VoIP and Unified Communications (News - Alert) go hand-in-hand together as the premier way that businesses communicate and collaborate both internally and externally. Instead of focusing on premise-based solutions like in-house IP PBX (News - Alert) systems, it appears that more businesses are shifting to a far more agile cloud-based model. As a result, hosted services are growing rapidly, and market research firm Infonetics (News - Alert) Research has released a report where they predict that the combined Cloud PBX and Unified Communication Services market will be worth $12 billion by the year 2018.
According to Infonetics' principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS Diane Myers, “While sales of premises-based PBX systems have been stagnant to declining over the past few years, the market for cloud services continues to expand with businesses worldwide seeking out hosted alternatives.” If you do the math, the answer seems pretty clear: while on-premises equipment will often cost a company thousands of dollars, hosted services are often priced at under $20 per month per seat.
While the initial thought may be that these monthly figures eventually add up to more than the total initial investment, most companies spend the same amount or more having a dedicated IT team that takes care of the equipment. The cost of replacement parts also contributes to the expense of owning in-house systems, which simply makes it more expensive to own legacy equipment.
Hosted PBX and UC services are expected to grow by 13 percent this year alone, in every major geographic region worldwide. While in the past hosted VoIP services were often unreliable, improvements in both Internet quality and VoIP equipment has made it so that hosted PBX systems are now more reliable, cost less and are higher quality than their legacy counterparts, making the decision between the two easy to make.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi