May 22, 2012
Three-Fourths of Western European Businesses Buying Phone Systems, Not Hosted IP Telephony Services
By Gary Kim, Contributing Editor
If there are any “rules” about the ways businesses buy phone systems and hosted IP telephony, one of the long-standing rules is that customers buy about three premises phone systems for every organization or business that buys hosted IP telephony. That has been true in the U.S. market, and also seems to be the case in Western Europe, according to IDC (News - Alert).
By 2015, CPE-based voice connections will still represent 73 percent of the total voice connections in Western Europe, IDC found.
There were 27,681,310 CPE-based voice business connections in 2011, and this will continue to be the most predominant business connection type in Western Europe throughout the forecast period, IDC forecasts.
In the U.S. market, that same general ratio seems to have held, as well, though there have been some signs of movement since 2008.
IP telephony adoption increased dramatically, from 17 percent in 2008 to 27 percent in 2010, an increase of 59 percent, among small and mid-sized companies, according to Consultant Dan Sachar of Inzenka, a management consultancy.
Based on a survey of 700 small and medium businesses, Inzenka estimates that about 33 percent of small and medium business IP telephony deployments use hosted IP telephony.
A Forrester (News - Alert) Research survey of 567 enterprise and smaller business users that already have adopted IP telephony shows that most buyers so far have chosen premises-based solutions.
Just four percent of the Forrester respondents say they have adopted a 'hosted' IP telephony service. Keep in mind that Forrester clients are enterprises, rather than SMBs, so the survey undoubtedly was weighted in a way that would not favor hosted IP telephony adoption.
Another four percent reported they had adopted a 'telephony as a service’ solution. About five percent said their IP telephony solution was outsourced. Taking all three as a group, just 13 percent of IP telephony solutions were hosted, cloud-based or outsourced.
Edited by Brooke Neuman
