UC: A Hope on Horizon

In the post recession scenario, large organizations and SMBs have become
optimistic in the adoption of unified communications (UC) in order to integrate
communication tools with real-time business processes. The UC is fast emerging a
business necessity, and the market trends are testimonial to the phenomenal
growth. Newer IT companies and vendors are coming up with their UC portfolios,
while other established names in the industry are set to explore it as a new
business vertical. The companies in this list include Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft,
NEC, 3Com, HCL and Tata Communications, who have already come up with aggressive
market plans in the UC domain.

With growing technology-driven demands, political organizations are
increasingly looking at collaboration tools to bridge the digital gap. BJP's
national convenor of IT, Prodyut Bora, who has recently been voted as one of the
'100 Bold CIOs In The Country', said that they would e-connect district offices
within next couple of years. The party has developed IP-based UC system that
facilitates instant messaging and video telephony in both broadcast and
individual modes. This open source platform is based on broadband connectivity
between various regional offices, and wired and wireless local area networks
(LANs).

Going by the trends and adoption, the UC platform facilitates reduction in
individual latency as well as increases organizational efficiency and delivery
of real-time business processes. IBM has entered into the UC marketplace with
various products in 2006, and released the UC middleware platform and IBM Lotus
Sametime as well as services that include IBM WebSphere Unified Messaging, IBM
Global Technology Services. Software major, Microsoft, showed its presence in
late 2007 with the launch of Office Communications Server-a software-based
solution that runs on Windows. Cisco has already come up with Cisco WebEx
applications that facilitates Webinars and Webcasts, and enterprise-wide instant
messaging. "UC is still a buzzword in India, and the CTOs and CIOs are not
geared up due to lack of infrastructure and convergence. In the last couple of
months, large companies have started pilot projects. The enterprise telephony
and mobility are all set to be the main drivers of UC. Trends have been
improving over the past one year," said Ravinder Raina, Country Head-Platform
Solutions Group, NEC India.

The market basics

The market for UC technologies is still at infancy but is expected to grow
at CAGR of 12 percent by 2013. Based on end-user revenue, the UC market is set
to be $15.9 billion by 2012. However in the Indian context, the market is steady
and is projected to grow at CAGR of around 22 percent and would become $1,200
million by 2012, as per IDC study. The projection include the components, such
as enterprise instant messaging, unified messaging, integration software, IM
federation, and conferencing and collaboration tools. Despite of the
cost-cutting in IT budgets, the UC infrastructure and solutions are expected to
grow across the horizontal markets. Financial services led the market with a
share close to 30 percent followed by the energy and utilities vertical with a
share of around 12 percent.

"Currently, the UC market in India stands at $549 million, while $321million
comes from enterprise telephony that include 17 percent share of contact center
applications, 11 percent e-mail and messaging, 10 percent tele presence and
conferencing while one percent comes from mobility, which is still a long way to
go," Raina said.

Challenges galore

Given the widespread role of UC, the lack of general awareness,
interoperability of infrastructures and evolution from the existing platforms
are some of the major cumbersome elements involved. There is no single vendor
that could offer a comprehensive UC solution. However, those involved typically
include telephony, mobility, desktop application, unified messaging,
conferencing, collaboration solution providers. Unfortunately, the vendors are
grappling with issues that are related to automation and integration. In
addition, the critical aspects include general concern for security and
reliability, last-mile connectivity, lack of standard equipment and advancement
of business processes. According to a study by network-management vendor,
Network General, the UC applications have caused performance issues with other
applications as organizations continue to converge communications applications
onto their IP-based networks. Of the 600 IT managers, the study found that 60
percent of them consider VoIP a critical service in their communications
network, and further reveals that Internet, video and Web conferencing account
for 78 percent of IT managers' additional network traffic.

"The companies have their own legacy systems. To migrate to UC platform from
the existing one involves cost factor, which is in itself is a challenge. Also
the vendors are not in the collaboration mode. The IT heads are not able to take
call due to the lack of knowledge and awareness," said Raina. "The major
limitation in Indian market is the government regulations on PSTN and VoIP
interconnection which restricts companies to deploy the complete solution. The
other bottlenecks being availability of good broadband infrastructure and cost
of bandwidth is still high compared with mature markets," said Minhaj Zia,
National Sales Manager-Unified Communications, Cisco, India and SAARC.

Adoption

Accelerated by the adoption of IP telephony in the banking and financial
services, services industry verticals and government sector, UC is one of the
fastest growing segments in India. The relevance of unified, consolidated and
collaborative solution is becoming imperative to the business needs in the
Indian landscape. According to James Messer, Director-Technical Marketing,
Network General, the increase in workplace mobility is the driving factor for
unified communications and IT managers would be able to help their companies
communicate this effectively in order to streamline business processes. "The
demands for conference and collaboration are also coming up and UC can be
deployed for growing companies. It facilitates mobility and remote working,"
said Raina. According to him, solution providers (SPs) are the main drivers as
most customers depend on them. "We work with SPs as they have ready-to-serve
clients with them. They work on an opex model to maximize benefits for
customers," he added.

According to Zia, the network has evolved beyond the traditional role of
connectivity. In the next phase of Internet, networks will enable sophisticated
forms of human expression-voice and video-beyond personal computers, to Internet
telephones, cellphones, PDAs, iPods, video game consoles, and of course, to
televisions. This phase of the Internet is all about innovation and productivity
being centered on Web 2.0 and collaboration technologies such as unified
communications and tele presence. The market is also going to see a lot of
convergence of voice, video, and data with mobility that would further enable
in-person collaboration and interaction.

"The latest trends we're exploring include personalization, online
collaboration, and adaptivity-changing the online experience to reflect the
visitor's interests and behaviors," said Zia. The adoption for a unified
communications system among corporate and enterprise continue to rise, and the
key drivers include business improvement, seamless communication, space
constraints, mobility and cost-efficiency. A recent CDW-G poll- 'Unified
Communications Delivers on Payback Expectations,' reveals that 57 percent of
their respondents were planning for UC adoption, while 25 percent were assessing
the technology in 2010. BFSI, hospitality, manufacturing and defense are some of
the potential sectors for the UC deployment in India. "According to a Frost &
Sullivan study, currently, India leads the SAARC region's UC market in terms of
total spending and better overall awareness of UC," added Zia.

Why UC?

According to 'UC End User Productivity Study' undertaken by Unified
Communication Strategies, the platform helps organizations and individuals in
making faster business decisions, offer remote access, accelerate collaboration,
and is cost-effective. The business benefits broadly focus on user productivity
(UC-U) and business processes (UC-B). Among multiple benefits, the UC provides
boundary less organization-wide collaboration, transformation of business
processes and consolidation of video, voice and data onto a single IP-based
network. In addition, it accelerate customer relationship in a real-time
business scenario. As green IT has become a buzz world in the corporate
parlance, the UC deployment pave a path for green IT.

The UC solution helps organizations and enterprises in the reduction of their
carbon footprint and savings on power and cooling. However, Raina said that
green IT will be a driver for UC but it might take some time in India. UC is a
viable option for the space-constraint companies as the employees can work from
any location with their virtual presence. Computer Economics Research in its
finding indicates that the early adopters of UC are reaping business
benefits-both in RoI and TCO. According to Zia, as unified communications
applications become more prevalent in the extended workspace, more organizations
are also realizing the associated benefits. Results documented by Sage Research
demonstrate a multitude of benefits-both in terms of employee time savings and
financial savings. Unified business communications applications not only
facilitate productivity improvements for employees wherever their work takes
them, they can also enhance the way in which all employees communicate.

The road ahead

The trend in UC would continue to grow as organizations and businesses are
looking forward to communicate seamlessly with colleagues and customers
irrespective of geographies. According to Tokyo-based Nomura Research Institute,
UC offers ample of potentialities for creating new values with optimal
communication media. The paper points out that the leading vendors will begin to
evolve UC on a full-scale basis, and by 2012, UC will be widely used for
business activities.

The study further indicates that during this phase, the performance of wired
and wireless connections would be better as represented by NGN (next generation
networking) and WiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) as well
as prices of large-screen displays might be reduced. These factors would lead to
the penetration of such kind of communication technologies.

Muntazir Abbas

muntazira@cybermedia.co.in