The unified communications and collaboration (UCC) market in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) will grow to $16.6bn by 2015, according to a new study from International Data Corporation (IDC).
The new IDC study predicts that the UCC market will grow at compound annual growth rate of around 23.7% in the next five years.
IDC EMEA senior research analyst of unified communications and collaboration Isabel Montero said the research firm believes that the impact of the credit crunch and rumours of a double-dip recession make enterprises more cautious when deciding whether or not to invest in new IT equipment across the EMEA region.
The IDC study found that UC hosted services will be on the rise and will become more predominant late in the forecast period, and this trend will be more notable within the small and midsize business community.
The study also found that vendors will use SIP as the most dominant protocol in the UCC and VoIP market, as it provides a common platform for system, handset, and application development and compatibility.
It said that businesses will have their converged networks and related services managed for them by a service provider, due to increased complexity of a company’s network infrastructure.
Applications like business VoIP, collaborative applications, and IP PBX platforms will primarily drive the integration of UCC offerings, the study said.
UK will follow France as the second largest UCC market in Western Europe by 2015, with Germany at third place.
Due to higher levels of UCC services sold to France and the UK, their total end-user revenue will be higher than in Germany.
