NEC's assault on unified comms market

NEC has been a major player in enterprise telephony systems for many years, but slow to embrace IP telephony and unified communications. It says that is about to change.

NEC has released in Australia its latest unified communications server, hailing the move as the unveiling of a new philosophy, a different way of attacking the market place. The SV8100 is designed to be scaleable to about 700 ports and according to Dr Steven Stenton – senior department manager for commercial product management; NEC Australia, "It really advances the migration path for existing customers."

Launch of the product, the SV8100, also marks the debut in Australia of NEC's SV8000 range of servers other models of which will be introduced in th next three or four months. "We have a wealth of unified communications applications for the enterprise and what this does is bring them down from the top end of town and make them available at a price point and a configuration that is affordable for the SMB market [2-700 extensions]," Stenton explained.

NEC has grand ambitions in the unified communications market. According to Stenton, "We are laying out our credentials in this marketplace. Going forward we expect there to be only three serious players in unified communications: Cisco, Microsoft and NEC.

NEC has a very large installed base in Australia of traditional switched TDM telephony systems and Stenton says many of these are now getting ready to move to IP. He claims that NEC holds about 30 percent of the total enterprise telephony market whether measured by lines, systems or revenue. According to Telsyte analyst Gary Tsang, NEC had 10 percent of shipments by line in the year to December 2007, worth about $45 million and about five percent of the IP telephony market, worth about $13m. Cisco, the market leader, had about 32 percent.

Stenton admits that NEC has been relatively slow to embrace IP, but says that is set to change. "Our intent is to make a very clear statement to the market that we have been working on this market for a number of years and have not just rushed in; and to make a very strong statement that we have a choice of telephony and UC systems and can look holistically at a business and tailor a solution to its needs...NEC customers in Australia are now getting to be on the cusp of going from traditional TDM systems. The challenge for us now is how to provide them with the compelling reason to move forward into the new market."

NEC sells direct and through 138 channel partners and Stenton said that, since January, the company had been running a programme providing more and richer tools to both channel and in house sales force. "We are ramping up our internal sales force significantly in this ara."

According to David Cannon, program manager, telecommunications, IDC Australia NEC's entry into the UC market is tardy, "but there is still time as UC is in its infancy in terms of adoption within the mass business market (excluding call centres and executive personnel)."

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