AMI-Partners, the well known research firm, specializing in SMBs, came up with the 2010 VoIP Update which forecast growth in the VoIP market among small and medium businesses (SMBs) with most of the small and medium enterprises seeming to consider that VoIP will become critical component of their business operations in the upcoming years.

Recession over last several years, forced the SMBs stay away from technology investments. In 2011, the SMBs are expected to change their stance and go for IP architecture implementation that promise to offer a load of advanced communication features as well as significant cost saving.

According to the survey, with most SMBs having limited IT resources plan to rely heavily on channel partners for VoIP installation and turnover, and to help with the crossover from analog to digital.

“The moment of conversion from analog to digital voice is the single biggest pain point for SMBs. Suppliers and channel partners should be prepared to make this switchover seamless. Partners should also understand and be able to prove that economic benefits stem not only from lower ongoing costs but also from a lower TCO,” said Senior Consultant with AMI, Karen Nielsen, in the report.

However, according to the survey, the VoIP industry is still in a nascent stage from a supplier’s perspective. The players are not fully known. The architectures are not completely defined. The markets are not structured.

Despite all these, AMI believes that down the road, the same things that are important to analog/TDM users will be important to digital/IP users: reliability, security, and quality. The report predicts that winners will be those providers who can provide not only a reliable service, but an alternate back up, as well as the channel expertise to serve SMBs from soup to nuts if needed.

A couple of months back, AMI-Partners predicted that SMB spending in the U.S. on software-as-a-service will increase exponentially over the next five years, eclipsing growth in investments in on-premise software by a significant margin. AMI forecasts a 25 percent CAGR in hosted business application services spending through 2014. Compare this to the extremely modest five percent growth expected for all other categories of on-premise software combined.