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

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UCaaS Round-Up (Tidbits 2443) – Nov 16, 2016

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UC Trends in Q1 2015 – Mar 24, 2015

Studying UCaaS – Aug 29, 2016

UCaaS: It isn’t All Bad News – Aug 25, 2016

Research Firms Missed Again on UC – Aug 24, 2016

What Pain Does UCaaS Solve? – Aug 22, 2016

UC Tidbits #2441 – Jul 05, 2016

Selling UCaaS as a Solution with Velis4 – Jun 17, 2016

Most Businesses Fear Change – May 19, 2016

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I am not going to be discussing M&A in this post. Those were big stories but I written enough on the mergers.

One big story was Google Fiber laying off and the CEO quitting. I tend to agree with Beranek on this: Google didn’t want to be a network operator. They just wanted to scare the Duopoly into building out broadband networks, so that Google could get more page views a la YouTube.

People don’t understand how much obstruction the Duopoly has in telecom. From lobbying to lawsuits, the phone and cable companies hate competition. They do everything they can NOT to compete. So given an upstart – Google Fiber or Covad or a muni network proposal – they go to town throwing up hurdles to success. Big is Bad for Consumers. Period.

The Election: Not getting political but it looks like Net Neutrality will be rolled back. Soon the 4 cellcos will make it look like 1996 again when it was Prodigy, AOL, CompuServe and DELPHI. Walled gardens are coming back. This will make it harder for any new entrants to get a foothold.

Devices: It was the year of device panic from Samsung’s blowing up to Apple eliminating the earphone jack. Add in the mix, the hacking of the IOT devices used for DDoS attacks against Krebs and DYN. It was 100K hacked cameras and DVRs that took down the Internet in October. It is only going to get worse. For a society obsessed with guns, why don’t we protect our information and devices? The Info War is going to set you back.

BTW, did you see that Quest Diagnostics was hacked? 34,000 accounts. Would you want your medical history online?

It was the year of hacks. Just ask the DNC.

Hacks and outages all year.

A lot of noise about Fake News (true), self-driving cars (almost) and SD-WAN (soon).

It was the Year of Uber. Of all the ride sharing apps including Lyft, Uber seemed to dominate. Close to 25 ride sharing apps have been funded to date, but it is Uber that leads the race, despite famous battles with cities around the globe.

VR got bigger (just as Scoble!) But like Augmented Reality, other than entertainment and early adopters I have no idea who is paying attention.

IOT was big. Everyone is still trying to figure it out. Or more precisely figure out how to monetize it for themselves.

Speaking of which, IAAS has blown up with one clear winner, AWS. At $13 Billion in revenue, it is all of the profit that Amazon shows. Rackspace, a rival, went private this year when a private equity firm acquired them for $4.3B. Like Dell, going private allows them time to pivot without the stock market beating them up. And speaking of Dell and pivots, what a year they had buying and selling. If the smoke ever settles in Austin, it will be an interesting story.

Artificial Intelligence is something I tend to think of as analytics and data mining. (We went from Big Data to AI.) From Siri to Alexa to IBM Watson, AI is entrenching in our world. A doctor friend uses Dragon Speak Medical Edition to transcribe his notes into the EHR system. That’s the kind of tech we need.

Microsoft added its Skype real time translation service to cell phones and landline. In a global economy, this will be a game changer. And this is on top of Skype4B crashing past 50 million seats.

What else did we see a lot of? UC&C or UCaaS. So much of it. But when you have 2000+ companies plus thousands of resellers trying to gain some ground, the noise level will go up. Most of that noise is pure hype, spin and hullabaloo. More on that in another post.

Is there anything I missed? Is there something you are watching? Let me know.

Tags: analytics, big data, broadband, duopoly, iaas, IOT, microcorp, outage, SDN, security, skype, UC, WAN
Related tags: google fiber, going, google, private, devices, noise

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Channel Outlook in a Mega-Merger World – Nov 07, 2016

National Harbor: In the Bubble – Aug 17, 2016

Business Continuity is a Conversation – Jul 19, 2016

Tidbits # 2436 – May 18, 2016

As A Service – Oct 09, 2015

Nothing But Vanilla Pudding – Jul 29, 2016

UC Tidbits #2441 – Jul 05, 2016

UCaaS Tidbits #2440 – Jul 05, 2016

Services Partners Should Take a Look at – May 10, 2016

Telecom Tidbits (Part 2433) – Apr 25, 2016

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I am not going to be discussing M&A in this post. Those were big stories but I written enough on the mergers.

