A key survey carried out each year has predicted that enterprises in the US are likely to continue to increase their investment in both internet protocol (IP) telephony and unified communications (UC) between now and 2016 by around 10% each year.
The survey, by major independent research organisation InfoTrack (itself a division of telecommunications research organisation T3i Group), also claims that the market in IP telephony will be dominated by hosted services, to the extent that between 2011 and 2016, expenditure on hosted IP telephony services such as business VoIP (voice over internet protocol) will have tripled.
InfoTrack says that although most of the outlay on hosted IP telephony will be made by larger organisations, a substantial number of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is also predicted to increase its investment in such services.
The findings of the survey mirror those of other surveys and reports in both the US and Europe, which claim that the strong growth in IP telephony and business VoIP demonstrated in recent years is also likely to continue over the next few years.
Multiple reasons have been cited by businesses for the strong take-up of these technologies, many of which centre around the increased flexibility they offer firms over conventional communications systems.
This is particularly the case when business VoIP is compared with the service offered by traditional landline-based business phone systems, with the benefits of the former including quicker and easier scaling of phone operations and the capacity to allow staff to make and receive calls over the same number and at the same call rate regardless of their location. Reduced phone costs are another factor.
In addition, as the InfoTrack survey suggests, the market has been boosted by the greater financial accessibility of the type of hosted IP telephony services offered by a host business VoIP provider or VoIP reseller.
