Managed Communication Services Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

The managed communication services market is expected to register a CAGR of 13.51%, during the forecast period of 2021-2026. Communication systems can be optimized by managed service providers and offer enormous value at a comparatively low cost. Managed communication services are experiencing increasing demand, due to the penetration of technologies, such as mobility, cloud computing, and big data across different industry verticals.

• Unified communications have emerged as a cost-effective solution for businesses across industries, such as healthcare, BFSI, and retail. The unified communications market has historically revolved around individual products. In the past, companies chose individual products to meet particular needs. For example, organizations bought email servers for messaging, team rooms for teamwork, portals for organizational information sharing, and PBX and voicemail for telephony services. Now, customers are making strategic technology decisions to deploy unified communications and collaboration environments based on the capability and integration of the collaboration stack.
• Vendors are undergoing various partnerships, which is proving to augment the market growth. For instance, in February 2020, Synoptek and Juxto announced a partnership to offer secure, real-time communications as a managed service. Both the companies leverage Ribbon Communications’ Kandy Business Solutions to allow clients to transition their legacy business communications systems to the cloud and enable next-generation Unified Communications capabilities.
• In November 2019, CloudZen Partner, an IT strategic firm partnered with UCaaS solution provider Avaya and Ring Central. This partnership is formed to implement a new Avaya cloud office in a complex, multi-location business environment.
• Remote work mandates caused by COVID-19 is creating an unprecedented opportunity for service providers to promote software-based communications as a key enabler of business continuity as well as demonstrate the flexibility of communication services in terms of capacity adjustments and services delivery (irrespective of location). This trend is expected to support market growth. Voxbone recently published a report highlighting the impact the virus is having on its network. According to the study, COVID-19 has pushed a massive increase in demand for cloud communications, as businesses look for ways to reduce the threats of things, such as group gatherings and the work commute.
• Cisco stated that during the first 11 days of March, its Webex product was used to run 5.5 billion meetings that were a massive surge due to the reason that organizations have opted to work remotely since the outbreak of COVID-19.

Key Market Trends

VoIP occupies Significant Share

• The rapidly increasing adoption of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend and other mobility solutions is expected to drive the adoption of communication solutions, such as VoIP even further. BYOD has emerged as a significant trend in this new era of flexibility and network accessibility for employees working around the world for various organizations, making the workplace more productive as IT and other industries are investing in strengthening the infrastructure. According to the Cisco, enterprises with a BYOD policy in place saves on average USD 350 per year, per employee.
• According to a 2019 survey of 2,046 people across France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, and Italy by Snom (one of the leading manufacturers of IP phones in the current landscape), 42% of people who have a desk phone have already made the migration to VoIP or are planning to do so in 2020. 64% of the respondents said that lower costs were the most important benefit of trying the new technology, followed by better voice quality and enhanced mobility.
• However, among those who intended to bring VoIP into their system in 2019, the share of Italian brands came in second at 16.7% to Spain at 18.6%. The country with the fewest new adopters was France, with only an 8.8% rate. On the other hand, the share of people who had already adopted VoIP in the United Kingdom (over a third) and Germany (38.9%) was much higher.
• New offering launches are helping in the market growth in the region. For instance, in September 2019, Panasonic launched its first fully-integrated cloud communication platform, UC-Line, to offer businesses across Europe a Unified Communications solution. UC-Line combines Panasonic’s wide range of SIP phone units with VoIP, video conferencing, and a powerful suite of unified communications tools.

Europe is Expected to Witness Significant Growth

• The major driving factor for the market growth in Europe is increasing use cases of UC&C in the retail industry. The UK retailers are looking to attract customers to interact with them in-store so that they keep coming back. To do this, they need to provide a convenient and frictionless in-store experience, with the added advantage of knowledgeable sales staff that can explain product offerings and the number-one preference of in-store shoppers, ahead of ambiance, which is propelling the adoption of communication services.
• The United Kingdom has witnessed a potential growth in the retail industry with major players, like 8x8, a US-based company, which is one of the largest UCaaS providers comprising more than 1 million users, expanded significantly in the European market, after it made two acquisitions of the UK-headquartered enterprises.
• The country’s carriers’ efforts to discontinue the integrated services digital network services are driving the carrier and customer migration to Internet protocol connectivity services. This huge shift is driving the adoption of next-generation business communication solutions, such as hosted private branch exchange (PBX) and UCaaS solutions.
• The market is also witnessing partnerships, which is helping to increase the awareness of the solutions. In July 2020, Atos transferred a portion of its unified communications and collaboration activities in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Finland to Damovo, a leading provider of ICT managed services and solutions. The partnership enables a faster response to the increasing demand for innovative UC solutions in the enterprise sector and is part of Atos’ global ambition to grow its market share for its UCC portfolio through indirect channel partners.

Competitive Landscape

The managed communication services market is highly competitive in nature. Product launches, high expense on research and development, partnerships and acquisitions, etc. are the prime growth strategies adopted by the companies to sustain the intense competition. Some of the recent developments are -

• April 2020 - Verizon Communications announced to acquire BlueJeans Network, an enterprise-level video conferencing and event platform. The acquisition will feed into Verizon’s immersive unified communications portfolio. Primarily BlueJeans’ meeting platform will be integrated with Verizon’s unified communications as a service business.
• August 2019 - Toronto-based cloud services provider OnX Canada is offering Cisco’s SD-WAN as a managed service to enterprise customers. OnX offers cloud-managed SD-WAN, cloud calling, cloud-managed access, and security, as well as the Webex services courtesy of Cisco.​

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