Initiatives by the government on decreasing the digital divide and increasing financial inclusion as well as the growing demand for network solutions will contribute to the UC growth
By Peter Quinlan
The unified communications solutions market is looking to increase revenues in the coming quarters along with the traditional verticals. Initiatives by the government on decreasing the digital divide and increasing financial inclusion as well as the growing demand for network solutions will contribute to this growth. Additionally, the introduction of verticals such as e-commerce, healthcare and hospitality will also play a significant role in the growth of this market.
Trends gaining popularity
Following are some of the trends that can be termed as the key growth drivers for the UC market:
UC-as-a-Service
In the upcoming year, adoption of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) will continue to grow in organisations of all sizes and in all vertical markets. Key drivers for this growth will be globally dispersed, mobile workforces. As-a-service models, or cloud-based communications, provides greater flexibility, many organizations can benefit from IT simplicity and scalability. Cost savings, the ability to easily scale services up or down, quick adoption of UC features and freeing up IT resources for projects related to a company’s core business are further fueling the adoption of UC.
Open APIs
With enterprises expanding their businesses, in terms of geography, workforce and services, it is becoming increasingly crucial to connect employees internally and to enable them to work more effectively with external stakeholders such as customers and partners. Hence, social collaboration tools are becoming an ever-more urgent priority for enterprises globally. However, as many are discovering, the challenges can be significant. It can be difficult to connect closed and proprietary social platforms with the context of everyday workflow, which is necessary if they’re to become widely used. Inside the enterprise, social platforms remain predominantly text-based.
The flexibility and interoperability of open APIs (application programming interface) address these challenges. Because of their accessibility, enterprises can customise the API-based tools they build. This will allow enterprises to design and refine social tools until they are a perfect fit for the enterprise business processes and IT architecture and their employees, thereby maximising participation and productivity gains as workforces become geographically disparate and as businesses look to expand their customer and partner base into new markets.
Instant messaging
In times when quick response is a key aspect of all types of communications, collaboration tools such as instant messaging are gaining prominence and are replacing email as the primary means of communication. By bringing team members together instantly, you can get everyone on the same page, while reducing the need for time-consuming meetings or back-and-forth emailing, thereby enhancing productivity.
Underlying Challenges
Some of the challenges that unified communications market faces in India are:
Lack of awareness on the benefits of UC adoption coupled with a resistance to change has been a hindrance in the Indian market. Earlier there were challenges around affordability and user experience regarding various UC solutions and platforms. However these have been addressed through multiple innovations by service providers in this space. Deployment of one solution that caters all the UC demands of an organisation is the need of the hour.
In creating and deploying a unified communications strategy that works today and in the future, the challenge lies in unifying the different islands of communication across platforms, software and endpoints around the globe. It’s a slow, complicated process that can cost enterprises plenty in time, talent, resources and lost business opportunities.
Ensuring seamless collaboration (Bata Case)
Bata, one of the world’s largest and oldest shoe companies, has more than 33 production facilities in 22 countries on five continents.
The company was facing a challenge ensuring seamless collaboration between all of its facilities without increasing operational costs. To overcome this issue, Tata Communications recommended its jamvee Unified Conferencing platform to Bata.
Jamvee Unified Conferencing is supported by Tata Communications’ global cloud and is delivered via its secure, global Tier 1 network that peers with all Internet networks.
Jamvee technology has enabled conferencing and collaboration for Bata across multiple platforms and devices – all at a very affordable and manageable cost. What started with implementation of facilities in just five countries, has now resulted in connecting virtually every major Bata operations centre around the world through the jamvee solution.
The author is Vice President, Integrated Business Video Services, Tata Communications