UCaaS Growth Forecasts

Per a TMR study, “the global market is expected to reach a value of US$61.9 bn by the end of 2018 from US$22.8 bn in 2011. The market is estimated to exhibit a strong 15.70% CAGR between 2012 and 2018. The rising mobile workforce and increasing enterprise mobility are the primary factors expected to augment the growth of the global unified communications market in the forecast period.”

The TMR report looks at these “Key players operating in the unified communications market across the globe”: Avaya, Microsoft, Polycom, IBM, NEC, Cisco, Siemens Enterprise Comm., and Alcatel-Lucent. (I didn’t know ALU was in UC.)

Now another “study by Hexa Research reveals that increasing enterprise and workforce mobility will be important factors leading global unified communications market to attain revenues of more than $75.50 billion by 2020.”

Hexa suggests that “Rising penetration of smartphones will also augment demand for unified communication products. Many organizations, large and small, across the globe are encouraging practices such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), necessitating reliable unified communication solutions. “

“Hexa Research divides all unified communications products into on premise and cloud-based or hosted.” The leading players in the global unified communications market include the same players as TMR but named Verizon also.

Frost & Sullivan agree with that addition, because F&S “recognizes Verizon Enterprise Solutions with the 2016 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Market Leadership. The company garnered 25.1 percent of total market share.” F&S combine all VoIP, even SIP trunking, under their UC market.

Yet another firm called Research and Markets put out a forecast. “The global UCaaS market size is would grow from USD 15.7 Billion in 2015 to USD 31.3 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 10.5% during the forecast period.” While none of them agree on CAGR or market size, all agree it is growing — just in North America not as fast as investors would like.

R&M stated, “The major factors that are driving the [UC] market are low cost of ownership as compared to other communications tools, pay-per-use model, growing mobility trends and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), single platform integration of all communicating services, rapidly growing demand by SMBs, and continuous service support options.” They all parrot each other, or more likely they are parroting the marketing material of the UC players.

R&M reported that “The North America Unified Communication-as-a-Service (UCaaS) market size is would grow at a CAGR of 9.2% during 2016-2022. North America would be the largest market during the forecast period. Driving Small & Medium business UC adoption is the need to enhance collaboration, especially among remote and mobile workers, and boost productivity.”

R&M lists these UC players in NA: BT Group; 8×8; WEST; Voss Solutions; Polycom; Cisco; Microsoft; Computer Science Corp.; and Verizon. That is a limited list for certain. In North America, the largest players are VZ, MS, 8×8, Vonage, Fuze, West, RC, Comcast and quite a few others among the 2500+ providers in that geography.

CenturyLink was honored with Frost & Sullivan’s 2016 North American Hosted IP Telephony and UCaaS Growth Excellence Leadership Award, yet didn’t make any other the research firms’ lists.

Tags: centurylink, hosted pbx, microsoft, numbers, UC, unified messaging, verizon, vz
Related tags: unified communications, north america, communications market, unified communication, global unified, market