SaaS-Based Systems Dominate the Web Conferencing Equipment Market

December 21, 2011

New data from TeleGeography partner Synergy Research Group show that the market for web conferencing equipment grew 21 percent between Q3 2010 and Q3 2011, with Software as a Service (SaaS)-based systems accounting for 83 percent of quarterly revenues. According to Synergy’s Unified Communications Applications Research Service, revenues from SaaS-based systems exceeded USD400 million for each of the past three quarters.

SaaS-Based Web Conferencing Market Growth

Source: Synergy Research Group

North America remains the largest market for web conferencing equipment, accounting for over 60 percent of industry revenues in Q3 2011. While strong revenue growth is occurring in all regions, the growth rate in North America is slightly lower than in other regions, causing its share of the global market to slowly erode.

Cisco’s share of the web conferencing market has declined modestly, but the company remains the clear market leader, with Q3 2011 market shares of 51 percent in North America and 41 percent worldwide. Globally, Cisco is trailed by Citrix and Microsoft, who command 25 percent of the market combined. Citrix has been making strong gains in the Asia-Pacific market, and is rapidly gaining on Cisco, which accounted for 27 percent of the Asia-Pacific web conferencing market in Q3 2011.

“Web conferencing is a great tool to help reduce both business travel and operating expenses, and is rapidly becoming an accepted way of conducting business meetings,” said Synergy Research Group’s Jeremy Duke. “With SaaS-based applications being embraced by an increasing number of corporations and users, this will be a strong driver of market growth. We project that annual revenues from SaaS-based web conferencing will double over the next five years.”

Synergy Research Group’s Unified Communications Applications Research Service provides data, analysis and forecasts of the unified communications applications market, including the conferencing, messaging, contact center, and presence/IM server technology markets.

Synergy Research Group is a strategic partner of TeleGeography, providing market intelligence, analytics and strategic consulting services to the networking and telecom industries.

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