Unified Communications (News - Alert) delivered as SaaS is experiencing strong growth as companies throughout the world are discovering the benefits that it can provide. According to recent research by The Radicati Group Inc., the market volume will quadruple by the year 2012.

In its latest whitepaper, sponsored by CommuniGate Systems, the Radicati Group predicts that yearly sales will rise from today’s $6.9 billion dollars up to $28.7 billion dollars. This report demonstrates how service providers can benefit from this potential.

Unified Communications are value added services that not only generate additional revenues from business customers, they also increase customer loyalty and reduce churn. The cost savings associated with the integration of services help to position these solutions strongly in the market.

Even the most sophisticated technologies can be within reach of small and medium businesses at affordable prices due to SaaS (News - Alert) offerings. UC delivered as SaaS is effectively increasing the attractiveness of these offers of new ways to reduce costs and simplify administration.

 

This whitepaper examines how service providers can best leverage this emerging market opportunity for UC delivered as SaaS. These service providers must focus on identifying the right platform supplier from the start, preferable one that offers a fully integrated solution that is designed from the ground up to be a UC platform for Service Provider use.

 

Key considerations for a powerful SaaS platform include: high-density carrier grading; multi-tenancy technology; extreme reliability; modular class of services; mobile access; and Web 2.0 delivery.

By the year 2012, Radicati predicts that the number of SaaS UC users will triple to 136 million users. To maximize this opportunity, analysts recommend that service providers select a high-performance solution to provide high density and an integrated architecture.

A multi tenant platform allows providers to virtualize potentially thousands of business subscriber customers in one system with low operating expenses, allowing them to significantly expand their reach.

 

“We are convinced that service providers who are joining the SaaS market will quickly realize the ARPU potential and loyalty of subscribers to the Value Added Service offering of Unified Communications. In the current situation, it is easy to build up a strong customer basis and to achieve increasing sales – best prerequisites for being a consolidated market leader,” said Sara Radicati, chief executive officer of The Radicati Group (News - Alert). “Service providers gain competitive advantage with a Unified Communications platform that is able to provide Value Added Services for communication like VoIP, VideoMail or video on demand.”

 

According to Jon R. Doyle, vice president of business development at CommuniGate Systems (News - Alert), especially in the SMB segment where there are limited IT budgets and IT recourses, UC as SaaS provides an ideal solution for the business to reap immediate benefits.

 

“CommuniGate Pro offers the only really integrated Unified Communications platform that enables service providers to seamlessly expand from five to 50 million subscribers in a single system image and easily add new Value Added Services with its rich development environment and APIs,” Doyle said.

Unified Communications can deliver considerable benefits to an organization. In fact, many are using UC solutions and may not even realize it. When they are delivered in a platform that allows for the optimization of benefits, the organization can more directly relate benefits with solutions.

 

When UC is delivered by way of SaaS, companies of all sizes can capitalize on the opportunities that these technologies provide, without breaking the bank to do so. Such an approach will help drive rapid acceptance and adoption.