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Growth Opportunities in the North American UCaaS Market

  • Report

  • 84 Pages
  • November 2023
  • Region: North America
  • Frost & Sullivan
  • ID: 5265822

AI-Powered Innovation Will Determine the Future of Cloud Communications

Macro-economic and socio-political trends have had a considerable impact on the North American UCaaS market in the past four years. The COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns triggered a massive shift to remote and hybrid work, disrupted supply chains and business models in many industries, and highlighted the need for digital transformation.

Without much time for post-pandemic recovery, many economies have now been affected by the Russo-Ukrainian war, which has further disrupted fuel and food supply chains and has contributed to rising inflation, increased consumer and business anxiety, and a pervasive economic slowdown. While the US and Canada have been less impacted by the war than their European counterparts, North American providers have also experienced lengthier sales cycles, reduced deal sizes, and an overall increased caution in technology investment decision making.

Despite adverse macro-economic and socio-political conditions, and somewhat contrary to supply-side anecdotal evidence, the data collected in January 2023 indicated a positive outlook on communications spending with slightly more than one-half of North American IT/telecom decision makers expecting their organizations’ communications budgets to increase. In fact, one-quarter of survey respondents reported that political and macro-economic events are accelerating their overall digital technology investments.

The North American UCaaS market is expected to remain on a steady growth trajectory. Evolved work models are among the leading drivers for cloud communications adoption. Organizations embracing flexible work styles and supporting a large number of remote and hybrid workers are leveraging UCaaS and cloud collaboration solutions to enable flexible and cost-effective connections among employees and between employees and various external parties. Untapped use cases among frontline workers and mid-market and large organizations, as well as upsell opportunities driven by AI-powered services, contact center features, vertical solutions, next-generation mobile services, and fee-based complementary services (e.g., call recording, archiving, push to talk, reporting, and analytics) are going to drive continued UCaaS adoption and incremental revenues.

From the supply side, new provider models, value propositions, and sales motions, as well as rapid, primarily AI-driven innovation, will play a key role in addressing an expanded array of use cases. The continued launches of integrated UCaaS and CCaaS solutions will enable providers to not only generate incremental revenues in the adjacent CCaaS market, but also address additional personas within the organization with differentiated capabilities provided at premium, yet compelling price levels.

Both technology developers leveraging their own proprietary platforms to deliver services and resellers providing their own branded UCaaS offers based on third-party platforms are included in this analysis. Services based on pure-cloud, multi-tenant, and multi-instance platforms are considered when evaluating providers’ market position and innovation and growth capabilities. For the purposes of this study, the publisher considers all multi-instance and multi-tenant hosted IP telephony offerings to be cloud PBX solutions. The supporting infrastructure can be hosted in a service provider or third-party data center or in a public cloud environment (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or Oracle Cloud).

This market analysis provides valuable insights on UCaaS market growth drivers and restraints, competitive factors and growth opportunities. It can be leveraged by market participants to develop sustainable growth strategies.

Table of Contents

1. Strategic Imperatives
  • Why is it Increasingly Difficult to Grow?
  • The Strategic Imperative 8
  • The Impact of the Top 3 Strategic Imperatives on the North American UCaaS Industry
  • Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine
2. Growth Opportunity Analysis
  • Scope of Analysis
  • Scope and Market Definitions
  • Key Findings
  • Growth Metrics
  • Distribution Channels
  • Growth Drivers
  • Future Remote Work Plans in North America
  • UCC Solution Investment Drivers
  • Growth Restraints
  • Macro Conditions' Impact on Investments in North America
  • Current and Future Enterprise Telephony/Business Call Control Environments
  • UCC Adoption is Well Underway
  • PBX/Cloud or Mobile PBX Investments for Remote Desk Workers
  • PSTN Calling Plan Investments for Remote Desk Workers
  • PBX/Cloud or Mobile PBX Investments for In-Office Desk Workers
  • PSTN Calling Plan Investments for In-Office Desk Workers
  • Enterprise Telephony Adoption for Frontline Workers
  • PBX/Cloud or Mobile PBX Investments for Frontline and Field Workers
  • PSTN Calling Plan Investments for Frontline and Field Workers
  • Cloud or Mobile PBX Services Adoption
  • Cloud or Mobile PBX Services Investments Among Current Users
  • Mobility is Critical, But it is Not a Mobile-Only World Yet
  • Mobile Business Calling App (Mobile SoftPhone) Adoption
  • Mobile Business Calling App (Mobile Soft Phone) Investments Among Current Users
  • Importance of Soft Phones
  • Importance of a Native Mobile Dialer with a Business Phone Number
  • Forecast Assumptions
  • UCC Budget Expectations Align with Investment Plans
  • Revenue and Installed Seats/Users Forecast
  • Net New Seats/Users Forecast
  • User and Revenue Forecast Analysis
  • Installed Seats/Users Forecast by Country
  • Market Analysis by Country
  • UCaaS Penetration of the Addressable Market
  • Percent Installed Seats/Users by Customer Size, 2022
  • Pricing Trends and Forecast, Total UCaaS Market
  • Pricing Trends and Forecast Analysis
  • Competitive Environment
  • Current Cloud or Mobile PBX/UCaaS Solutions/Providers
  • Future Cloud or Mobile PBX/UCaaS Solution Providers
  • Importance of a Fully Integrated UCaaS Solution
  • Installed Seats/Users Share by Service Provider Brand
  • Platform Vendor Share of Installed Seats/Users
  • Competitive Environment
3. Growth Opportunity Universe
  • Growth Opportunity 1 - Integrated Contact Center
  • Growth Opportunity 2 - Mobile-first UCaaS
  • Growth Opportunity 3 - International Expansion
  • Growth Opportunity 4 - Vertical Strategies and Frontliner Focus
  • Growth Opportunity 5 - Microsoft Teams Calling Enablement Services
  • Growth Opportunity 6 - AI Foundation
4. Appendix
  • Providers Included in “Other”
  • Platforms Included in “Other”
5. Next Steps
  • Your Next Steps
  • Why Now?
  • List of Exhibits
  • Legal Disclaimer

Companies Mentioned (Partial List)

A selection of companies mentioned in this report includes, but is not limited to:

  • Amazon
  • Google
  • Microsoft
  • Oracle