Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

February 25, 2009

Study Finds Global ACD Shipments Grow 6 Percent Year over Year

By Susan J. Campbell

TMCnet Contributing Editor

T3i Group LLC. has released new contact center research that reveals global shipments of ACD agent positions during the first six months of 2008 reached 1.5 million. This is an increase over 1.4 million during the first half of 2007. Total growth year over year reached six percent.

Certainly considered to be modest growth, it is still significant compared to the .07 percent growth in the previous measured period. Total manufacturer revenues during first-half 2008 were $1.30 billion versus $1.24 billion in first-half 2007 (4.8-percent growth).

It shouldn’t be any surprise that Avaya (News - Alert) continues to lead the market in total shipments, representing 34.8 percent of total shipments in the given period and 35.2 percent in revenue. All regions were claimed by Avaya, except for Canada where Cisco took the Number One position from Nortel (News - Alert).

T3i Group's report found that shipments of Internet Protocol (IP) agents in the first half of 2008 reached 1.03 million compared with 980,000 a year earlier, representing 5.4-percent growth. Overall IP shipments remained flat at 69.2 percent in the first half of 2008, compared with 69.5 percent in the first half of 2007.

Gains were realized in the market by Genesys (News - Alert) as the company enjoyed triple-digit growth. Cisco also experienced a 70 percent when comparing to the first half of 2007. The biggest decliners in the global market were Nortel, NEC/Philips, Mitel/Inter-Tel and Siemens (News - Alert) each showing losses of 30 percent or more.

"Only three manufacturers in our tracking universe had positive growth globally in the first half of 2008 compared with the first six months of 2007 - Genesys, Cisco and Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert)," commented Ken Dolsky, Senior Program Director for the InfoTrack for Converged Applications (ICA) program at T3i Group.

"An increasing portion of customer contact center budgets are going toward lower-cost, self-service applications, reducing the amount left to spend on new agent positions."

APAC and CALA showed strong growth, increasing by 50 percent and 14 percent, respectively. EMEA produced results that were nearly flat, but growth was positive. The U.S. and Canada were both down, 6 percent and 5 percent, respectively. As a result, the United States lost three market-share points, while APAC gained five.

This research shows that there is still positive activity in the global ACD market, although vendors may want to focus more attention on global opportunities instead of North America. With declines in this region, this may give indication that the market is too saturated or not experiencing enough growth in the contact center market to support growing shipments.

The state of the economy, both in the U.S. and abroad over the next few months or even years will dictate what to expect from these markets and how companies should align their strategies for positive growth.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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