The Asia-Pacific Hosted Internet Protocol Telephony (IPT) and Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) services market has entered the high-growth zone with service providers making concerted efforts to expand their service portfolios to meet the different requirements of vertical and horizontal customers.
Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand have emerged as the largest markets for hosted IPT and UCC services, while India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam are exhibiting strong growth potential for IPT adoption due to the increasing influx of service providers.
Governments of these countries are de-regulating the operational rights for Voice Over IP (VoIP) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking to catalyze their adoption, which, in turn, will drive hosted Private Branch Exchange (PBX) adoption. Foreign competitors are building partnerships with local telecom companies to penetrate and gradually expand their footprint in these markets.
“The customer demand for robust, integrated enterprise communications solutions has inspired telecoms and Internet service providers to offer a hosting or reselling model,” said Digital Transformation Research Analyst Chong Zi Ning.
“Service reliability and flexibility are the key considerations for customers to migrate to a hosted model. Enterprises with more than 200 IP phone users are prospective customers,” she noted.
Analysis of the Asia-Pacific Hosted IP Telephony and Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) Services Market, 2016 Update is part of Frost & Sullivan’s Conferencing & Collaboration Growth Partnership Service program. The research finds that despite the immense growth potential, a large installed base of legacy ICT infrastructure is restraining the swift adoption of hosted IPT and UCC services in the Asia-Pacific region.
Moreover, factors such as privacy concerns, the absence of well-structured legal regulations against malicious breaches, evolving directives about cloud computing, and difficulties associated with data accessibility often discourage customers from shifting from their existing system.
Many industry challenges will be resolved once governments start implementing e-governance programs, which will increase their communications spending. In addition, there needs to be well-defined plans to refurbish the existing network infrastructure so that uninterrupted, real-time communication via public network becomes possible.
“Many organizations in the Asia-Pacific region have yet to migrate to hosted telephony solutions from on-premise telephony solutions, which will be a key driver for growth in the market,” noted Chong.
“The Asian macro-economy is expected to grow at a faster rate than any other continents’ during the forecast period. In addition, no significant financial meltdown is anticipated in the short term,” she explained.
Apart from highlighting the major restraints and drivers in the market, this study discusses in detail the ways in which the demanding environment is giving birth to new UC technologies and business models that can expedite the adoption of hosted IP telephony and UCC services.