One big story was Google Fiber laying off and the CEO quitting. I tend to agree with Beranek on this: Google didn’t want to be a network operator. They just wanted to scare the Duopoly into building out broadband networks, so that Google could get more page views a la YouTube.

People don’t understand how much obstruction the Duopoly has in telecom. From lobbying to lawsuits, the phone and cable companies hate competition. They do everything they can NOT to compete. So given an upstart – Google Fiber or Covad or a muni network proposal – they go to town throwing up hurdles to success. Big is Bad for Consumers. Period.

The Election: Not getting political but it looks like Net Neutrality will be rolled back. Soon the 4 cellcos will make it look like 1996 again when it was Prodigy, AOL, CompuServe and DELPHI. Walled gardens are coming back. This will make it harder for any new entrants to get a foothold.

Devices: It was the year of device panic from Samsung’s blowing up to Apple eliminating the earphone jack. Add in the mix, the hacking of the IOT devices used for DDoS attacks against Krebs and DYN. It was 100K hacked cameras and DVRs that took down the Internet in October. It is only going to get worse. For a society obsessed with guns, why don’t we protect our information and devices? The Info War is going to set you back.

BTW, did you see that Quest Diagnostics was hacked? 34,000 accounts. Would you want your medical history online?

It was the year of hacks. Just ask the DNC.

Hacks and outages all year.

A lot of noise about Fake News (true), self-driving cars (almost) and SD-WAN (soon).

It was the Year of Uber. Of all the ride sharing apps including Lyft, Uber seemed to dominate. Close to 25 ride sharing apps have been funded to date, but it is Uber that leads the race, despite famous battles with cities around the globe.

VR got bigger (just as Scoble!) But like Augmented Reality, other than entertainment and early adopters I have no idea who is paying attention.

IOT was big. Everyone is still trying to figure it out. Or more precisely figure out how to monetize it for themselves.

Speaking of which, IAAS has blown up with one clear winner, AWS. At $13 Billion in revenue, it is all of the profit that Amazon shows. Rackspace, a rival, went private this year when a private equity firm acquired them for $4.3B. Like Dell, going private allows them time to pivot without the stock market beating them up. And speaking of Dell and pivots, what a year they had buying and selling. If the smoke ever settles in Austin, it will be an interesting story.

Artificial Intelligence is something I tend to think of as analytics and data mining. (We went from Big Data to AI.) From Siri to Alexa to IBM Watson, AI is entrenching in our world. A doctor friend uses Dragon Speak Medical Edition to transcribe his notes into the EHR system. That’s the kind of tech we need.

Microsoft added its Skype real time translation service to cell phones and landline. In a global economy, this will be a game changer. And this is on top of Skype4B crashing past 50 million seats.

What else did we see a lot of? UC&C or UCaaS. So much of it. But when you have 2000+ companies plus thousands of resellers trying to gain some ground, the noise level will go up. Most of that noise is pure hype, spin and hullabaloo. More on that in another post.

Is there anything I missed? Is there something you are watching? Let me know.

Tags: analytics, big data, broadband, duopoly, iaas, IOT, microcorp, outage, SDN, security, skype, UC, WAN
Related tags: google fiber, going, google, private, devices, noise

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Related Entries

Channel Outlook in a Mega-Merger World – Nov 07, 2016

National Harbor: In the Bubble – Aug 17, 2016

Business Continuity is a Conversation – Jul 19, 2016

Tidbits # 2436 – May 18, 2016

As A Service – Oct 09, 2015

Nothing But Vanilla Pudding – Jul 29, 2016

UC Tidbits #2441 – Jul 05, 2016

UCaaS Tidbits #2440 – Jul 05, 2016

Services Partners Should Take a Look at – May 10, 2016

Telecom Tidbits (Part 2433) – Apr 25, 2016

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Yesterday I saw AVNET advertise 172,000 partners globally. Tech Data has mentioned 62K+. Sandler Partners said they had more than 4,000 sales partners. TCG serves more than 1500 agents.

RingCentral’s channel head penned a post about the strategy to hit all the large master agencies. I see press releases every week of providers signing on with distributors, because that is what master agents are now. They even call themselves distributors. They are like a brokerage house of vendor contracts.

Agents used to get a reputation as commission shoppers, but in today’s environment it is almost encouraged. The Agent Alliance was set up to help volume buy for master agents. To reduce risk by putting a lot deals through one good contract.

Masters pass through sales back and forth all the time. For example, Verizon deals typically go through one of the handful of platinum partners. Some of it has to do with quota and volume needed. Some of it has to do with the one-stop shop experience that they are portraying. Some of it has to do with programs like VZ, AT&T and Comcast needing experts to navigate the programs.

