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Follow UsObliterating Distance
Communications as a Software
(UcaaS) is one of the emerging services, which will rapidly grow the
deployment of unified communication and collaboration solutions in
the Indian market, especially in the small-and medium-end of the
market. The Indian market is currently in a nascent stage and there are
few service providers who
are currently evaluating, and evolving solutions bundled along with
bandwidth to offer
value-added services to enterprise-end customers. A study by Frost
&
Sullivan reveals that the total size of the UC market in India is
likely to grow more than $1 billion by the end of 2010. At a time
when cutting costs and improving business processes seem to be key
challenges across industry, convergence of technologies in the form
of UC becomes all the more essential. Solution providers are
looking at the recession as a big opportunity for the unified
communications market. According to
Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager-Unified Communications, Cisco
India and SAARC, “Instant messaging and real-time collaboration
tools will emerge as the primary communications methods, surpassing
e-mail. Companies will evolve beyond typical voice calls, or even
basic click-to-talk functionality of soft phones and instant
messaging clients and integrate new voice capabilities into
innovative new business processes. Interoperability and open
standards will continue to evolve and help break down barriers
between disparate communications systems." Recession temporarily
dipped the growth curve of UC market in India, as most enterprises
became sceptical of investing in future technologies and survival
became more crucial. The recession, however, was only a temporary
setback,
from a bad 2009 the UC market in India has bounced back.
In the last two-three quarters, there
has been an uptake from the previous year, industry players peg the
growth to be anywhere between 30-40 percent YoY. The market trends
currently in this year is the global value chains, mobile workforces,
social networking, pervasive video, and information overload. To
address these business complexities, UC is a concept that connects
people, information, and teams, helping to enable comprehensive and
effective collaborative experiences. According to Raghu Kumar, CEO,
GlobalOutlook, “These days, companies are increasingly expecting their
employees to be capable by
consolidating a number of services onto standard data networks. By
integrating different methods of
communication, such as desktop handsets, voice mail, fax, e-mail,
instant messaging, conferencing,
laptops and mobile devices, it becomes easier to manage all these
devices and applications from a single
point, and access them using common devices. Thus, UC ensures
communication for any person all the time and from anywhere."
With SMBs emerging in the Indian business landscape and the
recessionary dust settling down, UC solutions are poised to grow. As
vendors are yet to offer a complete end-to-end on-premise solution,
budget-constrained businesses hold the key for growth of the UC
market. Besides, UC is now being offered in cloud-SaaS, which will
enable most of the SMBs adopting UC and save lot of capex.
THE MASTER OF ALL TRADES
Of late, the deployment of UC solutions
is not just restricted to large system integrators or service
providers. Even the relatively smaller
solution providers have jumped into the bandwagon, including the
likes of Chennai-based Gemini Communications. The company brings
varied expertise and experience of implementing several UC projects
in India. Amongst the major deployments undertaken by Gemini, the
ones that stands out are the videoconferencing installation at the
Doorma India, network video inter-connectivity at Vizag, and the
videoconferencing implementation at the Naval Dockyard. The project at
Doorma involved five
Sony videoconference devices to be configured in five different
locations (Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru) by
coordinating with the client and engineers present on-site at these
locations. The
connectivity for the locations was integrated using Dax routers
configured for MPLSVPN network provided by Aircel. The WAN and LAN
segment IP's were given by Aircel and the client respectively for
each router present in different locations. The LAN segment IP
already present at remote locations was changed to allow local LAN
traffic through MPLS-VPN to reach Chennai servers. A separate route
was added in each device in remote locations to allow Internet
through their available Internet bandwidth. "Till date, UC
solutions in the cloud have provided a great way for enterprises to
enhance
their users' communications and productivity. Users are better able to
manage powerful applications
such as VoIP/telephony services, collaboration, unified messaging and
voicemail through a unified interface to make certain workers do not
miss important meetings, messages and ideas,” added Krishna Kumar,
Chief Marketing Officer, Gemini Communications. Meanwhile, Gemini is
keen on investing in the same. Currently, it is focusing in the
Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi and Hyderabad and further plans to take UC
in the tier-II cities and other markets as well. Another solution
provider, OmniTel Technologies, believes that Theoretically, unified
communications technologies are supposed to help improve employee
collaboration, productivity and customer service, and provide a way
for IT departments to reduce operating costs. However, in order to
implement UC, companies need to go through both technological and
organizational change and these two things don't necessarily happen
at the same pace.
THE CHAMP
After analyzing the success stories of
the solution providers in the UC space, one name that clearly stands
out is Gemini Communications. The company has the vision of creating
innovative and flexible solutions that offer its customers a
competitive advantage and help them meet their business goals.