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Economy driving SMBs to green-light VoIP deployments
22 October, 2008
By Chris Talbot |
Research from AMI-Partners shows that while the economy is continue its downward slide and businesses of all sizes are looking for ways to cut costs, one of the ways they're doing so is to green-light VoIP implementations.
The main reason for the increase adoption in VoIP in the small- and medium-sized business (SMB) segment is cost savings, with productivity gains being a secondary consideration, said Sanjeev Aggarwal, vice president of SMB infrastructure at AMI-Partners. While this is driving adoption of VoIP in all levels of the SMB market, including in businesses with fewer than 50 employees, it's not having the same effect in unified communications, which is still mostly being adopted by enterprises and the upper end of the mid-market, he said.
However, SMBs do see presence as the killer application for VoIP and unified communications, Aggarwal said. While the various applications of unified communications will prove to be useful by SMBs and will eventually be adopted, the main concern right now is adopting VoIP for the cost savings the technology delivers.
"The key driver right now is cost savings, and then there's related benefits in productivity and improvements in communications and collaboration," Aggarwal said.
With economic conditions worsening, one of the things businesses look at is where they can cut costs. Deploying VoIP solutions helps them save money on their communications, but it also provides a good return on investment within a year, Aggarwal said.
VoIP systems are not too expensive, and the financing being offered by the major VoIP vendors is also helping to take away even the sting of the up-front costs, he said.
AMI-Partners outlined the top vendors in the VoIP space in its report, "Cashing in on the SMB VoIP Telephony Upgrade Cycle -- 2008 Update: Vendor Share Analysis -- SMB Worldwide and U.S. On-Premise Voice Communications Market." From a worldwide perspective, Avaya leads the pack of vendors in the on-premise voice communications systems market, followed by Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, NEC and Siemens Communications. Specifically in the U.S., the list doesn't change much, except for the removal of Siemens in fifth palce and the addition of Mitel/Intertel.
A recent entrant to the market that will likely become a much bigger player in the next year is Microsoft, which has taken a toe-hold in the market with its own VoIP products and is slowly growing its marketshare, Aggarwal said.
As more SMBs purchase and deploy VoIP solutions, there will be ample opportunities for all players in the market, as well as their channel partners.
"If you look at the current penetration in U.S. small businesses, the IP PBX systems have a low penetration rate of only about five per cent, so there's a tremendous amount of opportunity for both the vendors and channel partners," Aggarwal said.
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