Research Reports

Unified Communications and Collaboration: Laying the Foundations for Business Process Flexibility and Innovation

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:33:53 -0400

These are challenging times, with organisations facing continuous change, including the shift to a more agile, virtual organisation, increasingly mobile workers, and the unremitting demands to increase productivity and lower costs. The requirement for a multi-channel IP network and unified communications to support all of an organisation's interaction and collaboration needs has never been more evident.

Sustainable IT Provision: Meeting the Challenge of Corporate, Social, and Environmental Responsibility

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:31:18 -0400

Corporate, Social, and Environmental Responsibility (CSER) has become a significant issue for every enterprise, and is particularly pertinent for IT management which must focus on supporting the requirements of the organisation in this area. The challenges of meeting these responsibilities have brought into sharp focus the need for IT to be more proactive, along with including the required capabilities into IT strategy and governance procedures. A more responsible agenda requires longer-term planning, and also brings new disciplines which potentially conflict with existing IT management goals.

Hosted Contact Center (Strategic Focus)

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:49:36 -0400

For the past 10 years the primary motivation to purchase hosted contact centers has been to reduce cost. But if growth is to continue, then vendors must look beyond cost as a marketing message. Vendors need to shift their marketing campaigns to address business processes.

Scope

Market Opportunity: Hosted contact centers play a strategic role in an organization Technology Evolution: Many technology debates arise from new-generation software-based platforms Customer Impact: Vendors must know the pain points if they are to understand the customer Go to Market: How to position the solution to Service Providers and end-users

Highlights

Hosted contact centers were seen as solutions which were geared for the low end of the enterprise market. They were seen as providing basic contact center functionality, namely network routing. However, over the past 15 years hosted contact center technology has developed. The hosted model goes beyond pure network routing.

Technology options in commodities trading (Strategic Focus)

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:46:19 -0400

Report Highlights
The rapid growth in commodities trading volumes and prices will continue with fundamental demand in China and India for oil and raw materials providing a counterbalance against the downturn in the US. New entrants are flooding into the market in large numbers, in many cases without physical exposure to the underlying commodities.

They are contributing to volatility by exacerbating any movements in price, which coupled with the rise in algorithmic trading is causing risk management strategies to be re-evaluated in light of the breakdown of historical trends.

Carbon trading continues to develop, with the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) publishing its roadmap for phase III. It will be keenly watched as it is envisaged the EU ETS will provide the foundation for a global carbon trading scheme. With the advent of a US based cap and trade scheme the US domestic market alone could reach $1Trillion by 2020

Delivering Software as a Service to Manufacturing Companies (Strategic Focus)

Thu, 01 May 2008 16:22:23 -0400

Introduction
This report looks at the market for SaaS within the manufacturing industry. It considers the market opportunity, key applications of the delivery model, and go-to-market strategy.

Scope
This report considers SaaS as a technology delivery model independant of specific software.

Considers the manufacturing industy as a whole, with some discussion of batch, process and discrete sectors.

Report Highlights
Manufacturers, to an extent, still wish to engage with vendors that have a more local presence as there is a belief that these vendors better understand the discrete characteristics of the manufacturer’s market.

Reasons to Purchase
Understand the current state of SaaS within the manufacturing industry.

Get an insight into Datamonitor's recommendations for go-to-market strategies.

Enterprise mobility forecasts: highlights

Thu, 01 May 2008 16:18:16 -0400

The enterprise mobility market forecasts have been revised to reflect stronger growth than expected, particularly in mobile computer connections. We believe that growth will increase over the next few years.

In this year’s forecast we have combined our enterprise wireless forecasts with our datacard forecasts. We have renamed our datacard forecasts to mobile computer connections.

Whilst growth in enterprise wireless connections has remained steady, we have not seen as steep a reduction in voice ARPU as expected. The reduction in roaming tariffs has been offset by increased usage, so we have reduced the voice ARPU decline in our forecasts.

We have seen a faster decline in data tariffs than expected. Service providers have reduced data tariffs to encourage uptake of applications which have so far failed to attract significant usage.

UK Market Trends: Software and IT Services

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:21:48 -0400

The UK software and IT services market is entering a period of change. The public sector, so long a source of growth for so many vendors, is set to become a tougher place to do business. Meanwhile, the commercial sector faces an uncertain investment climate, not least in relation to software, consulting and IT projects spending, as our forecasts show. Whether operating in these segments of the market, or in the less downturn-sensitive areas of ITO and BPO, vendors will need to adapt their strategies and their messaging in the times ahead to take account of such changes.

This report looks at the market for software and IT services in the UK. It details Ovum’s estimates and forecasts of the sizes of the market and its key sub-segments, as well as highlighting key market trends and drivers from both the end-user and supplier perspectives.

This analysis is intended to give the reader an understanding of current and future changes in the UK S/ITS environment, and to help formulate plans and strategies appropriate to the opportunities and threats that these are creating and will create. It contains four reports published in January and February 2008, which focus specifically on market trends in BPO, infrastructure services, software and project services & application outsourcing. It also contains spreadsheet data that forms the basis of the forecasts.

2008 Trends to Watch: Identity & Access Management

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:48:16 -0400

The pressure to provide better auditing and governance capabilities within IT will lead to an increase in the level of integration between ID&AM and IT compliance, IT governance and security management solutions.
Use this report to identify potential strategies that could allow stakeholders in the market to minimize risk and maximize rewards through 2008.

IPTV: Challenges and Opportunities

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:25:39 -0500

Developing a successful value-added service business is essential for future revenue growth for wireline operators. Of such services IPTV is currently one of the biggest opportunities, as it not only opens up the broadcast TV market to telecoms operators but also a whole realm of possibilities around interactive video services and applications, as well as adjacent opportunities such as advertising. IPTV has consequently become one of the most discussed topics in the consumer telecoms space over the past 12 months. This report highlights the major tends, opportunities, issues and threats faced by operators moving into this industry.

Multinationals, IP Telephony and Unified Communications

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:23:30 -0500

Many multinationals have now embarked on network convergence and the implementation of IP telephony. IP convergence is increasingly being driven by the need for improved mobility as well as an expectation of cost savings. Unified communications (US) applications are on the agenda for the majority of the companies we talked to. These companies are not looking for a single supplier for UC, but expect the IP telephony and software collaboration vendors to have a strategy of interoperability.