The IP telephony market is far from immune to the impacts of the
current economic situation. The rapid collapse and subsequent
bailout of the global banking system and ensuing economic turmoil
have created a radically different context for global economic
growth. In September 2008, the forecast for real global GDP growth
in 2009 was 2.5%. By February 2009, it had dropped to -1.0%.
Due to the economic unraveling, all companies paused to figure out
"how badly" they were affected. IDC sees that IP telephony and
unified communications (UC) deployments that have already begun
will continue and others may be delayed or downsized.
Environmentally conscious companies may look to green IT elements
to help cut down on HVAC costs. In the extreme and most pessimistic
cases, all discretionary spending has been stopped. Despite the
current uncertainty in the market, IDC believes there are six core
trends that combine to drive network capital expenditures faster
than IT spending, regardless of economic conditions. They
are:
! Migration of voice and video traffic to IP
! Expansion of network-based businesses
! Intelligent networks winning over dumb pipes
! Endpoint growth
! Centralization of communications
! Virtualization of compute, storage, and client resources
These trends likely explain why line-of-business (LOB) managers and
IT leaders consistently rank network equipment and storage at the
bottom of the list of where cuts will be made (see Figure 1 for
October 2008 data).
Since voice infrastructure is the backbone of most unified
communications architectures, future UC plans are also likely to be
affected by the current economic situation. Companies now will need
to assess if their UC plans are strategic to their overall
corporate priorities; how they can leverage what they already have
now; and what incremental steps they can take in the meantime to
continue forward progress, but at a decreased cost and/or pace.
More astute IT staffs are looking at the savings that IP telephony
and many UC applications can provide. Outright savings (like
decreased long distance charges, SIP trunking, and least cost
routing) and indirect savings (like travel and utility costs) can
be achieved. IDC notes that a flexible UC architecture can be a
strategic asset to the business. Successful companies will work out
ways to invest strategically to ensure they are positioned as
leaders when the
upswing starts. Now is the time to do that thinking.
If you’ve bought into the idea that migration to IP telephony
(and eventually unified communications) is worth considering, IDC
suggests that you start by doing the following:
! Complete an inventory of what you have smart vendors can help
you get the most out of what you have; a good vendor can build on
what you have.
! Be sure to have good visibility into application use on the
network and a good gauge on the desire for video and other
communications tools. Solicit views from a diverse set of users on
what types of communications tools they demand to address new
challenges and opportunities.
! Look to make the most of licenses you have already paid for. Make
sure your vendor will allow you to repurpose your license (e.g., if
you close one office and move people into home offices).
! Determine which equipment leases are expiring and the cost of
supporting that equipment internally.
! Ensure that solutions do not lock you into a rigid IT
architecture that cannot be adapted for growth and/or new
communication needs. Examine each vendor’s architectural approach
to see how it allows customers to leverage existing equipment, to
centralize network intelligence, and/or to distribute UC
applications to all business users.
Can You Change Vendors?
Once you have decided to migrate to unified communications, IDC
suggests that end users also reevaluate their existing equipment
suppliers. Despite the economic uncertainty that lies ahead,
changing vendors may be economically viable. IDC advises IT
managers to take a close took at vendor pricing and financing
options.
! Does the vendor have a strong reseller channel with certification
and training programs in place? Customers want credible and
reliable experts to deploy their solutions.
! How easy is it for partners/customers to build solutions on the
vendor’s existing infrastructure?
While a lot of the UC marketing looks at minutes saved, those
minutes don’t get executives excited they want to see dollars
saved or dollars generated. There is no guarantee that those
minutes that are free will actually be used for business instead of
just coffee breaks. Internal and external meetings cannot afford to
stop, but as travel budgets get slashed, it’s fairly easy to
compute the savings in airfares versus virtual meetings. Since UC
solutions can allow you to consolidate equipment in wiring closets
and datacenters, you can also compute power and real estate
savings. For environmentally conscious companies, travel and power
savings can become part of a broader corporate initiative to reduce
their carbon footprint.
The best business cases for IP telephony migration and unified
communications adoption often come from the building of basic
applications that can fundamentally streamline business-critical
processes. IDC suggests looking for cases coming from your
respective vertical market, such as:
! Healthcare: Nurse call and doctor paging applications
! Education: Campus shutdown notifications, automated attendance
applications, remote campus environments, faculty support
! Government: 311 services (or notification of nonemergency
government services), security notifications
! Financial services: Customer notification applications in case of
notable market activity
! Transportation/logistics: Applications for rerouting equipment
due to inclement weather or broken equipment
It may be easy for some companies to stop existing projects or
forgo planning for new communication needs due to fiscal
constraints. However, there is a financial risk to doing nothing.
Companies cannot afford to lose communication with their customers;
especially in tough times, customer retention is crucial to
financial success. IDC has found that the cost of new customer
recruitment in the future may be more expensive than protecting
existing customers. IDC also notes that the cost of supporting
legacy infrastructure that doesn’t support a UC vision may end up
being more costly once the economy recovers. Above all else,
companies that don’t do anything with their current
communications environments may open the door for competitors to
leapfrog them in the deployment of next-generation technology and
make it impossible for them to recover.
The year of 2009 may not be all doom and gloom for companies
looking to migrate to IP telephony and for those that are building
their unified communications architectures. Over the next year, IDC
still expects to see companies invest in increments focusing on the
key communication needs and tools for their internal constituents
and external partners and customers. Figure 5 shows which solutions
are driving future investment among the respondents to the
IDC/InfoWorld survey.
IDC believes that companies will continue to invest in and deploy
unified messaging, remote and teleworker solutions,
videoconferencing, and audioconferencing over the next year,
especially due to the continual need to collaborate and have
meetings, without the travel budget to have them in person. On a
positive note, IDC expects to see the following trends in
2009:
! Vendors will develop new architectural models for VoIP and
unified communications to address concerns about cost containment,
equipment
integration, flexibility, and scalability. The majority of these
efforts will focus on the use of software and service-oriented
architectures (SOAs) principally to leverage existing equipment,
centralize network intelligence, and distribute capabilities to
business users.
! More companies will begin to trial and deploy videoconferencing
solutions.
! Vendors will develop new solutions and delivery models to support
branch/remote offices.
! UC as a service (UCaaS) will emerge. (IDC believes that it might
still be a bit early to see rapid adoption of this UC delivery
method).
! Development of "cool" mobility applications, such as
speech-to-text conversion of messages, will continue (especially if
those applications are iPhone compatible).
In spite of economic turmoil or success, IDC advises companies to
look beyond just the "cool" applications. The key is to find cool
and business-relevant applications that can drive down costs or
generate future revenue opportunities.
