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Despite cautious spending from organizations, the unified communications (UC) market in New Zealand grew 6.6 percent in 2011 and is expected to grow at a 9.1 percent compound annual growth rate through 2018.

According to Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert), the 2011 Canterbury earthquake caused many organizations to evaluate their IT infrastructure’s disaster preparedness. In addition, shortening software lifecycles and plans to reduce maintenance overhead will drive businesses to explore UC and Unified Communications- as- a -Service (UCaaS).

The New Zealand government plans to deploy high-speed broadband across the country to 75 percent of the population over a 10-year period, which will also drive UC adoption.

Cisco (News - Alert) and Microsoft are the top vendors in New Zealand, and Microsoft Lync is emerging as a major player as organizations look to cut their overhead costs by replacing their premise-based PBXs with software-based PBXs.

Additionally, channel partners and resellers are reinventing themselves as cloud-based services gain a larger share of the market. “As the momentum shifts towards managed services, hosted and cloud based solutions, channel partners will need to re-invent the way they offer services,” explained Audrey William, Head of Research, ICT Practice, Australia and New Zealand, from Frost & Sullivan.

Adding, “With shrinking profit margins in the professional services segment (installation, maintenance and support), it will be critical for channel partners to offer services beyond the traditional portfolio.”

The Frost & Sullivan survey also found that over half of New Zealand use over-the-top (OTT) applications for communications thanks to their cost effectiveness and ease of use. Also, half of organizations use Telecom New Zealand (News - Alert) as their UC-related service provider.

Worldwide, the growth in the enterprise video conferencing market is slowing. Expensive conference room systems are diminishing as companies choose solutions that they can deploy over a smartphone or a laptop.

Despite softer growth, however, many CIOs view UC as a priority, and the segment remains one of the fastest-growing networking technologies.

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