Cisco tops enterprise telephony chart

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Mumbai, Aug 28: The latest report by Frost & Sullivan on the ‘Indian Enterprise Telephony Markets Quarter1 (Jan-March) 2008’, reveals that Cisco has emerged as the market leader for the first time. Of the $106.2 business done in India, Cisco accounts for a market share of 22.4%, while Avaya has garnered 19% and Nortel, about 17%. Avaya has been a leader in the segment in for the past six years.

The report mentions that, of the total enterprise telephony market, about $69.2 million consists the IP telephony market. Cisco tapped the largest share, about 34.4%, of this market during the first quarter.

Interestingly, Avaya said that it has not provided any figures to the research firm.

V Praveen Kumar, head, enterprise voice & teleconferencing, Avaya GlobalConnect said, “These could be just one of the market fluctuations. We have been far ahead of our competitor, almost double for all these years.”

The 2007 yearly (Jan-Dec) report by Frost & Sullivan says that of the $345.8 million Indian market, Avaya had captured 26.2% while Cisco had 14.8%.

The IP telephony market for the period was worth about $210 million; Avaya had 42.6% market share in it while Cisco had about 24.4%.

Kumar added, “We will continue to focus on hospitality and manufacturing, as we see large business coming from these verticals.”

Minhaj Zia, national sales manager, unified communications, Cisco, India and SAARC, said, “We have been focusing on banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI), retail and manufacturing as well. The market growth for IP telephony is about 30-32% and at Cisco, we expect a growth higher than the market; about 40% in India.” Meanwhile, the Indian market is expected to mature given Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) recent recommendations.

The regulatory body has pitched that internet service providers (ISPs) be allowed to offer local, STD and ISD calls from computers to mobile and landlines or vice versa without any restrictions.

This will eventually increase the use of IP-compatible devices. Both Cisco and Avaya ate betting big on the approval of these recommendations. According to Zia, at the moment, not many SMBs (small & medium businesses) are buying IP telephony, video technology and other unified communication products.

But once the recommendations are approved, ISPs can buy their products and take them to SMBs on pay per use model.