Industry experts are predicting the demand for Unified Communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) will continue to increase over the next few years. The mobile UC market alone is expected increase from $5.2 billion in 2014 to $17.4 billion by 2019, according to a forecast report by the research firm MarketandMarkets.

Hoping to capitalize on this emerging market, is the nearly 20-year-old telecommunications company MegaPath. With roughly 4,000 channel partners – including both telecom agents and IT solution providers – the Pleasanton, Calif.-based firm says it's the largest privately-held, end-to-end facilities-based provider delivering data, voice, security and cloud services to businesses nationwide.

John Scarborough, senior vice president of marketing and product management, recently gave IT Best of Breed some insight into what solution providers can do to grow and exploit the UCaaS market.

What do you see currently trending in UCaaS?

One trend we're seeing is more integration of UCaaS features, such as telephony, video and messaging, into other IT applications, such as CRM and ERP applications. As more executives are realizing the tremendous cost and resource savings associated with UCaaS, the industry is seeing an explosion of vendors competing for the enterprise mindshare.
Businesses are evolving past traditional VoIP and IaaS and going deeper onto the desktop to deliver solutions that give the end user greater flexibility and mobility.

What types of VARs/solution providers can best utilize UCaaS for their gains?

End-clients continue to expect more from their technology providers and they tend to favor firms who can do it all, and who have access to a full portfolio of capabilities over specialized or boutique firms with single point solutions.
It is critical for VARs and solution providers to continually broaden their service offerings to include UCaaS in order to meet both the expectations and needs of their customers. The VAR community needs to become expert-level in order to provide the necessary degree of consultative support for their clients. The VARs/solution providers that are best suited to succeed in the UCaaS market are those that already have strong expertise in voice and data networking, LAN and desktop infrastructure and monitoring and support of end users as they adopt, learn and use UCaaS as a daily business tool.

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