More than 40% of businesses in Kenya are planning to deploy unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions over the next three years, according to the latest insights from global IT market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC).
Referencing its Unified Communications Trends, Priorities and Insights in Kenya 2013 Survey Results report, IDC says it expects the adoption of unified communications technologies to increase over the coming years as enterprises transform their business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) models in order to exploit the opportunities offered by these solutions.
“Convergence solutions were very rarely used in Kenya until a few years ago,” says Leonard Kore, a research analyst for telecommunications and media at IDC East Africa.
“However, the need to increase enterprise collaboration between different departments and branches, improve cost savings, and drive efficiency gains has resulted in unified communications becoming a priority IT strategy for organisations striving to remain competitive.”
Despite the positive outlook, the uptake of UCC has yet to fully mature as a key communications tool for many Kenyan businesses.
As such, IDC believes IT vendors and solutions providers should not only push increased efficiency and improved productivity as the main value propositions of UCC, but also engage in more challenging tasks – such as clearly quantifying the net ROI for organisations that adopt their UCC solutions.
IDC identified Cisco and Microsoft as the leading vendors for UCC in Kenya, while Kore expects other players such as Avaya to make a big push for more market share in the UCC space in 2014, particularly through their next-generation contact centres and other business collaboration solutions.
“Vendors are expected to start focusing on newer unified communications elements away from traditional voice and email applications,” continues Kore.
“We expect them to concentrate on newer UCC technologies such as enterprise mobility solutions to capture the mobile workforce, as well as CRM contact centres and enterprise social applications to enhance customer interaction.
“Videoconferencing solutions have also gained traction with Kenyan organisations as a cost-saving measure, ensuring easier communication between employees across geographically dispersed locations.”
