Unified Communications Featured Article

UC Market on a Rapid Growth Track: Near Triple Current Value by 2023

Unified communications (UC) has delivered a lot of value for businesses so far, and more and more, businesses are looking at this new market not with skepticism but with wonder, imagining just what could be done with all that possibility. A new report from Global Market Insights shows that the UC market isn't done growing yet, and will achieve impressive new levels in just a few years.

The Global Market Insights report suggests that the global UC industry was worth $34.8 billion in 2015, but by 2023, will approach triple that at $95 billion. The study cites several factors involved in that upward growth spiral, including the growth of mobile device use, rising mobility at the enterprise level, the accompanying growth of the bring your own device (BYOD) doctrine, the growth of unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and the ongoing rise of big data operations.

The UCaaS market alone is expected to show big gains, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.4 percent through 2023, thanks in large part to its ability to cut costs by reducing infrastructure demands and provide centralized management in a cloud-based format. Throw in the value of better connectivity thanks to things like telephony, online meetings, video conferencing and similar formats and it's not just a cost-cutter but also a potential profit generator.

That's a point not lost on a wide array of different industries; UC applications are found in a host of verticals ranging from government to healthcare to enterprise and beyond. The biggest such segment, reports note, is the enterprise market, which represented 60 percent of UC market share in 2015, and is only set to grow from there. The BYOD market, in turn, is projected to clear $365 billion by 2023, and that's going to help fuel more growth still.

Whether it's cost savings or growth potential, there's a lot of room for upward mobility in UC. It's already been demonstrated as a great savings tool, allowing businesses to take a lot of travel off the table. Not all travel, of course—there are always times when the face-to-face personal touch is called for—but any plane ticket and per diem a company didn't have to pay for is savings that goes directly into the company's coffers. That's direct value, and a good explanation by itself why this market is doing so well. Throw in the benefits of improved communication and a mobile workforce and the value of UC materials only improves from there.

The end result is a great market ahead for UC. The desire to cut costs without affecting service, and the desire to improve collaboration and get more out of the combined efforts of employees will only increase, and UC will be there all the while to take advantage and offer the necessary infrast


Edited by Maurice Nagle