Asia-Pac tele-applications market to grow explosively

The Asia-Pacific Enterprise Telephony applications (ET apps) market (excluding Japan) is expected to enjoy very high growth at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 33.7 percent from 2005 to 2012. ET apps, which are in the nascent stages of adoption, currently could account for over 30 percent of the total enterprise telephony market by 2012, from only 5.2 percent in 2005.

ET apps are a set of applications that reside on the telephony platform to provide additional productivity enhancing tools. These include vertical (industry) specific applications, as well as horizontal applications such as voice mail, unified communications and interface applications. The deployment of such applications is presently pervasive in countries such as Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).

By 2009, the Greater China region comprising China, Taiwan and Hong Kong is expected to surpass ANZ as the largest adopter of ET apps solutions. As IP deployments continue at a rapid pace, CIOs are increasingly seeking ways to utilise the underlying IP platform to increase productivity and reduce costs,” notes Frost & Sullivan industry manager Prasannavadan Gaitonde.

As a result, applications on the telephony platform are finding greater acceptance and are likely to provide the next level of growth for enterprise communications. Vendors are responding by building applications and forming partnerships with third party application developers in order to tap the market.

The integration of voice with business processes provides for better customer service and helps to improve productivity within enterprises. Hospitality, healthcare, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and, to a certain extent, retail and manufacturing, are some of the industries that have started deploying ET apps in order to increase productivity.

Most enterprises do not have the metrics to measure the savings brought about by the increased productivity of the workforce or the greater customer satisfaction resulting from improved efficiency. The high cost of IP telephony end-points are also an added challenge, as well as the lack of standardisation of voice platforms and the requirement for vendors to shift from product sales to solutions-selling.

Given the enormous potential for ET apps in the Asia-Pacific region, vendors will do well to further educate the market, demonstrate quantifiable ROI, and target specific verticals for niche applications. In addition, further collaborations with third party developers will also ensure that the right set of applications required in the industry are developed.