A new study has found that more businesses are choosing VoIP over traditional phone systems.
“Every year, Software Advice speaks with hundreds of small-business buyers (those with $50 million or less in annual revenue) looking for VoIP phone systems and services,” the company’s website said. “These interactions provide us with valuable insights as to what smaller organizations want and need from IP communications—a market more frequently analyzed from an enterprise perspective.”
The company studied a random sample of small business software buyers. Software Advice found that 36 percent of its buyers were already using VoIP software, followed by 24 percent of buyers still using POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).
Most of Software Advice’s customers were buying either hosted PBX (News - Alert) services or on-premise PBXes rather than POTS PBX systems. The combined adoption rate for both hosted and on-premise VoIP systems was 29 percent, nearly double the 15 percent of POTS adoption.
Most of the customers were upgrading their legacy PBX systems to VoIP. While Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) systems are growing in the enterprise, notably Microsoft Skype for Business (formerly Lync), lots of smaller businesses find them too expensive.
Hosted PBX systems are also a viable alternative to on-premise systems. Many Software Advice customers find that these systems have the same features with lower up-front costs, which makes them attractive to small businesses.
As older PBX systems become obsolete, many businesses are looking to upgrade. Based on the results, many businesses are opting for VoIP since they have to upgrade immediately. Fifty-two percent of businesses said they had end-of-life problems with their systems; VoIP systems offer more flexibility for lower costs than traditional phone systems.
The growing number of mobile devices is also spurring changes to business phone systems. Twenty-one percent of businesses said they wanted to be able to forward calls to mobile devices.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson