VoIP Making Inroads with Small Businesses

Recently TMC’s Jamie Epstein wrote about how analyst firm IDC released a report indicating an increasing trend of SMBs beginning to use unified communications technologies, exactly VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

Titled "Unified Communications in U.S. Small and Medium-Sized Business, 2011: Growing Demand for Communication, Collaboration, and Connectivity — Nevertheless Integration Remains Elusive," the report examines multiple unified messaging elements on platforms including desktop and mobile devices, finding that over one-third of small businesses and nearly three quarters of mid-sized businesses own for the time being one UC component innovation.

However, the report found that 30 percent and 55 percent of small and mid-sized businesses intend to implement for the moment one UC component within the then year.

VoIP is rising in popularity in SMBs, and "SMBs are interested in both underlying capabilities and specific UC technologies," IDC innovation manager Justin Jaffe commented. "The real challenge for vendors is to effectively connect the benefits of unified communications to improved business performance. Show how UC can make a real difference in productivity and efficiency and SMBs will flock to it."

The report concluded that as more SMBs realize the multiple benefits associated with VoIP, more companies are beginning to use this portfolio of unified communication tools.

In August TMC’s Beecher Tuttle wrote that the mass migration to VoIP-based phone systems is so then underway, with more companies ditching their legacy communication technologies in favor of more flexible and cost-effective alternatives each day.

Better understanding of the VoIP market

To develop a better understanding of the VoIP market and where it is headed, TMC CEO Rich Tehrani recently caught up with Greg Brashier, chief operating officer at Virtual PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange), a provider of cloud-based business phone systems.

Brashier believes that traditional business phone systems will in the long run be supplanted by virtual, cloud-based technologies and straightway-generation mobile devices, which SMB and enterprise employees will use more frequently as softphones for VoIP calls.

Host of benefits to mobile workers

This trend will bring a host of benefits to mobile workers and companies, says Brashier, just as significant costs savings and the ability to access all the features of a corporate phone system during out of the office.