The unified communications market not only holds promise in terms of increased Rol, the current growth is fueled by the adoption of IP telephony in the government (specifically defence), banking and financial services, and services industry verticals as well as greenfield projects in emerging markets.

According to a report by Frost & Sullivan the total size of the unified communications markets in India is close to $670 mn. Majority of this includes enterprise IP telephony (almost 50 percent) and applications like presence, mobility and conferencing and collaboration are around 10 percent. The highest growth area is around applications which add maximum value to end users.

Solution providers are making a strong case for the market by highlighting its real benefits that lie in its democratization. The belief is coming right from the top that the benefits of UC will prevail only when each of the contributing employees get enabled with these applications. Its important that CIOs understand the impact of this democratization and implement policies to fire this innovation engine within their organizations, says Porwal.

Worldwide, this coming together of communications and technology presents a lucrative market of close to $40 bn.

Over the long term, opportunities even exist to design entirely new businesses and approaches using mobility such as virtual manufacturing, virtual meetings, virtual logistics or new modes of operations, such as office-less business. ERP and CRM applications linked to mobility will also be seen in years to come, Minhaj Zia, national sales manager, Unified Communications, Cisco India & Saarc.

For SMBs

Its not just the large enterprises that the trend watchers are bullish about; they are betting big on the small and medium companies too. According to estimates by Nasscom, there is a huge SMB market which is waiting in the wings. Last year close to 50 percent of IT spend in the country was expected to come from the flourishing SMB segment. However, to be in a position to tap this market, the solution providers have to effectively look at developing customized solutions, which offer a cost-effective and easy to deploy alternative.

SMBs are going for hosted offerings. They are looking at UC in order to reach out to suppliers, manufacturers, and buyer anytime, anywhere via video and audio capabilities and so on. So its about making them more productive, says Mehra. No wonder, conferencing, instant messaging, and emailing on IM platform are already big.

SMBs want IT to help them be more like enterprises by enabling them to access broader resources and create effective communications on a global basis. At times like these, IT can enhance companys own revenue as we as and reduce expenses, says Zia.

Early customers are already reporting as much as a 50 percent reduction in departmental (logistics) and functional team (IT) telephone tolls for inter-location calls, especially between their home office (in North America, Europe or Asia) and their international locations, where the toll savings are still significant.

That there is a huge opportunity waiting to be tapped cannot be denied, but it is also true that there are apprehensions about some inherent challenges that stare solution providers in the face. Minhaj raises a significant point here, Government regulations on and VoIP inter-connection which restricts companies to deploy the complete solution, is a major limitation for the Indian market. The other bottlenecks being availability of good broadband infrastructure and cost of bandwidth which is still high compared to mature markets.

Clearly, what needs to be seen is how these challenges are overcome and the market for unified communications individual components turned into one big opportunity.

Experts Panel :

Vivek Porwal, business unit head, Unified Communications, Avaya GlobalConnect
Minhaj Zia, national sales manager, Unified Communications, Cisco India & SAARC
Sanjay Manchanda, director, Microsoft Business Division