Wednesday, February 8, 2006

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SMB Market Starts to Drive Growth in Global Communications Systems

Business Wire February 8, 2006 Parsippany, NJ Demand from small to medium-sized businesses is beginning to drive global enterprise telecom system shipments, according to new research from InfoTech, the market research arm of The Telecom Intelligence Group. The findings mark a significant departure from previous years when large enterprises proved the sweet spot for telecom equipment manufacturers and distributors.

Shipments of systems in the 2-40 lines category represented the highest percent of shipments globally in Q3 2005, reported the InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications (IEC) research program in its Third Quarter 2005 Report. The segment represented 29 percent of North American, 24 percent of EMEA and 24 percent of CALA (Caribbean and Latin America) line shipments. Most noticeably, the CALA region showed the highest annual growth in that segment with a 34 percent increase.

The SMB opportunity is confirmed by the Telecom Intelligence Group’s TelecomTactics service, which tracks communication systems and compares their functionality. Nearly 80 percent of new enterprise telephony systems introduced in 2005 were designed for small- to mid-sized businesses or branch offices, up from 60-70 percent in recent years. Nortel’ s BCM 50, Avaya’ s IP Office, Mitel’ s SX-200 ICP and Cisco’ s Integrated Services Router for CallManager Express have all had a major impact on this market .

“A few years ago, selling technology protection was the game, but distinctions among IP, Key and PBX have blurred, and the issues now are functional needs and budgets, vendor preferences, application productivity and channel effectiveness,” said Susan Hobart, InfoTech Vice President and Senior Program Director for IEC. “The winning vendors will adapt with cost-effective solutions to tap the rising SMB demand. The rest will continue selling high-end systems under considerable price pressure to what is now a very mature market.”

For more information on the IEC Third Quarter 2005 Report please visit http://www.telecomweb-infotech.com/iecreport3Q.html.

About InfoTech

InfoTech, part of The Telecom Intelligence Group, publishes quarterly tracking and analysis reports on business communications systems and applications as part of its InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications (IEC) program. Its next report, analyzing Fourth Quarter 2005 North America shipments and market share, will be published later this month, and will be followed by the Global report early in March. The North America report addresses PBX, Converged, Key, Messaging and ACD systems, Centrex and Hosted IP, and includes a five year revenue forecast; installed base history and projections; and shipments and share by line size segment. The Global report forecasts and tracks PBX, Converged and Key shipments globally, by region, W. Europe country and line size segment.

About The Telecom Intelligence Group

The Telecom Intelligence Group includes market intelligence provider InfoTech; TelecomWeb and TelecomWeb news break; newsletters Wireless Business Forecast, Broadband Business Forecast and Telecom Policy Report; tariff consultancy Tarifica; and the Web-based business-telephony-product database TelecomTactics.

Contacts:

Susan Hobart, vice president and IEC program director, shobart@accessintel.com
Mike O'Neill, vice president and publisher, moneill@accessintel.com