Friday, February 9, 2007

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TelecomWeb: IP Telephony Competition For Underserved SMB Market Accelerates

PR Web February 9, 2007 Parsippany, NJ   According to a new InfoTrack report, the U.S. small business market (SMB) is buying IP Telephony (IPT) in a big way – and in several flavors. 

InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications’ “Overview of the U.S. Hosted IP Telephony Market” indicates hosted IPT finally is gaining acceptance.

In the U.S. market, more than 600,000 business-hosted IPT licenses are active, most of them through small service providers. IP-PBX manufacturers and service providers also are teaming to introduce such simple-to-install hybrid options as peer-to-peer products and Asterisk-based telephony applications for the SMB.  

“Specialty service providers are offering the SMB choices, which is generating awareness of migration paths to IPT,” says Susan Hobart, vice president and senior program director/enterprise communications. “For example, fast-growing IP trunking enables a business to retain its legacy key or PBX system but to reduce expenses with managed Voice over IP. The business can migrate to hosted as its business grows – a strategy called ‘cap and grow.’” 

Broadsoft, Sylantro and Tekelec, the primary software providers behind these hosted platforms, have sold more than four million licenses globally. 

Small professional firms that demand high-quality voice/data, mobile convergence and abbreviated dialing, see hosted IPT as a way to get bottom-line-impacting features, flexibility and high-quality services for a consistent monthly price without having to hire their own IT staff or to make large upfront investments. With a loyal following and more than 99-percent retention rates, many of the small service providers incorporate customized applications oriented toward a vertical market in their hosted service. 

“The challenge to penetrating the vast SMB is not just targeting them, but keeping the cost per sale down by shortening the cycle and minimizing premise visits. Service providers realize customer satisfaction is the key – and they use business referrals to short-circuit the cycle,” Hobart concludes. “And channels are also changing – many VARs and interconnects, trusted by small businesses, are getting onboard to compensation models that combine monthly service revenues with hardware commissions, and the ones who understand it like it.”

For more information on the “Overview of the US Hosted IP Telephony Market” report, please visit http://www.telecomweb.com/iecreport207/ or contact Craig Born at cborn@telecomweb.com or 973/602-0123.

About InfoTracks

The “InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications” (IEC) program publishes quarterly market-share tracking, forecasting and analysis reports on business communications systems for approximately 20 global regions and countries. Other InfoTrack programs conduct specific enterprise and SMB demand research on unified communications, mobility and managed services while tracking market share.

About TelecomWeb
TelecomWeb provides access to the global market-intelligence InfoTrack reports; daily e-letter TelecomWeb news break; TelecomWeb wireless, TelecomWeb broadband and TelecomWeb policy content packages; tariff consultancy Tarifica; and the Web-based business-telephony-product database TelecomTactics. To learn more, please visit www.TelecomWeb.com.

Contact:

Sharon Valencik, research & marketing director, telecom@telecomweb.com