The study of representatives from 31 countries at Siemens Enterprise Communications’ dedicated partner day at CeBIT also identified the constraints on potential reseller growth as countries seek to emerge from a challenging economy. Asked for the greatest growth potential for 2012, nearly half (46%) of respondents support UC but resellers also noted customers’ needs to drive down costs with 22% believe that migrating to IP networks and cloud solutions (15%) would be the key target areas.
The partner research broadly aligns with the end-user perspective in recent State of Enterprise Communications 2012 Study, which revealed the following key themes:
- IP communications saves money with pure-IP communications
- A mobile and distributed workforce fuels cloud adoption
- UC is a priority but the skills gap is hindering the ability to deploy these technologies
The partner survey findings found a similar level of agreement on the challenges. Unsurprisingly, increasing revenue is the top priority for partners. When asked for their top three challenges to achieving this, 34% said the tough economic climate, 22% said no capital budget and 15% stated their customers’ perceived risk of adopting pure IP-platforms.
Marc Aghili, Senior Vice President of Indirect Channel Sales and Business Development in EMEA and Asia-Pacific, Siemens Enterprise Communications comments that: “UC has always been popular, but it is now top of the agenda as businesses are getting to grips with mobilising their workforce. Adopting IP-platforms are also a high priority for businesses that want flexible communication and scalable collaboration with low costs when capex budgets are so tight.”