The masters look more and more like VADs such as AVNET or Tech Data. Large numbers of vendors are trying to get their SKUs in the catalog with the strategy of hope that this will be enough. That if we can just get in Jenne’s catalog we will be sailing!

There is a big problem with that: sell through.

What happens after you ink the deal with the VAD?

These programs work great for a specific business. One type of business is specialty shop that offers a narrow niche of products, like Fireeye or Juniper (for people that don’t want Cisco). Another is a vendor with demand created by the vendor in the buyers’ realm, like IBM, Cisco, Comcast, Verizon or Microsoft.

In the case of Microsoft and IBM, software licensing for under 10K seats is a pain in the butt. Better to let a VAD handle that. It is what they are designed for. In the case of hardware like Cisco or APC, the VAD is like a warehouse and logistics partner. Microsoft and Cisco helped create demand by making a certification ecosystem that generated demand through experts who were married to that product line. (Very hard to duplicate.)

Now if you are just one of 20+ VoIP providers in a catalog, how does that help you? It is a commodity game at that rate. To a certain extent, you are hoping for name recognition. For example, if it is LSI, Panterra, RingCentral, 8×8, Vonage Business, Star2Star, Broadview, Broadvoice, ShoreTel, West, Evolve IP, Momentum and say an MSP reselling CoreDial underhis own label. How does a partner decide? Seriously. I would be curious how executives at the ITSPs think that decision tree goes.

Factors that may influence that decision include price, SPIFF, integration, feature set, the channel manager and past experience.

Most VARs have accounts with multiple VADs (TD, Ingram, D&H, Synnex), in case the gear is not in stock near the customer site. However, when moving to white-label or hosted solutions like email, backup, and even software licensing, VARs will be picking one vendor. They won’t want to log into multiple systems to see the status of that client’s email or license is. One portal. So now those huge numbers of VARs who would buy gear from you just shrank because they are picking a single source for hosting.

Agents don’t want to become familiar with 20 provider systems and platforms. They want far less. The more familiar you are with a service and the environment around that vendor (quoting, features, ordering, support), the easier it is to sell. Less unknowns means comfort, means trust. Trust is required for sales. Remember that list of VoIP Providers? Name recognition – the brand – can convey trust.

There is an expensive and time consuming process for sell through. DSCI and TelePacific have been going through that since the merger. National road tours, webinars, numerous master agent events, expos like NextGen Cloud and Channel Partners, promotions, SPIFFs – to tell the story, to get your name in front of the partners. It isn’t ink and done. It is ink, then go push that rock up the hill every single day! Hustlin’ as Gary Vee says.

The other factor is sales friction. Personally, I never even consider selling cable because waiting 15 days for a site survey is total garbage, especially when the direct side gets it done in three days. There are carriers I won’t work with because I have in the past and got burned. (I am not alone here.) The easier you are to do business with the better.

It is getting harder and harder to sell through channel because of a number of factors including industry consolidation; musical chairs; too many vendors not enough partners; Noise and Attention; the cost of sales acquisition during both a price war and a SPIFF war; and buyer budget constraints.

The noise of UCaas, SD-WAN, DDoS Mitigation and cyber-security are getting louder every day. To the point that it is just noise, not a resonating message, but more like when that car pulls up to you at the traffic light with the music blaring drowning out the music in your own car. So you roll up the windows to drown it out. Yeah, that’s where we are.

Tags: branding, channel managers, channel partners, marketing, master agency, sellecom, VAD, var, voip
Related tags: software licensing, master agents, partners, agents, vendor, because

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Channel Sales Enablement: Part 2 – Jun 30, 2013

The Sub-Agent Dilemma – Sep 20, 2016

What Channel Are You Watching? – Apr 25, 2016

The Channel Target Cycle – Apr 08, 2016

What Business Model Should the VAR Examine? – Mar 30, 2015

The UC Install Opprtunity – May 19, 2014

VADs, VARs and Cable: How Does That Work? – Apr 02, 2014

What About Selling Cloud? – Feb 21, 2012

Channel Partner Enablement Tools – Oct 10, 2016

Where is the Demand? – Sep 08, 2016

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Yesterday I saw AVNET advertise 172,000 partners globally. Tech Data has mentioned 62K+. Sandler Partners said they had more than 4,000 sales partners. TCG serves more than 1500 agents.

RingCentral’s channel head penned a post about the strategy to hit all the large master agencies. I see press releases every week of providers signing on with distributors, because that is what master agents are now. They even call themselves distributors. They are like a brokerage house of vendor contracts.

Agents used to get a reputation as commission shoppers, but in today’s environment it is almost encouraged. The Agent Alliance was set up to help volume buy for master agents. To reduce risk by putting a lot deals through one good contract.

Masters pass through sales back and forth all the time. For example, Verizon deals typically go through one of the handful of platinum partners. Some of it has to do with quota and volume needed. Some of it has to do with the one-stop shop experience that they are portraying. Some of it has to do with programs like VZ, AT&T and Comcast needing experts to navigate the programs.

The masters look more and more like VADs such as AVNET or Tech Data. Large numbers of vendors are trying to get their SKUs in the catalog with the strategy of hope that this will be enough. That if we can just get in Jenne’s catalog we will be sailing!

There is a big problem with that: sell through.

What happens after you ink the deal with the VAD?

These programs work great for a specific business. One type of business is specialty shop that offers a narrow niche of products, like Fireeye or Juniper (for people that don’t want Cisco). Another is a vendor with demand created by the vendor in the buyers’ realm, like IBM, Cisco, Comcast, Verizon or Microsoft.

In the case of Microsoft and IBM, software licensing for under 10K seats is a pain in the butt. Better to let a VAD handle that. It is what they are designed for. In the case of hardware like Cisco or APC, the VAD is like a warehouse and logistics partner. Microsoft and Cisco helped create demand by making a certification ecosystem that generated demand through experts who were married to that product line. (Very hard to duplicate.)

Now if you are just one of 20+ VoIP providers in a catalog, how does that help you? It is a commodity game at that rate. To a certain extent, you are hoping for name recognition. For example, if it is LSI, Panterra, RingCentral, 8×8, Vonage Business, Star2Star, Broadview, Broadvoice, ShoreTel, West, Evolve IP, Momentum and say an MSP reselling CoreDial underhis own label. How does a partner decide? Seriously. I would be curious how executives at the ITSPs think that decision tree goes.

Factors that may influence that decision include price, SPIFF, integration, feature set, the channel manager and past experience.

Most VARs have accounts with multiple VADs (TD, Ingram, D&H, Synnex), in case the gear is not in stock near the customer site. However, when moving to white-label or hosted solutions like email, backup, and even software licensing, VARs will be picking one vendor. They won’t want to log into multiple systems to see the status of that client’s email or license is. One portal. So now those huge numbers of VARs who would buy gear from you just shrank because they are picking a single source for hosting.

Agents don’t want to become familiar with 20 provider systems and platforms. They want far less. The more familiar you are with a service and the environment around that vendor (quoting, features, ordering, support), the easier it is to sell. Less unknowns means comfort, means trust. Trust is required for sales. Remember that list of VoIP Providers? Name recognition – the brand – can convey trust.

There is an expensive and time consuming process for sell through. DSCI and TelePacific have been going through that since the merger. National road tours, webinars, numerous master agent events, expos like NextGen Cloud and Channel Partners, promotions, SPIFFs – to tell the story, to get your name in front of the partners. It isn’t ink and done. It is ink, then go push that rock up the hill every single day! Hustlin’ as Gary Vee says.

The other factor is sales friction. Personally, I never even consider selling cable because waiting 15 days for a site survey is total garbage, especially when the direct side gets it done in three days. There are carriers I won’t work with because I have in the past and got burned. (I am not alone here.) The easier you are to do business with the better.

It is getting harder and harder to sell through channel because of a number of factors including industry consolidation; musical chairs; too many vendors not enough partners; Noise and Attention; the cost of sales acquisition during both a price war and a SPIFF war; and buyer budget constraints.

The noise of UCaas, SD-WAN, DDoS Mitigation and cyber-security are getting louder every day. To the point that it is just noise, not a resonating message, but more like when that car pulls up to you at the traffic light with the music blaring drowning out the music in your own car. So you roll up the windows to drown it out. Yeah, that’s where we are.

Tags: branding, channel managers, channel partners, marketing, master agency, sellecom, VAD, var, voip
Related tags: software licensing, master agents, partners, agents, vendor, because

Follow me:

Twitter Profile

Related Entries

Channel Sales Enablement: Part 2 – Jun 30, 2013

The Sub-Agent Dilemma – Sep 20, 2016

What Channel Are You Watching? – Apr 25, 2016

The Channel Target Cycle – Apr 08, 2016

What Business Model Should the VAR Examine? – Mar 30, 2015

The UC Install Opprtunity – May 19, 2014

VADs, VARs and Cable: How Does That Work? – Apr 02, 2014

What About Selling Cloud? – Feb 21, 2012

Channel Partner Enablement Tools – Oct 10, 2016

Where is the Demand? – Sep 08, 2016

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Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company