There
are a number of opportunities for providers of unified communication (UC) and
business video services for large enterprises in Australia and New Zealand
(ANZ). The quantity of video solutions has considerably increased over the last
few years and this momentum is expected to continue. Although there is growing
demand for greater interoperability across multiple devices and different
access technologies, there is enormous customer acceptance of high-definition
(HD) video conferencing, according to Ovum.
With
the life-sized images found in telepresence offerings (or near life-sized
images found in other video conferencing offerings), superior audio and visual
quality, and a strengthening business case built around travel cost and time
savings, room-based video conferencing is the most popular video solution among
large enterprises. These solutions are also playing a key role in increasing
awareness about the benefits of video collaboration, which is now expected to
spread across the enterprise through more economical low-end solutions (e.g.
PC-based).
“Not
surprisingly, desktop video is expected to show the greatest growth, with 21%
of survey respondents expecting to deploy it in the coming year. This
percentage is greater than in other developed regions and can be explained by
the fact that sites of enterprises in ANZ are more likely to be located in
remote areas that are not served by MPLS or Ethernet nodes that would support high-end
video services,” said Claudio Castelli, senior
analyst, Ovum.
Local
and national SIs are the most trusted providers of managed HD video
conferencing services for large enterprises in ANZ (29%), but this preference
is not as high as in Europe or the US. Telcos come next with 26% of the
preference,” Castelli added.
This
is good news for telcos in the region, whose ability to provide this service is
well perceived by customers compared to other developed regions. This
preference will grow as elcos are increasing their SI capabilities in video by
either investing in existing divisions or by acquisitions. Telstra, for
example, has recently acquired the video integrator iVision in an attempt to
lead the video conferencing market in Australia.
Telcos
should explore the lack of relatively strong local and national SIs specialized
in this market to develop a sound customer base. Combining HD video
conferencing with network services in an integrated managed proposition with
end-to-end SLAs will provide an additional strong differentiator against other
types of providers.
By
TelecomLead.com Team