A new report from market research firm AMI-Partners predicted that the desire of small- and medium-size businesses looking to cut employees’ travel costs will contribute to sizeable growth in the networking market to the tune of $1.6 billion this year.

 

According to AMI-Partners, more companies are taking advantage of software-based Voice over Internet Protocol, or "VoIP" services, such as Skype, and video conferencing solutions as an alternative to traveling to cut costs, fueling the success of the APAC SMB networking market.

 

The report predicted that the developed APAC SMB networking market is expected to grow 1.7 percent over 2008. Continued spending on network upgrades and migration to all-IP platforms, coupled with the desire for low latency, no hardware redundancy, operating systems that maximize uptime, and high speed to recovery will help drive the growth, the report said.

 

In addition, the research found that adoption of IP voice and video, higher demand for network intelligence, and a growing number of users and devices connected to the network will also boost spending.

 

“Mobility has taken off over the last couple of years," said Gina Luk, Asia-Pacific telecommunications and networking research manager at AMI-Partners, in a statement. "This is occurring as SMB employees in the developed APAC region are traveling more and farther. Korea and Australia SMBs have a greater propensity for telecommuting, while Japan and Australia SMBs tend to be more mobile because of travel. This is evident even among firms across all employee segments.”

 

AMI-Partner’s findings are supported by other recent market research, which found that VoIP adoption rates continue to grow, despite the recession. As virtual-pbx reported, small businesses looking for ways to reduce telecommunications costs are finding ways to slash 50 percent to 80 percent off their monthly phone bill by switching to a hosted VoIP service.

 

For example, Internet service providers in Australia, Japan and Korea are launching low-cost VoDSL or VoCable offerings as SMBs are implementing small VoIP and wireless-enabled VoIP routers. But to encourage networking business and multiplatform usage growth, networking equipment vendors should accelerate emphasis on value-added features, Luk said.

 

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence.

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