Australian contact centres look to hybrid model

The Australian contact centre applications market will grow at a moderate 6.2% CAGR from 2012 to 2019, due largely to demand for hosted and hybrid systems, Frost & Sullivan predicts.

Large contact centres are increasingly baulking at the costs of deploying and maintaining on-premise solutions, as well as the long contract terms that typically come attached to these products, according to Frost’s head of research for ICT, Audrey William.

“Organisations are increasingly evaluating alternative solutions offering similar capabilities with more flexible deployment and payment models,” William said. “This is driving demand for hosted and hybrid solutions, where vendors such as Interactive Intelligence have been particularly successful.”

Fully cloud-based contract centres are still a rarity in Australia, but products for this segment are experiencing very high growth. The research firm expects the Australian cloud-based contact centre market to grow at a 38.9% CAGR over the 2012-2019 period.

But due to concerns about the reliability, security and availability of a full cloud contact centre model, the preferred option for organisations remains hosted contract centre solutions with dedicated infrastructure, according to the firm.

“As momentum gathers towards third-party hosted and delivered contact centre solutions, telcos, with their network expertise, will be advantageously positioned to capitalise on this trend,” William said.

“Telstra and Optus have strong vendor partnerships to go with their carrier and local data centre capabilities. Additionally, global telcos such as BT are strengthening their market presence through vendor partnerships.”

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