Unified Communications Unified Communications (Russian market)

Unified Communications (Global Market)

Main Article: Unified Communications (Global Market)

PBX - Office PBXs (Russian Market)

Main article: PBX - office PBXs (Russian market)

IP telephony (Russian market)

Main article: IP telephony (Russian market)

2023

Market volume estimated at 81 billion rubles

The volume of the Russian unified communications market (corporate telephony, video conferencing, corporate messengers and mail solutions) for 2023 was estimated by analysts at J'son & Partners Consulting at 81 billion rubles. Such data are given in a study published in early April 2024.

Experts did not specify the market dynamics in comparison with 2022, but noted that sales of unified communications in the Russian Federation are on the rise. Moreover, the share of domestic decisions is growing, in 2023 it amounted to 45%.

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According to J'son & Partners Consulting, IVA Technologies, Vinteo and TrueConf were among the three leaders in the Russian VKS market by the end of 2023. IVA Technologies is increasing its share due to the development of the product ecosystem, which, in addition to VKS, includes IP telephony, corporate messengers and mail servers, the researchers noted.

According to analysts, sales of domestic VKS systems, including software and equipment, reached $9.8 billion in 2023. By 2028, the volume of this market may grow to 44.5 billion rubles, experts predict.

Sales of Russian corporate telephony systems (virtual automatic telephone exchanges on servers, software, IP phones, etc.) for 2023 are estimated at 20.2 billion rubles. It is expected that in 2028 the volume of this market will be measured at 56.1 billion rubles, showing an annual increase of 23%.

Sales of domestic software for corporate messengers in 2023 amounted to 2.8 billion rubles. Analysts predict an average annual growth of 59% and a volume of 28.2 billion rubles by 2028 for this segment. In the segment of corporate postal solutions, the income of vendors in the Russian Federation in 2023 reached 3.9 billion rubles.^[1]

Unified communications: how Russian suppliers strengthen their position. TAdviser Overview

The Russian market for Unified Communications (UC) until February 24, 2022 was not empty. For many years several quite strong companies have been working on it and developing communication platforms at once - developers of solutions and audio and video conferencing services, virtual PBXs and corporate messengers.

True, at that time their development was limited by competition with leading global players. Nevertheless, they successfully mastered their niches and sought to expand them, including outside our country.

The start of a special military operation, which entailed the departure of global players from the Russian unified communications market, influenced the balance of power and brought its participants to the operational space. How did they take advantage of this situation? What technological and business trends have relied on the last year and a half? And what is expected from the future? Read about this in the TAdviser review "Unified Communications in Russia 2023."

2022: Unified communications in Russia: features of the market development before and after the departure of global vendors. TAdviser Overview

A significant share of the Russian unified communications market has traditionally been occupied by global players. Not only large corporations, but also medium and even small companies voted for the decisions of their development. And this is not surprising: domestic manufacturers of such products in terms of marketing budgets could not compete with international corporations.

At the end of February 2022, the situation changed, both for solution providers, foreign and Russian, and for their clients. Read about how sanctions and the departure of foreign vendors will affect the Russian UC market, what are the scenarios for switching to domestic products and what is expected in the near future in a new TAdviser review.

2020: UCaaS Russian market growth by 44%

The volume of the Russian cloud unified communications (UCaaS) market in 2020 grew by 44%, which was a record dynamics. The previous high dated back to 2017, research firm J'son & Partners Consulting said.

Analysts divide the UCaaS market into two main segments:

• Virtual PBX (VATS) services using telephone network numbering
• cloud-based audio/video conferencing services.

According to the study, in 2020, the segment of virtual PBXs in physical terms (the number of subscribers) grew by 13%, and in money reached 9 billion rubles, an increase of 11% compared to 2019. Thus, for the second year in a row, the growth rates in the VATS segment are below 20% and are approaching below 10%, experts say.

According to them, the factor of transferring personnel to remote work did not contribute to increasing the dynamics of sales of virtual PBXs, but it became a powerful driver for the development of the cloud audio/video conferencing services market. From a level below 500 million rubles in 2019, this segment reached a volume of 2.7 billion rubles in 2020.

In 2020, the Russian UCaaS market grew by 44%

The fact that the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic did not help revive the demand for VATS, J'son & Partners Consulting linked the dynamics to the industry structure of consumption of such solutions, where the lion's share is occupied by trade and service enterprises (36% and 34%, respectively), which experienced the greatest financial blow from the introduction of sanitary restrictions in 2020.

Small business prevails in the horizontal structure of VATS consumption, and from the territorial point of rhenium - enterprises located in Moscow and the Moscow region.

The report notes that until 2020, the VATS segment occupied about 95% of the Russian UCaaS market in terms of revenue, and the volume of consumption of cloud audio/video conferencing services was within the measurement error of the VATS market.

In the period 2014-2018, the main segment of the Russian UCaaS market - the VATS segment showed a steady growth in volume in monetary terms. However, if in the period 2015-2017 there was an acceleration in the market growth rate from 26% in 2015 to 41% in 2017, then in 2018 this trend turned around - the growth rate slowed down to 29%. In 2020, growth rates have become even lower.

At the same time, Rostelecom (the leader of the VATS market in terms of the number of subscribers) said that the virtual telephony services provided by the company were in demand by businesses of various sizes, especially during the period of mass transfer of employees to a remote mode of operation. The telecom operator associated the growing demand for the VATS service with the flexibility of its scaling, developed functionality and high performance.

Last [2020], in the shortest possible time in response to the pandemic, we launched large-scale actions aimed at long-term assistance to entrepreneurs. One of the positive results of this work was a significant increase in the client base and the use by customers of wide capabilities of the product functionality. An important point was the deployment of virtual telephony infrastructure in small towns in Russia, - said Sergey Tabolin, director of the product marketing department of B2B Rostelecom.

The study sample published by J'son & Partners Consulting does not provide a balance of power among the largest players in the Russian cloud unified communications market. According to TMT Consulting, Rostelecom accounted for 26% of the VATS market in 2020 in terms of the number of clients, Mango Office - 15%, VimpelCom - 10%, MTT - 9^[2]

Notes