Asia-Pacific Antes Up For ET Apps

Asia-Pacific's enterprise telephony applications market--excluding Japan--is poised to realize a strong upsurge in growth: The sector totaled $77.2 million in 2005 and is expected to reach $589.9 million by the end of 2012, a CAGR of 33.7 percent, according to "Asia Pacific Enterprise Telephony Applications (ET Apps) Market CY2005," a study by Frost & Sullivan. (The consultancy defines ET apps as a set of applications that reside on the telephony platform to provide additional productivity-enhancing tools, including industry-specific applications and horizontal applications like voicemail, unified communications, and interface applications.) The study also notes that by 2012 ET apps could represent more than 30 percent of the entire enterprise telephony market, up from 2005's mere 5.2 percent. Additional findings from Frost & Sullivan's research contend that by 2009 the Greater China region, encompassing China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, is forecasted to exceed Australia and New Zealand as the largest adopter of enterprise telephony applications solutions. The study, which examines Australia and New Zealand, Greater China, Southeast Asian nations, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, and Indian markets, offers market sizing, forecasts and opportunities, and highlights the industry's vendors, third-party developers, and system integrators. As IP deployments continue at a rapid pace, CIOs are increasingly looking for ways to use the underlying IP platform to increase productivity and reduce costs, according to Prasannavadan Gaitonde, a Frost & Sullivan industry manager. "Companies are moving to the next stage of utilization of their voice networks beyond the standard benefits of TCO reduction and...towards enhancing productivity and integrating applications in their business processes," he said in a written statement. The report, however, does reference some of the challenges plaguing the region's enterprise telephony market. For example, one of the issues cited is the difficulty associated with justifying tangible ROI, especially for productivity-based applications. Other challenges, according to the report, are the hefty price tag of IP telephony endpoints, lack of voice-platform standardization, and the need for vendors to shift their sales focus. "Solutions sales have longer selling cycles and require an understanding of customers' business needs, rather than purely offering a lower priced commoditized product," Gaitonde said. "This often proves challenging for vendors and their sales channels, who for years have been used to selling products." Related articles: The Ring Dynasty: China's Contact Center Market Intensifies Growth Spurt: The Asia-Pacific Next-Gen Voice Market Asia Pacific Contact Centers Warm to Nearshoring