Interactive Intelligence Group Inc has published the latest Frost & Sullivan analysis, “Cloud Momentum Boosts Trends in the Contact Center”. According to it, 2012 marked the first year in which the spend for cloud-based contract centers surpassed the premise-based contact centre market. Frost & Sullivan forecasts the hosted contact centre market to grow on average by 12.1% annually, while the on-premise contact centre market is to grow by no more than 5.5% in this period.
Frost & Sullivan analysts report that the global market for hosted contact centers grew from $1.561 billion in 2011 to $1.761 billion in 2012 for 12.8% growth. The calculation includes the combined spend across hosted and cloud-based ACD, IVR, outbound contact, chat, quality monitoring, workforce management, and analytics applications. In the same time period, the total on-premise contact center systems market grew only 6%, from $1.615 billion to $1.62 billion. While this is not direct comparison, as maintenance fees are excluded from the premises market size, this validates the increasing market trend of customers choosing to host all or a part of their contact center infrastructure.
“The data reported by Frost & Sullivan confirms our opinion on the development of the market. Interactive Intelligence has offered a cloud-based contact centre system since 2009. Since then, we have seen a significant increase in implementations of this model every year. In 2012, the number of cloud orders reached 35% of all the company’s orders. In my opinion, such a clear and stable growth in just three years is a proof that the cloud is something more than a fleeting media fad”, said Marcin Grygielski, Territory Manager for Eastern Europe, Interactive Intelligence.
Frost & Sullivan forecasts the hosted contact center market to grow to $3.162 billion by 2017, with an average growth of 12.1% annually. In contrast, the contact center systems market is forecast to grow only to $1.892 billion during the same forecast period (5.5% CAGR).
“The cloud is a market success simply because it is very convenient from the user’s perspective. Instead of buying servers and licenses, the customer purchases only those functions that are needed at a given moment. Instead of worrying about business continuity and data security, the customer signs a specific SLA with a provider, who is then held accountable for the results achieved. Instead of training a dedicated team of administrators, the customer is assisted by specialists who have been working with a given system for years,” added Marcin Grygielski.
In Europe, the growth of cloud solutions is additionally stimulated by the economic crisis. Given the uncertain economic situation, companies seek to save money, and the cloud model brings measurable financial benefits that many companies find compelling, such as the lack of investment barriers, lower CAPEX, better OPEX control, costs corresponding to the amount of resources used, and lower spend for hardware. Frost & Sullivan predicts that penetration of cloud-based and hosted contact centre solutions will grow from 8% in 2012 to 15% in 2017.
“The most important barriers to the growth of the Polish cloud contact center market are customers’ concerns over security and business continuity. It is true that only a few years ago most systems struggled with these problems. However, the market now offers fully virtualised contact centre solutions that make it possible to create a separate instance on the server for every cloud service customer, ensuring high data security. Particularly demanding customers may choose a hybrid cloud solution in which sensitive data does not leave the customer’s internal network. When it comes to business continuity, one can sign an SLA with a trusted provider to ensure a 99.999% service uptime. For all intents and purposes, we have a better guarantee that the system will be stable than when we purchase a license,” said Marcin Grygielski.
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