Is it a unified communication platform or a unified market structure?

Are you still skeptical about this technology in the face of the current popularity of the Unified Communication platform? Now let's give a brief introduction to the market development. First, let's take a look at the actions of major manufacturers and believe that you will understand the needs of this market.

Although the concept of Unified Communication has been widely publicized by major manufacturers, the goal of the Unified Communication Platform is to achieve the integration of various communication methods, from the perspective of domestic enterprises, their understanding of Unified Communication is still in a vague stage. In terms of users, what functions do they need most to integrate with each other? The Research and Consulting Institutions of the Chinese ICT market conducted a large sample survey on potential users in China, with more than 800 enterprises under investigation. The enterprise field is distributed in various industries and focuses on large and medium-sized enterprises, the survey results show that domestic enterprise users want to achieve the interconnection function first, namely office kits, accounting for more than of all respondents, followed by email systems and mobile phones, nearly half of the total, followed by fixed talk, video conferencing, and instant messaging, and integration with user business systems, such as ERP and CRM, are at the end.

It can be seen that manufacturers with a wide range of office kits and email systems will have great advantages in the future development of the Unified Communication Platform. For example, Microsoft and IBM are later in the Unified Communication Field, however, due to their intervention, they have greatly promoted the development of the unified communication market. In the future, software-based Unified Communication will become a trend.

In the past analysis, we thought that only by integrating the Unified Communication with the business system can it truly reflect its value. It will even promote the reorganization of users' business processes, this greatly improves user productivity and brings significant economic benefits to users. However, this survey found that the integration of Unified Communication and user business systems is not as urgent as the development of other functions. The reason is that many users do not have a deep understanding of the changes that can be brought about by the integration of the business system into the unified communication function, and there are few such successful cases. Therefore, unified Communication vendors should increase the deep application of Unified Communication in user business systems and accumulate relevant success stories. Only in this way can they truly promote the development of unified communication in the enterprise-level market.

Unlike other hot spots in the past, the Unified Communication Platform is currently the most widely used field by major international vendors, top international telecom, IT, and Internet vendors, represented by Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Nortel, AVAYA, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, HP, and GOOGLE, have joined camp. Let's hear from major manufacturers, including product launches, Unified Communication solution tour, establishment and release of various alliances, and various activities; the majority of domestic enterprise users gradually learn about Unified Communication from the original ignorance, and some have realized the value that unified communication brings to enterprises. Contrary to the booming scenes of manufacturers, the overall performance of domestic operators is rather dull. In the entire Unified Communication ecosystem, the operator's position is critical and has a huge influence on the future development direction of the Unified Communication.

Xu guohong, an analyst at the ICT market research institute, believes that the development of the unified communication market is far greater than the challenges encountered by domestic operators. Therefore, domestic operators should change their current wait-and-see attitude as soon as possible and actively participate in the construction of Unified Communication.

The specific analysis is as follows:

1. Currently, domestic operators, especially fixed-line operators, are declining as the prices of telephone bills and rental network lines continue to decline, resulting in their ARPU decreasing year by year, at present, the profit growth rate brought by the value-added services launched by operators is not very satisfactory, and the development pressure in the future will be even greater, while Unified Communication will be a new development field in the future, it can bring great help to users' daily work efficiency and cost, and will inevitably attract more users to choose Unified Communication, which will undoubtedly be a relatively long-term and stable profit growth point.

2. Judging from the current situation of unified communication platform construction, it is mainly applied inside the Enterprise. Due to the lack of support from operators, it is difficult to implement a wider platform. for operators, it is precisely a good opportunity for them to build a unified communication platform to provide services for a wider range of enterprise users. Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, they can provide online services, at present, although the major operators are also promoting their own value-added services, they are only limited to users of the network, and lack the extensive support of various vendors. At the same time, due to lack of connectivity with other systems, therefore, the probability of being used by users is low.

3. If traditional telecom operators want to change from telecom operations to integrated service providers, they will face a transformation from a monopoly industry to a fully competitive industry, from the perspective of maximizing the interests, we try to slow down the pace of all-round competition. However, this trend is irreversible. If operators are not prepared early, then in the future competition, other sellers will take the lead and lose their competitive advantages due to insufficient preparation. If operators adjust their strategies as early as possible, they will be able to launch a Unified Communication Platform at the operation level to serve a large number of enterprise users at the same time because of their monopoly on the line, however, this cannot be achieved by any vendor at present. The operator's advantages will not only be very prominent, but also expand a broader market through cooperation with other related equipment and service providers, this will be the new blue ocean for carriers in the coming years.

Fortunately, China Netcom has already started cooperation with other vendors. They are working with RADVISION to build a unified communication platform at the operational level. I believe they will continue to earn considerable benefits in the future.