CAPE TOWN, South Africa - (Business Wire) The uptake of collaboration is increasing steadily in South Africa, despite bandwidth limitations and narrow knowledge of the various tools that exist in the market. Rising uptake amongst small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the advent of web-based solutions will continue to promote this growth. The popularity of unified communications will support the expansion of integrated collaborative solutions and vice versa.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.conferencing.frost.com), South African Collaborative Tools Market, finds that the growth in the country’s SME sector will create significant opportunities for vendors of collaborative tools.
“The future of collaborative tools in South Africa is in the SME sector,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Spiwe Chireka. “While collaboration was traditionally for large enterprises with an extensive geographical presence, there are now a growing number of solutions tailored to SMEs. In addition, the advent of vendor-developed (as opposed to community-developed) open source solutions and the increasing uptake of web-based solutions are becoming more prevalent.”
The resource savings brought about by web-based collaboration are most welcome in a bandwidth-starved market such as South Africa. Most companies will soon be opting for solutions hosted on the vendors’ server in order to limit the bandwidth and processing resources required on their client server.
Vendor-developed open source collaborative tools are definitely gaining ground in the corporate market. This is due to the increased reliability and strong support being provided for such solutions as vendors create large, dedicated teams to offer services for their solutions. Desktop solutions are projected to decline and open source solutions will become formidable substitutes to proprietary software.
The shortage and poor speeds of bandwidth still however limit the uptake of collaborative tools, as most offerings can be resource intense. In addition, there is a general lack of awareness of both the benefits of collaborative tools and the various tools available in the market. This has created a challenge for vendors to communicate the costs as a justification of the perceived value of collaboration.
“With the accelerated growth happening in the SME sector in South Africa, vendors should continue to aggressively market their services to this sector,” Chireka states. “Vendors that are effectively able to communicate their technology and its benefits to this sector will reap the rewards. Unfortunately, it seems some vendors are simply rolling out their solutions and expecting them to sell themselves.”
Management collaborative tools will experience the highest growth levels in South Africa and vendors need to start marketing these in terms of a good balance between relevance and operations, as well as cost and ease of use.
If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end users and other industry participants with an overview of the South African collaborative tools market, then send an e-mail to Patrick Cairns, Corporate Communications, at patrick.cairns@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail address, company website, city, state and country. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by e-mail.
South African Collaborative Tools Market is part of the Conferencing & Collaboration Growth Partnership Services Programme, which also includes research in the following markets: South African Hosted IP Services Market, Unified Messaging and Communications Market in South Africa, Strategic Overview of the South African Open Source Market and Untangling the Web: African ISP Markets. All research included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.
Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, partners with clients to accelerate their growth. The company's TEAM Research, Growth Consulting and Growth Team Membership™ empower clients to create a growth-focused culture that generates, evaluates and implements effective growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan employs over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 30 offices on six continents. For more information about Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Partnerships, visit http://www.frost.com.
South African Collaborative Tools Market
MIE5
Frost & Sullivan
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