SMB Spending on Unified Communications in the U.S. to Double by 2015: AMI Partners

U.S. SMB spending on Unified Communications (News - Alert) solutions is expected to double by 2015, according to AMI Partners.

As there is a significant growth in the number of employees who access business information and communicate via multiple devices and platforms, American SMBs are adopting collaboration. The other reason for growth in unified communications is the creation of virtual workspaces.

“In particular, Unified Communications that allow for interoperability between, and/or bundling of, a range of solutions such as email, instant messaging, presence and document sharing along with audio, web and video conferencing into an integrated interface are a natural fit,” said Antara Jaitly senior consultant at AMI-Partners, in a statement.

These SMBs are also leveraging solutions to gain an equal footing with larger firms in order to enhance their competitiveness and customer outreach.

Enhancement of employee productivity and responsiveness to markets is also prompting for better communication technologies among small and midsized businesses. Due to the increase in mobile and remote workforce and multiple company locations/branches, U.S. SMBs are focused on upgrading connectivity and communications capabilities.

In the U.S. SMB Cloud Services study, AMI projects that U.S. SMB unified communication spending will grow at a CAGR of 16 percent through 2015, from its current total of about $1.8 billion. This presents IT/telecom vendors and partners with the opportunity to capitalize on this increasing demand, especially in these times of tightening budgets.

Recently, Ovum (News - Alert) announced that the implementation of unified communications applications among companies that use IP telephony is showing great prospect in China, even as IP telephony adoption has not picked momentum in the country.

16 percent of Chinese companies said they have already deployed IP telephony. This is the lowest adoption rate across the 12 countries surveyed.