Enterprise comms challenged by cloud consumer alternatives

Consumer grade unified communications services are riding into enterprises on the wave of 'bring-your-own-device', threatening vendors of both premises-based and cloud-based IP telephony, video and UC products, according to innovation firm Telsyte.

"Advancements in cloud and consumer-grade systems allow workers to bypass an organisation's existing investments in enterprise communications systems and software," he said. "The use of mobile devices instead of company handsets can as well impact enterprise communication requirements. For instance, if a consumer-grade UC app is available on a smartphone and an enterprise vendor app is not, people will choose what is available."

Telsyte said this trend was leading to consumer-grade services like Skype being used for videoconferencing in 30 percent of companies that had adopted the innovation.

"With more software-only communications systems available today, we looked at how comfortable IT leaders are using software and cloud systems instead of a traditional hardware PABX," Gedda said. "CIOs are quite receptive to these changes so the market is wide open for new players."

He added: "About 30 percent of the hosted telephony market is now defined by CIOs as 'cloud' telephony. As cloud telephony services mature and more business processes can be performed in the cloud, CIOs will have fewer compelling reasons to invest in on-premise systems...

"A high 37 percent of organisations have no plans to deploy UC and a furthermore six percent have a five-year roadmap. This indicates there remains some reluctance from CIOs to take on a UC project," Gedda said. "As a result, the public communications tools are filling the void."

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