By Audrey William and Anand Balasubramanian
Introduction
The Australia videoconferencing market, including videoconferencing end points, infrastructure and services, is expected to be worth over A$700 million by 2018. Whilst there will be strong growth for endpoints, the services market is offering increasing opportunities for vendors and channels mainly in the areas of cloud-based videoconferencing and managed services. The Australian videoconferencing market is expected to register a healthy growth of close to 18% from 2011 to 2017. Given the current economic climate, with generally cautious IT spending, this healthy growth rate suggests that businesses still see videoconferencing as an attractive option for reducing travel costs. The rapid increase in smart phones and tablets usage is also expected to impact videoconferencing adoption in the enterprise market, as an increasing number of business users utilise these mobile devices for videoconferencing. The decline in price points for videoconferencing solutions is another contributor to the growth in the Australia market.
This market insight looks at the state of competition between the major vendors, as well as market opportunities and challenges.
Whilst Polycom and Cisco Dominate the local market, many new entrants are starting to ramp up their activities
The Australian market continues to be a key Asia Pacific market for both Cisco and Polycom. Last week, Polycom announced a corporate rebranding including a new logo. The new logo and identity indicates that both Polycom and the broader industry are increasingly moving towards software based solutions. In an era where mobility, social media and cloud are the big themes in enterprise communications, this demonstrates Polycom's increasing focus on these areas. Polycom has a strong foothold in the Australian market, and has a strong channels strategy with Telstra being one of its main channels. Both Telstra and Polycom will be looking to offer cloud based videoconferencing services on the back of Polycom's Real Presence solution. Another growth area for Polycom is through its partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft's Lync has experienced good growth in the Australian market in the last 12 months and is a great platform for Polycom to enter new market segments.
