Cloud unified communications market penetration to increase 6x by 2020: Survey

NEW DELHI:Cloud unified communications market penetration for new lines shipped will increase nearly 6x to 41% over the next five years, according to a new BroadSoft, survey of global telecom service providers and industry leaders.

The survey points to a rapid shift away from traditional premise systems across all market segments. By 2020, the Cloud UC market penetration is expected to grow 3x in the large enterprise segment, 7x in the midmarket segment, and almost 5x in the small business segment, according to survey results.

BroadSoft conducted the survey of 129 global service provider and industry leader respondents in the fourth quarter of 2015 at BroadSoft Connections, BroadSoft's annual users' conference that drew over 1,000 attendees.

The survey examined global perspectives on business adoption of cloud and mobile UC solutions, the evolving competitive landscape, and the extent to which emerging, over-the-top (OTT) team messaging and collaboration applications are disrupting current business productivity tools such as email.

Key Survey Findings:

Shift from premise to cloud UC fully underway across all market segments respondents expect UCaaS/Hosted PBX market penetration to grow by a factor of almost 6x across enterprise, midmarket and SMB in the next five years. By 2020, respondents believe that UCaaS/Hosted PBX market share will increase to:

Small business segment (<100 employees): 48% (10% today)

Midmarket business segment (100 - 999 employees): 37% (5% today)

Large enterprise segment (1,000+ employees): 20% (6% today)

Total market: 41% (7% today)

Enterprises are cutting the cord - UC and mobility become synonymous

According to the survey, in addition to the shift from premise to cloud, Unified Communications will become increasingly mobile: 42% of respondents believe that more than half of UC interactions for businesses of all sizes will occur via mobile devices by 2020, while one-third of small businesses will opt for mobile-only UCaaS/Hosted PBX solutions, eliminating their need for desk phones.

Email on the way out - unlocking new opportunities for service provider revenue growth

82% of survey respondents expect OTT integrated messaging and collaboration applications to disrupt the business email market, while only 18% feel email will remain the primary business-messaging tool.

BroadSoft believes that these new OTT solutions, when deeply integrated with UC and business applications, will offer service providers a differentiated and compelling value proposition, and access to a large and growing market opportunity with attractive margins.

"Enterprise UCaaS is proving disruptive due to its superior value proposition - reduced complexity, lower total cost of ownership and greater productivity and mobility for the increasingly millennial and distributed workforce," said Taher Behbehani, chief marketing officer, BroadSoft.

"Importantly, this opportunity is not lost on service providers and industry leaders as 90% of survey respondents rate UCaaS/Hosted PBX as their preferred technology solution strategy, while only 10% are leading sales efforts with premise PBX,” said Behbehani.

BroadSoft is a global unified communication software as a service (UCaaS) provider. Over 700 customers in more than 75 countries are delivering services using its software, and BroadSoft has surpassed 12 million cloud unified communications lines deployed globally.

According to Frost and Sullivan, in 2015 BroadSoft was the market leader for UCaaS, with a 41% market share.