Businesses today, even amidst a struggling economy, are finding benefit, and investing in, technologies like VoIP that help lower costs and improve productivity and efficiency at their operations.

Business phone systems based on VoIP offer free or reduced calling fees, advanced features to make it easier to communicate with contacts, and for those systems including videoconferencing, even reduce the need to travel or hold meetings at on dedicated location.

Despite a weak economy, even service providers are seeing bright spots in the market according to the latest finding from Dell’ (News - Alert)Oro group.

Their latest market research report, “Carrier IP Telephony Quarterly Report,” found that the carrier IP telephony market increased by 7 percent sequentially in the second quarter of 2009. With this increase, the market hit $737 million, as “service providers replenished equipment and license inventories and purchased infrastructure to serve near-term customer needs,” Dell’Oro group said.

Even smaller providers in the market were able to gain share in the second quarter – some doing better than their larger counterparts according to the report, even without a high degree of exposure to network modernization projects.

According to Greg Collins, vice president at Dell’Oro Group, business voice-over-broadband licenses on both softswitches and voice application servers remain a bright spot.

“During the quarter, softswitch IP business trunk, including SIP trunk, license shipments increased 33 percent during the second quarter and business voice or IP Centrex license shipments on voice application servers grew 85 percent,” Collins said.

To help businesses choose which of the many business phone systems best fits their company’s needs, VendorSeek.com offers free quotes and compares them to help narrow down the best choice.