Infonetics sent me over a summary of their latest report on the unified communications (UC) market. Infonetics Research reports that the unified communications market, which includes unified messaging and communicator software, jumped 20% sequentially in 2007, following a 19% increase in 2006. Similarly, the IP contact center (IPCC) market grew 24% in 2007, after a whopping 26% increase in 2006. Infonetics' report, Unified Communications and IP Contact Centers, shows that together, UC and IPCC sales grew 22% to hit $1.05 billion worldwide in 2007, and healthy growth is expected through at least 2011.
Interestingly, Microsoft jumped to first place in worldwide communicator revenue market share in 2007. Looks like Microsoft OCS 2007 deployment blues aren't so blue after all!
Another interesting aspect of the report is that it states the transition from TDM to IP is causing the IP contact center market to grow more rapidly than the overall contact center market. They've already optimized TDM to death with predictive dialers, ACDs, workforce management software, etc, so it makes sense that the contact center is now looking to unified communications as a new way of increasing communications efficiencies, agent productivity, etc.
"As a key component of unified communications, sales of communicator software clients are taking off. The Nortel/Microsoft alliance drove growth in 2007, and Microsoft captured close to half the communicator market. Market share will likely bounce around in the coming years, as vendors from different backgrounds try to establish themselves as the leader in the nascent UC market and promote their offerings aggressively," said Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics Research's directing analyst for enterprise voice and data.
Other report highlights:
Interestingly, Microsoft jumped to first place in worldwide communicator revenue market share in 2007. Looks like Microsoft OCS 2007 deployment blues aren't so blue after all!
Another interesting aspect of the report is that it states the transition from TDM to IP is causing the IP contact center market to grow more rapidly than the overall contact center market. They've already optimized TDM to death with predictive dialers, ACDs, workforce management software, etc, so it makes sense that the contact center is now looking to unified communications as a new way of increasing communications efficiencies, agent productivity, etc.
"As a key component of unified communications, sales of communicator software clients are taking off. The Nortel/Microsoft alliance drove growth in 2007, and Microsoft captured close to half the communicator market. Market share will likely bounce around in the coming years, as vendors from different backgrounds try to establish themselves as the leader in the nascent UC market and promote their offerings aggressively," said Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics Research's directing analyst for enterprise voice and data.
Other report highlights:
- Sales of the relatively small communicator segment skyrocketed 164% from 2006 to 2007
- Unified messaging makes up the bulk of the UC market, and is led by Avaya, with more than 1/3 of the market
- Avaya also leads the IP contact center market by far, with more than half of worldwide revenue; Cisco is 2nd
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Deja Vu. Software companies chewed up the mainframe and mini-computer brigade in the 70s and 80's. They struggled to reinvent themselves as software/service businesses, but only IBM succeeded after a near death experience. It's a replay, but this time it's the TDM PBX fraternity that's about to go through the mincer. They're attempting to compete with Microsoft on its home ground.