Research Says SMB Market Will Spend $12B on Unified Communications

AMI-Partners, as part of its 2011/2012 North America SMB Unified Communications (News - Alert) Review, found that small and medium sized businesses are projected to spend around $12billion on unified telecoms components in the next three years.

These results indicate that while unified telecoms solutions provide huge savings after the initial investment, companies are finding it more economical to invest piece by piece in today’s tougher climate.

According to the report, more than half of SMBs are using at least one individual UC component rather than a complete solution. This means that companies need to offer a more attractive segmented bundle.

“Most SMBs need several UC components on a daily basis, but not necessarily all elements of a complete solution. Currently, few vendors are willing to break apart their full UC suite to capture the share and revenues from a structured series of UC bundles mapped to SMB needs,” said Brian Galgay, manager of Cloud Services at AMI in the report’s release.

The results also demonstrate the demand for unified communications packages that are better suited to smaller, more specialized business types. Services such as internal e-mail and remote data access will be available as patches, which could eventually be linked together if and when required.

“SMBs in North America have shown resistance to adopting full UC solutions, not realizing that they already pay for a number of the individual components,” said Galgay.” The challenge is guiding these SMBs to the full solution. Once SMBs break the initial pay-barrier, up-selling from a basic solution to a fully integrated UC solution will need guidance and structure,” Galgay continued.

Over the next five years, unified communications packages and options are expected to double, providing a positive outlook for future telecoms markets.

In other unified communications news, TMCnet reported this week that Deltapath announced support for its frSIP Unified Communication Core solution for Polycom (News - Alert) RealPresence Mobile.

Customers of Deltapath that currently use Polycom endpoints and UC infrastructure will now be able to both extend and integrate with Deltapath frSIP Unified Communication Core.

“Deltapath's vision is to make it possible for hundreds of thousands of frSIP Unified Communication Platform users to be able to connect and collaborate with each other with their preferred way of communication even they are on the road. Deltapath frSIP supports the Polycom RealPresence Mobile, enables the mobile tablet devices such as Apple iPad2, Samsung Galaxy Tab, or Motorola (News - Alert) XOOM to be a remote extension of your video desktop in your office,” said David Liu, CEO of Deltapath.