New technology, working from home, globalisation, green issues, collaboration and mobility are just some of the factors paving the way towards a new landscape in the UK comms market. Here, we provide an overview of the trends and issues that are shaping the industry.

Voice revenues are set to plummet over the coming years, according to Forrester Research's figures which also shows that revenue for voice services from 2006 to 2011 has an annual compound growth rate of minus nine per cent. In 2005, voice revenues in Great Britain stood at £3,935 million. In 2008 that figure has sunk to £3,233 million. By 2011, the number will drop significantly to £2,378 million, Forrester says. However, over the same period, VoIP revenues are going to rise. CAGR from 2006 to 2011 for VoIP stands at 66.1 per cent, from revenues of £16 million in 2005, to £211 million in 2008, to a whopping £898 million in 2011.

Unified communications is also on the rise, growing at a rate of 22 per cent CAGR for the period 2006 to 2010, according to Tandberg in 2007. "Those figures are enormous," says Alison Brewer, Product Marketing Manager for mobility solutions at Mitel. "Enterprises in particular know they can retain staff if they provide the tools that enable users to work flexibly, as though they were in the office. It's not just voice, it's bringing email, data sharing, video, web-based collaboration and instant messaging in under one umbrella."

"Increased costs are seeing more and more people working from home"

Dan Somers, Managing Director at VC-Net, a global managed network for collaborative and conferencing technologies, commented: "Voice is rapidly decreasing, VoIP is rapidly increasing, and MPLS, quality of service networks have double digit growth. Those are some high growth rates and some scary stats. Resellers need to balance their fear and greed and ride the wave."

The European Commission's Flexible Working Directive, which came into existence in 2003 and has been tweaked and expanded since then, is adding pressure to smaller businesses to pay for the tools to let people do this properly. Mark Hayes, Sales and Networking Manager at Universal Telecom, says home working is a growing trend for Universal's customers.

He commented: "Much of this is being driven by government directives on maternity leave for men and women, equal opportunities and flexible working. Many businesses have noticed the benefits of being able to retain staff that otherwise would have left. They have also been able to take on additional people without buying more premises, which with the coming credit crunch is making people wary of overstretching themselves."
David Pollock, Managing Director at Chess, added: "Homeworking is definitely a trend, with fuel blockades and environmental issues. Increased costs are seeing more and more people working from home, which is helping their work-life balance."

BCS Global is also seeing a rise in homeworking, which is in turn driving demand for its visual conferencing products. Thanks to that, it is now recruiting channel partners with a channel programme launch on 1 August. Clive Sawkins, CEO at BCS Global, commented: "Homeworking is a rising trend. All organisations are thinking green. They are absolutely concerned about doing the right thing. Secondly, the fuel price rises are making everyone think more broadly, so about quality of life for their employees and the work-life balance."

Additionally, a new generation of worker has already entered the marketplace. These people sit at their PCs and talk to friends on Skype video, while simultaneously instant messaging family and texting a work colleague. This unified form of communications is also expected at work. Research from BT shows that by 2010, over 50 million Europeans will work flexibly. According to a YouGov survey for BT Business, 65 per cent of smaller UK businesses questioned said staff motivation would be increased, and 50 per cent cited increased productivity would be expected from home working.

The survey also showed that younger workers were particularly motivated by flexible working, and would be willing to forego a pay rise in order to work flexibly, with 70 per cent of graduate job seekers actively looking for the chance to work flexibly. However, all these factors pushing people towards home working are being offset by the fact that technology has caught up and people can now benefit from lowered costs of the maturing areas of unified communications, collaboration and conferencing technology.

Jayne Dimmock, Product Marketing Director at Swyx, stated: "Flexible working will gain more importance and small businesses will not feel caught between a rock and a hard place. They will be able to set people up at home, and also get more good employees as people are able to be more flexible in the way they work."

While advanced unified communications applications such as presence have been around for some time, they have not been available at the price point that would tempt SMEs to buy. This end of the market has been in a difficult position for some time, despite the protestations of larger vendors that their products are suitable and affordable for all - just looking at sales records show that very few SMEs have been able to afford this type of technology.

However, changes are afoot, thanks to the ever decreasing price point as this technology has matured, more SMEs are and will be able to participate in the converged, collaborative world of unified communications.

Carl Churchill, Commercial Director at Murphx, commented: "Market costs are being driven down for connectivity and communications technologies. That lowered cost and ability for people to have the functionality they have in major offices, at home, are big drivers for homeworking. The biggest issue for SMEs was being able to afford these services, which before only blue chip companies could afford. Now, products and services are out there that support the smaller deployment."

Much of the growth in the conferencing market is being driven by SME usage, Somers states, as this market finally gets it hands on accessible, affordable technology. This take up of conferencing in the SME market has created what VC-Net calls the global, or virtual SME, where a very small company is able to work on a global basis through the one on one touch provided by good conferencing solutions. Somers explains: "Conferencing allows businesses to be flexible, global and to take resources from people at home and overseas. It's a rapidly growing, new phenomenon that is only bought on by the advent of conferencing."

Churchill added: "It's so easy to run a national organisation with these technologies now. You can have all the connectivity, security, voice and video calls, the lot, and it's all cost effective and easy to implement."

In June this year, Chess launched its new audio conferencing product because of customer demand. Web conferencing, which includes video, will be coming in September this year, Pollock says. He adds that the costs of these products are being driven down by BT's 21CN, as a strong network enables more cost effective products to go mass market.

One trend in conferencing that Hayes has seen is desktop conferencing being taken from hosted to inhouse so the technology is there for customers to build on. "People want to control that technology inhouse so they can add additional applications. That's great for us, as we can out a nice big system in the middle of that and add the applications the customer wants on top, like presence and collaboration," Hayes says.

"Conferencing, UC and collaboration are turning the sales cycle on its head"

"People are getting confused by all the technologies, protocols and buzz words out there, and some resellers are helping them get confused. Our job is really to understand what the customer wants to achieve and put in the foundations to help them move forward. Fundamentally, we're coming at this as a voice provider, so we're selling the control in the centre, a converged IP PBX which is an enabling technology."

Conferencing, collaboration and unified communications is turning the sales cycle on its head, believes Hayes. He says that resellers have to talk to the end user customer about the benefits of homeworking, find out what the customer needs, and then explain the applications that can enable those benefits, and then the underlying technology it can all run on - the switch. "Don't just walk in with a brand and a box," he warns.
Somers adds: "The most powerful thing resellers can do is brush up on their consultancy skills and antennae to really know what's going on. The customer wants someone who understands convergence and collaboration. We've really simplified things; our box is preconfigured and is sold on a three year maintenance contract, giving the reseller the opportunity to cross and up sell while providing recurring revenues."

The future of unified business will be about total immersion and full presence across the board, from the office to the home worker, claims Hayes. He explains: "You will be able to see who is available across all businesses in your network and what the highest common denominator is for you to be able to correspond according to the devices you are on at that time and connectivity available.

"For this to work though, it really depends on standards being put in place so people on different systems can talk to each other. We've got a long way to go yet."