that’s trying find value in the modern market.
However, though there are doubts, Technology Leader of Collaboration at Cisco, Johan van Puymbrouck, believes this shift is a huge advantage for the service provider, claiming that
“Our advantage is the way we communicate, the way we set up the desktop, the way we facilitate the cloud is what will help an enterprise better than anything else, and although I am convinced that Microsoft will definitely not be the platform of choice for a lot of enterprises, it has opened up a discussion on these key areas.”
In a sense, Puymbrouck believes this evolution of the desktop is a benefit for service providers as it opens up new opportunities for them to use their expertise to guide their customers through the digital transformation process and prepare them for the oncoming change by guiding them along their digital journey.
Adding to this, EVP Unified Comms Practice & Siphon MD at Nuvias, Steve Harris, added
“There are lots of these new disruptive forces offering often freemium based economic models that encourage subscriber growth. What’s quite hard about that, however, is it’s very difficult to monetise and actually branch out into additional services, and that’s something service providers have in their DNA. What we’re seeing now is a great opportunity for service providers if they take some of this innovation and do it from a regulatory perspective”, Harris states.
With this in mind, knowing how to retain customers is more important than an acquisition alone and I think the service providers that do that and have a trusted brand in that area actually have a much bigger part to play than a lot of these larger valued businesses that are looking to take that installed base away.”
Though big vendors such as Microsoft and Amazon do have the advantage of market-leading products and huge revenues, what they lack is an ability to connect with the customer on a personal level – especially for the SME.
Service providers, however, have years of experience working within their specific field and know what their customers need, and in a market as diverse as Europe, where the demands of businesses differ greatly depending on which region they’re in, having that personalised insight on the customer and a strong reputation for reliability is a huge asset.
UC Today Opinion
Overall, the main points to take from this event are that the cloud market is set to continue it’s rapid growth over the next five years, with the bulk of cloud adoption coming from both Germany and France. Having said that, the conference also established how fragmented Europe is as a whole, with each section having separate needs that can’t be met with a one-size-fits-all proposition.
Moreover, though there has been some concern about the disruption caused by big vendors such as Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook moving into the SME market, it’s clear that service providers will still have an important role to play in driving the market forward in the future and their deep relationships with customers and years of experience working in these separate fields places them at a considerable advantage of the larger brands.
Cloud Communications Summit 2018
For any readers wishing to attend the next event, Cavell have announced they will be running their 2018 summit (now re-branded as Cloud Communications Summit) which will be held on 8th March 2018 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London.
Early Bird tickets can be purchased here at a reduced fee until 15th December.
See you there!
