Recession has proved to be a windfall for business VoIP providers. As businesses, both big and small, turn to VoIP to reduce the cost of communications, a new era of communications has emerged. Several companies that have adopted VoIP services have reported significant reduction in communications and travel costs, thereby improving their bottom line while also helping reduce carbon emission.
In fact, a recent research from Infonetics Research (News - Alert) revealed that global VoIP services market, including residential and business VoIP services, totaled $63 billion in 2012, up 9 percent from 2011.
The combined business and residential VoIP services market is forecast to grow to $82.7 billion in 2017.
NTT (News - Alert) retains its leadership as the world's largest residential VoIP service provider in 2012, with 7.6 percent of global subscribers, followed by Comcast (News - Alert) and France Télécom.
Thanks to the growing demand for enterprise cloud-based services, hosted VoIP and unified communications (UC) services revenue grew 17 percent in 2012 from 2011. This is the sector that showed the maximum growth in VoIP services.
Hosted VoIP services are huge hit among small and medium businesses that do not have the resources to purchase costly hardware and pay for the maintenance. Hosted VoIP is flexible and highly scalable too. Businesses have the option to start with the basic package and upgrade to a bigger package as and when the need arises. Most hosted business VoIP providers also offer the pay-for-what-you-use model.
Business VoIP providers also offer IP PBX (News - Alert) services that allow advanced communications features like multiple extensions, call forwarding, call waiting, conferencing and more. They can also integrate services like IP fax. Another attraction of these services is that businesses can upgrade to these services using their existing telephony infrastructure.
According to Infonetics Research, the market for managed IP PBX services, which focus on dedicated enterprise systems, remains the largest business VoIP services segment, and sales grew 9 percent in 2012.
Larger enterprises that want dedicated extensions at their premises turn to services like SIP trunking. Infonetics Research reveals that the market for SIP trunks jumped 83 percent in 2012 from the previous year, as multi-site businesses adopt SIP trunking for cost savings and flexibility.
“The market for VoIP services has moved well beyond the early adopter stage to mainstream status in many developed countries. New geographic regions are opening up, and SIP trunking and hosted UC continue to heat things up, fueling growth,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research, in a statement.
“Vendors are increasingly pitching cloud telephony and unified communications services alongside SIP trunking as more multi-site businesses seek out hybrid solutions,” Myers added.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey