Friday, July 11, 2014

In Enterprise Telecom Markets, New Revenue Sources are an Order of Magnitude Greater than UC, Conferencing

One might make a few interesting observations about the latest telecom and enterprise spending forecasts contained in the latest Telecommunications Industry Association market review.


The report finds that in 2013, for the first time, United States information and communications technology spending accelerated faster than overall global spending, a trend that is expected to continue through 2017.  


Additionally, the U.S. has passed Europe in overall ICT spending, and now ranks behind only Asia.


Those findings mirror the healthy revenue trends in the U.S. mobile and broader telecommunications industry, where U.S. mobile service providers continue to grow revenue at a time when revenue in Europe is declining.


There also is some significant information about the balance between legacy and new revenue sources in the enterprise and business segments of the market.


Among the most revealing bits of data is that cloud computing, cybersecurity and M2M already dwarf legacy services such as unified communications, videoconferencing and audioconferencing, which have been mainstays of the business segment.


In 2014, unified communications will be a $2 billion revenue stream, videoconferencing will be a $1.3 billion revenue source and audioconferencing will be a $3.7 billion business.

Compare that to cloud computing at $67.8 billion, M2M at $13 billion and cybersecurity at $46 billion in 2014. Every one of those emerging new lines of business already is an order of magnitude bigger than the legacy services.

By 2017, the picture will be even more pronounced.

By 2017, unified communications will be a $2.5 billion revenue stream. Videoconferencing will remain flat at $1.2 billion. Audioconferencing will be only marginally bigger, at $3.8 billion annual revenue, than it was in 2014.

But cloud computing will have grown to $107 billion, M2M will reach $28 billion and cyber security will represent $$61.5 billion in annual revenue.

In other words, even the smallest of the new revenue sources--machine to machine services--will be an order of magnitude greater than the combined revenue from conferencing and unified communications.

Collectively, revenue from cloud computing alone will be two orders of magnitude greater than all conferencing and unified communications revenue.

Meanwhile, the combined value of cloud computing, cyber security and M2M services will be very close to four orders of magnitude greater than the revenue generated by conferencing and unified communications.


And that is why some of us essentially have stopped following voice and some legacy markets to concentrate on the newer revenue segments related to Internet-based communication services.

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