|
|
 |
|
Viewing report
|
|
|
|
FoIP Server Markets, 2009-2014
Davidson Consulting, May 2011, Pages: 76
FoIP Server Markets, that says the market will grow rapidly during the five-year forecast period, from $130 million in 2009 to $415 million in 2014, a 26.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). The fact is that switching from conventional fax servers to FoIP servers saves companies money and so businesses are making the switch. The market growth will also be driven by the virtualization of fax servers, the desire of companies to centralize their fax operations, to enhance their VoIP initiatives with FoIP, and to endow their multifunction peripherals (MFPs) and fax machines with audit trails to satisfy compliance regulations.
Overall, FoIP servers generated 88% of 2010 revenues, while hardware-based sales accounted for 12%. By 2013, hardware sales will be flat and will start to decline.
This year, Open Text is the leading FoIP supplier, as its FoIP revenues increased by 46% to $54 million. This placed the company just ahead of Sagemcom whose FoIP revenues only increased by 6% from $48 million to $51 million in 2010. Sagemcom's results were hurt by the conversion from euros to dollars which decreased the company's revenues to $51 million, whereas, if the euro conversion had stayed as it was last year, Sagemcom's revenues would have been $55 million, causing it to retain its leadership position. Sagemcom derives about 80% of its revenues from Europe.
SIP (session-initiation protocol) trunking and fax is a key issue for market growth. SIP trunking is a service offered by an ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Provider) that permits businesses that have a PBX installed to use Voice-over-IP (VoIP), by using the same connection as the Internet connection. SIP trunking eliminates can save in overall telecommunications costs. By extending the SIP capabilities of the corporate network outside the LAN, satellite offices, remote workers and even customers can use VoIP and other forms of realtime communications applications to share ideas and increase productivity. But, as reported in last year's research study, SIP trunking has created and still creates fax interoperability problems. Moreover, even though the SIP standard is written with interoperability in mind, integrating SIP equipment from different vendors always takes time because, all too frequently, minor inconsistencies exist in how the different vendors interpret the SIP specifications. If a company is looking to use SIP trunks from more than one vendor, they still have to deal with the complexities of interoperating with several SIP trunks that each behave in different ways. SIP trunking is giving enterprises pause even just for VoIP. Many corporations, especially large ones, are hanging back from SIP trunking as a result.
With regard to FoIP and SIP trunking, the current situation is that most businesses that are using SIP trunking are small-to-medium-sized companies that want the cost savings and don't have to think about any other interoperability problems. Large companies are mostly just starting to look at SIP trunking with fax. These companies are the meat-and-potatoes of the FoIP marketplace and when they start taking leaps into the SIP trunking market, it will be a watershed event.
Today, the Fax Task Group (FTG) is testing T.38 FoIP with the 37 Internet Telephony Service Providers from the i3 Forum who represent a combined subscriber base of over 1.5 billion in over 100 countries. The FTG is overseeing the FoIP testing and they are initially testing 14 different IP carrier networks, which includes 14 different environments. Several of the networks have never used T.38 faxing and another tore down any call where it detected a fax. So the Fax Task force has its hands full ironing out the wrinkles. But it is making progress. At the time this report was written, such interoperability was starting to be accomplished between the 14 different carrier networks. By 2012, interoperability should be accomplished between the 14 carriers, and from there, the assumption is that the other 23 carriers in the i3 will follow suit.
Meanwhile, FoIP has changed the game in terms of arguments that Internet fax service providers make. The Internet fax service providers have traditionally made their arguments comparing fax services to conventional fax servers, but FoIP servers eliminate many of these arguments. Such eliminated arguments include telecom costs, which are cut by FoIP servers as well as by Internet fax services, the cost of hardware upgrades, which goes away when businesses install softwarebased FoIP solutions, and maintenance costs, which are less with centralized FoIP solutions and less with hardware-less FoIP installations. In fact, in many cases, the support cost difference is very small or non-existent. Still, the Internet fax service vendors do have some advantages in system capacity and disaster recovery, but FoIP server suppliers who also sell fax services, like Biscom, can neutralize both arguments. Finally, FoIP vendors have an advantage when it comes to MFP links, where they sell rich links and the Internet fax service suppliers only sell links where the MFP must handle email which does not meet with compliance regulations.
|
|
|
|
