Australia’s Unified Communications (UC) market fell by nearly 20 percent in 2009, with many projects put on hold, new research has found.
The Australian Unified Communications 2010 assessment, conducted by consulting company Frost & Sullivan, found that the Australia UC market was valued at $792.2 million in 2009, representing a fall of 16.2 percent from the previous year. The majority of UC projects are made up of applications such as conferencing and telephony.
The recent economic downturn is behind the market decline that saw a significant number of local information technology projects shelved or put on hold, says ICT Research Director – Australia and New Zealand, Frost & Sullivan Audrey William.
“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,” Ms William said.
The report also found that only a small proportion of organisations such as banks and telephone companies are choosing to integrate voice, unified messaging, presence and mobility with their overall UC platform.
Despite this decline, Frost & Sullivan is predicting UC activity to pick up slightly in 2010, suggesting that the market will experience an 8.0 percent compound annual growth rate between 2009 and 2016. This prediction is largely based on the advancements in smartphone technologies and the development of richer applications that drove the mobility sector to record the highest growth in the UC market, with an increase of 11.2 percent in 2009.
