Telstra is a market leader in APAC UCaaS segment

The Asia-Pacific unified communications as a service (UCaaS) market is booming, and Telstra is one of the market leaders, according to Frost & Sullivan.

The research firm estimates that the total APAC UCaaS market was worth around $1.8 billion (US$1.67 billion) in 2013, and is on track to grow to US$2.98 billion by 2018. This would represent a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4%.

Frost said the telephony services segment of the market is the most widely adopted - and is likely to remain so in the near future. The key growth drivers include mobility, video-as-a-service, web conferencing and cloud contact centre services.

“The necessity of having a highly mobile workforce aided by the increased usage of UCaaS solutions delivered through hosted/cloud and managed platforms has been a boon for enterprise mobile collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Jessie Yu, industry manager for ICT Practice at Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific.

“Enterprises are also actively looking to integrate UC applications to reduce costs and complexities, and offer greater flexibility for their operations.”

Telstra is one of the top three vendors in the APAC UCaaS market, Frost estimates. Together with Japan’s NTT Communications and US-based InterCall, the three companies capture around 25% of market revenues.

But the big three are facing challenges to their dominance by rivals including SingTel - Optus’s Singapore-headquartered parent company - as well as China Telecom, India’s Tata Communications and the UK’s BT.

Image courtesy of Eva Rinaldi under CC