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CORPORATE BUSINESS
he overall size of the European market for hosted or cloud- based communication services will triple in size over the next five years, according to analysts at Frost & Sullivan, reaching the important billion Euro milestone soon. In a report published last month, the company claimed that the total market value will rise from 46.9 million Euros in 2009 to 1.6 billion Euros in 2015.
Cloud comms to mushroom
T
money last year. The market was really bad for them,” she says. “Unified communications and hosted communications may be a small share of the market, but it’s growing well and will eventually be substantial.”
The figures may be dwarfed by the overall size of the telecoms market, which is estimated around the 500 billion Euro mark, but it presents a significant opportunity to resellers in the enterprise space, says the report author, Dorata Oviedo.
“All the traditional telecoms sectors effectively lost
Justin Coombes, Marketing Manager at Gamma Telecom, says the findings tally with his experiences in the UK. “The market for hosted has been growing at a steady rate since its inception,” he said. “But since 2009 it’s been picking up more. The cost savings, such as calls being free on net and reducing capital expenditure, are compelling.”
The relative size of the market for hosted solutions shouldn’t put resellers off, says Coombes. “Telecoms isn’t about selling calls
Justin Coombes
and lines any more, it’s about selling solutions that help customers. Resellers are taking on a broad portfolio, there’s going to be a fit for everything and hosted is a part of that.”
According to Adrian Hughes, CEO of Inclarity, end users still don’t fully understand the benefits of hosted telecoms and unified communications. He says the industry needs
to communicate more clearly. “A key challenge in the sales process for telecoms is not showing that proven technology works, but overcoming the cultural change to encourage people to give up the box on the wall,” stated Hughes.
“The challenge for traditional PBX resellers is that their cashflow and sales commission models
aren’t based around a service recurring model. If you’re a sales guy out there with two similar offerings, you’re going to lead with the one with the easiest route to earning your commission.”
The good news for resellers, he says, is that as more communications services become converged into the cloud, there is less pressure to skill up in every adjacent area in order to capitalise on the opportunities.
“Customers want to rationalise their number of suppliers and leverage cost savings,” concluded Hughes. “The comms reseller can leverage this opportunity by becoming an aggregator of services to the end client, through partnering with other companies in the field.” n
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COMMS DEALER APRIL 2010 29
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