Business VoIP, Barcodes, Social CRM and More

First, it would be remiss of me not to mention the North America Business VoIP Services Leadership Matrix recently released by our friends at Infonetics Research (News - Alert).

The report says there are now more than 100 service providers offering business VoIP services in North America, with many that have fewer than 10,000 IP Centrex subscribers of IP lines or trunks. And it names the top IP connectivity service providers as AT&T, Cbeyond, and Verizon (News - Alert) Business.

The top ten providers in both the IP Centrex

"This year the top ten providers in both the IP Centrex and business IP connectivity markets represent a broad mix of incumbents, cable operators, and competitive service providers,” says Diane Myers, directing analyst for service provider VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research. “This cross-section of providers offers a good set of options for businesses looking at voice over IP services. Service providers hoping to succeed in this fast-growing market, particularly with hosted PBX (News - Alert), need to know that the most critical factors for success are financial stability, proven experience in hosted PBX deployments, and quality service and support. At this stage in this market, the fundamentals are much more important than the bells and whistles, especially when going after larger enterprises."

On an entirely separate note, there are some fun and interesting developments on the social networking front that seem worthy of note.One is the intersection between barcodes, smartphones and social media.