SMBs in India to Spend US$48.8M on Unified Communications in 2009

Conferencing tools account for 80% of the total India SMB UC expenditure, says AMI

BANGALORE, India--(BUSINESS WIRE [1])--Small and medium businesses (SMBs, or companies with up to 999 employees) in the Indian subcontinent are set to spend US$48.8 million on unified communication (UC) in 2009, up over 2008, according to a new study by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. Medium businesses (MBs, or companies with 100-999 employees) will account for over 40% of the country’s total SMB expenditure, while small businesses are increasing their adoption of basic UC solutions.

“India SMBs are looking at UC as a low-cost tool to communicate effectively with customers and suppliers as well as facilitate communication across multiple branch locations,” says Sumeeta Misra, AMI’s Bangalore-based Research Associate. “These SMBs seem to be finding smarter ways to cut travel costs, maximize operational efficiency and improve business & customer strategies by streamlining their communication infrastructure. Conferencing and collaboration tools such as video, audio, web conferencing and instant messaging will account for a majority of the total UC spending.”

As India SMBs become more willing to invest in new technology, vendors are developing alternative modes and platforms in UC. The rise of hosted unified communication and offering UC in open and interoperable platforms are a few examples. Communication-as-a-Service, which is an extension of the SaaS model, will provide UC over a service provider’s network. Knowing the current economic constraints, the India SMB market is attracted more to on-demand collaboration applications and network-based solutions for delivering a seamless business-to-business partnership. Hosted VoIP spending among India SMBs will be close to US$18M in 2009.

Many vendors feel that the open source UC suite will raise the interest of users that are looking for a solution with a minimal initial investment. System integrators are migrating to a solution-selling approach for UC from their conventional box-pushing strategies. India SMBs are beginning to adopt UC solutions to enhance the customer experience and enhance business continuity. For unified communication to become the accepted best practice for India SMBs vendors and channel partners must overcome some significant challenges such as clarity in TCO, the need for higher bandwidth, maintenance of IP networks, and hardware expense to list a few.

Unified communication being a collaborative tool is no longer a point solution that businesses look at like a voice or a video conferencing solution. Today companies start off with IP telephony, and then add video application and finish off with an application to integrate both audio and video. India SMBs are progressing from using IM and click-to-call services solutions that will enhance business processes and line-of-business applications.

Related Study

AMI’s 2009 Marketing Telecommunications Products and Services to India SMBs in the Emerging Asia-Pacific Region [2] report provides Service providers, vendors and marketers a clear understanding of how the SMB market has been impacted by business concerns today. It provides detailed analysis on fixed-line telephony, mobile telephony, Internet, and broadband market in India, coupled with its current economic environment and future prospects.

AMI-Partners’ Technology Sector studies highlight major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions. The sector reports are based on AMI-Partners’ annual SMB market surveys, “Q-Pulse” quarterly tracking studies and Global Forecast Model database.

Based on proprietary surveys of partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific, AMI-Partners' technology sector reports are presented in a highly actionable, graphical format with go-to-market insights and analysis

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com [3] or visit www.ami-partners.com [4].

About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and ―go-to-market solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.