UCaaS Market to Reach almost $25 Billion by 2020

By David Delony
Contributing Writer

It’s a cliché to say that the Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) market is booming, but MarketsandMarkets projects that it will turn out to be a very big business indeed. The firm expects the value of the Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) market to reach $24.88 billion by 2020.

“In recent years, UCaaS has changed the ways in which business communication is done. UC services have made it easy to address communication related challenges in businesses,” a MarketsandMarkets statement said. “Today, the communication service provider companies are focusing to provide their customers with highly efficient communication tool to simplify the communication processes.”

A lot of major UC vendors such as Microsoft (News - Alert) that have targeted the enterprise have introduced lower-priced versions geared toward small and medium businesses (SMBs). At the same time, these businesses are looking to cut costs and improve customer satisfaction. Even smaller businesses are embracing the mobile workforce and BYOD, so they’re looking to integrate their various communications system into one platform that can work on both desktops and mobile devices.

UCaaS looks to be an ideal solution to solving both problems. MarketsandMarkets said that UCaaS systems let businesses pick and choose the platforms that best work for them, including YouTube, Lync, Skype, LinkedIn (News - Alert) and other services.

These systems also offer greater security, which is becoming more important after several high profile breaches. While the breaches occurred with enterprise businesses, their professional reputations have taken a hit. Smaller businesses can’t recover as easily from security problems. A breach could very well be fatal for a small business.

The projected growth in the new report is likely due to the lower costs of UCaaS appealing to smaller businesses. Cloud technology appeals to these businesses because they can have new features without having to install new hardware and software. A lot of these businesses lack specialized IT staff to handle communications systems.