Demand for managed services is helping the Unified Communications (UC) market in Australia grow as organisations strive to avoid service and maintenance overheads while controlling UC hardware and applications, according to Frost Sullivan. The analyst firm’s Australia and New Zealand ICT head of research, Audrey William, said that managed services is “particularly strong” for videoconferencing endpoints where a third party provides maintenance, support, troubleshooting and scheduling. “Managed services accounted for about 35 per cent of overall UC services revenues in 2012 and is expected to experience strong growth as organisations prefer to use managed services for their audio and collaboration infrastructure”, she said in a statement. The study ,entitled Australian UC Services Market 2013, forecast that the UC services market in Australia is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.9 per cent from 2012 to 2019. According to the report, voice based and conferencing offerings accounted for the majority of UC services revenues last year. Why CIOs find the business case for UC difficult Unified communications- Part 1 Unified communications- Part 2 Turning to on-premise UC deployment, William said this remained the predominant model within Australia, with cloud-based alternatives still in the early stages of growth. “Many organisations remain concerned about the reliability and security aspects of hosted and cloud-based offerings,” she said. “Although such factors are expected to limit adoption of cloud-based solutions in the short term, the lack of flexibility and scalability of an on-premise model will cause organisations to consider alternatives.” According to William, the hosted and cloud-based UC segment is poised for strong growth over the next five to seven years because of this need for an alternative UC model. In addition, mobility could help growth in the UC market because enterprises are looking at the benefits that may be offered by smart devices to enhance collaboration and communication amongst employees. Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia Related content feature Expedia poised to take flight with generative AI CTO Rathi Murthy sees the online travel service’s vast troves of data and AI expertise fueling a two-pronged transformation strategy aimed at growing the company by bringing more of the travel industry online. By Paula Rooney Jun 02, 2023 7 mins Travel and Hospitality Industry Digital Transformation Artificial Intelligence case study Deoleo doubles down on sustainability through digital transformation The Spanish multinational olive oil processing company is immersed in a digital transformation journey to achieve operational efficiency and contribute to the company's sustainability strategy. By Nuria Cordon Jun 02, 2023 6 mins CIO Supply Chain Digital Transformation brandpost Resilient data backup and recovery is critical to enterprise success As global data volumes rise, business must prioritize their resiliency strategies. By Neal Weinberg Jun 01, 2023 4 mins Security brandpost Democratizing HPC with multicloud to accelerate engineering innovations Cloud for HPC is facilitating broader access to high performance computing and accelerating innovations and opportunities for all types of organizations. By Tanya O'Hara Jun 01, 2023 6 mins Multi Cloud Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe