TMCnews Featured Article
October 13, 2011
VoIP is Growing, We Just Can't Agree on How Fast
By Gary Kim, Contributing Editor
There is almost nothing so certain as that small and medium-sized businesses are going to adopt IP telephony and unified communications. But there is almost nothing about the adoption rate that most people can agree on.
More than one-third of small businesses (firms with less than 100 employees) and nearly three quarters of medium-sized companies (firms with 100–999 employees) currently own at least one unified communications component technology, according to IDC (News - Alert).
More than 30 percent of small firms and 55 percent of mid-size firms cite plans to add at least one UC component in the next 12 months, IDC said. VoIP technology has established a solid foothold in the medium-sized business segment, and more than 30 percent of firms with 100 to 999 employees use it. Also, approximately 45 percent of medium-sized businesses currently use some type of conferencing technology.
But what does that mean? At one level, it might mean that there is some use of one UC tool, but not completely unified communications. It might mean Skype (News 
- Alert) gets used. It might also mean that the entire communications platform is completely unified in terms of messaging functions, call delivery or device support.
Reading between the lines, IDC believes SMBs have a “relative reluctance” to deploy VoIP technology.
Although SMB ownership of mobile resources — from smartphones to notebooks to media tablets — continues to increase along with interest in supporting remote workers, adoption of unified messaging remains modest. But the percentage of firms citing plans to add it in the next 12 months has increased over the last year, IDC said.
That said, you’d be hard pressed to find any forecast that does not suggest UC and IP telephony are growing, and significantly. A new survey of 106 enterprises found that 96 percent expect “eventually” to unify all communications modes into a single end user experience, says Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data at Infonetics (News - Alert) Research.
More than half of surveyed companies indicate they already have unified at least some important communications functions and features.
And that illustrates the problem. UC is growing, IP telephony is growing. The issue is “how much, how fast.”
Gary Kim (News - Alert) is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Gary’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell
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