More than half of organisations now have sites or employees outside of their domestic market that require cloud communications solutions, opening up new opportunities VARs.
That is according to a white paper published by Cavell and CallTower, which found that 56 per cent of businesses with staff in different markets are being driven towards unified communications solutions that don’t require hardware investment to connect their teams.
The European UCaaS and telephony markets are also forecast to grow significantly alongside the need for multi-country offerings. Total cloud communications users will increase by 50 per cent, surpassing 80 million by 2028, representing an expected revenue growth of £1 billion to a total of £5.5 billion. At the same time, users of Microsoft Teams telephony will grow to almost 20 million, with Operator Connect in line to be the dominant solution (roughly 50 per cent market share) and direct routing partners to be close second.
Cavell has also forecast that cloud-enabled contact centre agents will exceed one million by 2028 as the traditional boundaries between unified communications and contact centre technologies are rapidly dissolving.
Paul Holden, VP of EMEA sales at CallTower, said, “Taken together, the revenue predictions and the trends we’re seeing in enterprise organisations have created a significant growth opportunity for multi-country VARs – if they can offer a single voice platform that plugs into the leading unified comms products and provides flexibility to move between them. The rewards are even greater for VARs that can include contact centre seats as part of their offering, as contact centre solutions typically offer higher margins than basic unified comms services.”
The research also highlights the complexity of maintaining a presence across multiple countries with distinct regulatory and compliance requirements, creating unique challenges for service delivery, support and management. With VARs increasingly working with partners to address these challenges, the study highlights that VARs should choose a partner with a proven track record, a strong presence in key European Union markets, and certification/established relationships across the major technology platforms and vendors.
Holden added, “It’s clear that enterprises are committed to running multi-vendor communication systems in multi-country environments, but that they are increasingly looking to enable this through a single system that’s simpler to procure and manage. With the backing of the right unified comms solution provider, there’s a massive opportunity for VARs grow their customer base and share of wallet by enhancing their multi-national capabilities.”