If you would hear it from NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), there is dramatic growth in the (UCaaS) market in the Asia-Pacific region, with a key trend being businesses making the switch to IP communications in order to reduce their cost of international calls.

According to the company, this is particularly the case in industry verticals with highly mobile workforces such as in professional services, logistics, travel and hospitality, transportation, entertainment and retail sectors. And NTT Com should have an inkling of the shifts as the largest telecom in Japan, and is itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), one of the largest telecommunications company in the world.

Building a communications cloud

Toshio explained that NTT Com utilizes multiple technologies within its data centers to implement its own cloud infrastructure, including virtualization software such as those from VMware. Key aspects of its services however, are developed internally and the company is also able to put together custom solutions for its customers.

Kentaro Tanaka, a manager in the Voice and Video business, also highlighted the breadth of the company’s cloud communications offering. This ranges from VoIP (Voice over IP) implemented via SIP trunking for organizations that only require IP telephony, to fully-fledged UCaaS for organizations that require capabilities such as instant messaging.

Indeed, Kentaro says the NTT Com is also happy to provide access to the underlying Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) platform for customization in an IaaS-like approach. He alluded to an “open model” in which customers is able to obtain custom support to configure anything they like for their platform of choice.

And NTT Com isn’t content to support standard platforms such as those from Cisco and Microsoft either - Lync is currently in the works. In January this year NTT Com completed the acquisition of Arkadin, the world’s third-largest provider of collaboration solutions with about 37,000 customers in 32 countries at the time of its acquisition.

“Arkadin has a strong voice communication service,” said Toshio, who admitted that the company is currently dependent on revenues in Japan where voice communication is concerned. With the company offering UCaaS globally now, it is easy to see how having Arkadin onboard would serve to further its cause.

The company is positioning Arkadin to offer audio and web-based conferencing to better round-up its stack of services.

The state of UCaaS in the Asia-Pacific
So where does the Asia-Pacific stand where UCaaS is concerned, from the vantage point of NTT Com as one of the leading telecommunications providers in the region?

“Our customer base in the Asia-Pacific region is gradually growing; the UcaaS market is growing,” said Toshio. “In Singapore and Hong Kong, a lot of European and U.S. companies have their regional headquarters there. We see a lot of demand in the Asia region”

Toshio was referring to the many multinational corporations from Europe and the U.S. that have established their regional headquarters in Singapore and Hong Kong. Presumably, NTT Com’s UCaaS solutions would be particularly attractive to them.

Toshio was able to confirm that there are 10,000 users of the company’s UCaaS service in the region at this moment. Based on projected growth rates, he expects the number of users should top 40,000 within next year.

Not everything is a bed of roses however. Compared to some other parts of the world like Europe, there are a substantial number of regulations in the Asia-Pacific region, says Toshio. Toshio singles out countries such as China, Indonesia and Vietnam, which he classifies as “quite regulated”.

For example, SIP trunking is regulated in China, due to a desire to protect the interests of the various state-owned telecommunication companies there. Of course, this is balanced out by countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan which Toshio says “don’t have any regulations for voice communication services.”

And what about poor network connectivity, which can be an issue in certain regions in the Asia Pacific we asked? “We cannot guarantee the quality for Internet service,” said Kentaro, though he was quick to suggest the use of MPLS - which NTT Com is able to provide - to ensure that the correct quality and quality of service is available.

In all, the company appears optimistic about the potential of UCaaS in the Asia-Pacific, and is apparently casting its eyes on smaller organizations in the region. Toshio emphasized that UCaaS is not a solution only for the enterprise, but that even smaller companies can benefit due to not having to fork out the capital to purchase physical servers. “There is demand from the small and mid-sized enterprise businesses,” he said.