Unified Communications & Collaboration market up 22.5% in Malaysia: IDC

• Overall UC&C revenue in 2012 hit US$89.2mil in Malaysia
• Around 72% of the market is in the hands of Cisco and Polycom

ACCORDING to IDC's Asia/Pacific Semi-annual Collaborations and Video Tracker, which captures the market share of major vendors in the region, the 2H12 (second half of 2012) Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) market in Malaysia increased 14% to US$47.5 million, compared to 1H12.
 
Overall, the revenue in 2012 hit US$89.2 million, a 22.5% growth on a year-over-year basis, IDC Malaysia said in a statement.
 
Enterprise telephony continues to play an integral part of the UC&C market, with 50.6% of total revenues in 2H12, followed by enterprise collaboration apps (29.5%), contact center applications & equipment (12.9%) and enterprise videoconferencing solutions (6.9%).
 
While enterprise videoconferencing solutions recorded a slim proportion in the market share, it is the fastest growing product category with 64.2% growth, the research firm said.
 
Around 72% of the market is in the hands of Cisco and Polycom, and a significantly large proportion of this is room-based telepresence deployment by multinationals and large enterprise customers.
 
The increase of UC&C market in 2H12 is believed to have been accelerated by the growth of IT spending and investments in local businesses prior to the May 5 general election.
 
Local businesses generally push their financing and resources to implement developments while the existing government is in place, to ensure they are familiar with the guidelines, as policies can change when a new government comes in.
 
In 2013, UC&C will continue to remain an area where companies are willing to invest for both internal and customer-related purposes, as well as working with external partners/ suppliers to improve revenue and to lower operating costs, IDC Malaysia said.
 
"We see IP (Internet Protocol) telephony deployment happening steadfastly in the country with fierce competition among vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent and NEC,” says Tan Hwee Xian, market analyst at IDC's Asia/Pacific Communications Group.

“Deployment of IP telephony on the enterprise network will continue to be a significant form of UC&C in Malaysia.
 
“We also observe growing interest in the implementation of enterprise collaboration and videoconferencing solutions pushing down market from large scale enterprise-level solutions to the mid-market segment.
 
“With widespread availability of UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) solutions arriving in the marketplace, we are expecting more UCaaS offerings which are opex-friendly to appear in the market," Tan adds.
 
According to IDC's Asia/Pacific Collaborations and Video 2013-2017 Forecast report, Malaysia’s UC&C market will be worth US$134.1 million by 2017, up from US$89.2 million today.
 
Although there are signs of market growth slowing down in the traditional on-premise market in the region due to cloud and ‘freemium’ app services, enterprise videoconferencing will continue to grow at a fast pace with rates hitting between 10-15% annually, driven by the increase demand in verticals like retail banking, healthcare establishments, oil & gas, government and educational institutions.
 
"We believe the UC&C industry will continue to grow in the country, with conversations being redefined and moving away from cost savings to business process transformation.
 
“This will also translate to increased opportunities for service providers and system integrators as this market will increasingly be services-led and will soon turn from nascent to mainstream over the forecast period," says Tan.
 
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