Homepage Frost & Sullivan newsroom

Frost & Sullivan: Australia's Unified Communications Market Falls 16.2% in 2009

Announcement posted by Frost & Sullivan 09 Jul 2010

Economic downturn sees projects shelved or put on hold
Sydney, 9 July 2010 – The Australian Unified Communications (UC) market was valued at $792.2 million in 2009, representing a fall of 16.2 per cent from the previous year according to Australian Unified Communications 2010, an assessment of market opportunity, vendor and user behaviour prepared by consulting company, Frost & Sullivan.
 
The market decline is largely a result of the recent economic downturn which saw a significant number of local information technology projects shelved or put on hold.  UC activity is expected to pick up slightly in 2010 with Frost & Sullivan predicting an 8.0 per cent compound annual growth rate between 2009 and 2016.
 
Applications such as conferencing and telephony account for the majority of UC projects.  The report notes that only a small proportion of organisations such as banks and telcos are choosing to integrate voice, unified messaging, presence and mobility with their overall UC platform.  
 
Audrey William, ICT Research Director – Australia and New Zealand, Frost & Sullivan, says, “Although awareness of UC is high there is still a great deal of uncertainty among IT decision makers about how to integrate UC with a company's infrastructure.  The other big challenge to deployment is the lack of clarity about how exactly UC can help an organisation to achieve better productivity and more efficient communications.”
 
Advancements in smartphone technologies and the development of richer applications drove the mobility sector to record the highest growth in the UC market, with an increase of 11.2 per cent in 2009.  Frost & Sullivan predicts that mobility will continue to see high growth through to 2016.
 
2009 also saw carriers including Telstra and Alphawest/Optus steadily increase their presence as channels and systems integrators through major contract wins and vendor partnerships.  The report notes that carriers enjoy a unique position in UC, using their expertise in networks and communications technologies to bundle UC applications and traditional communication infrastructure. This will ensure that carriers continue to account for the majority of large deployments and revenues in the Australian UC market over the next six years.
 
Interest in Web 2.0 technologies, especially enterprise social networking applications, is increasing with organisations keen to find new ways of increasing brand and technology awareness.  However, issues such as security, privacy and the impact on employee productivity will limit the extent to which these applications are deployed.
 
Australian Unified Communications 2010 forms part of the Frost & Sullivan Next Generation Enterprise Communications program 2010. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.
 
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 40 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit http://www.frost.com