Tight Budgets Drive SMEs to Hosted VoIP

Hosted IP PBX services are breaking out across North America and it's a good thing because tighter budgets are motivating SMEs to hosted solutions, says Frost & Sullivan.

F&S expects nearly 4 million hosted users in 2013, a large increase from the 860,000 in 2007.  Lack of capital budgets for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is cited as the key driver for the North American hosted IP telephony and VoIP access service markets. Companies can get an advanced solution without spending a lot of money up front and avoid ongoing operating expenses.

The downside to this is a lack of in-house IT staff that can delay the adoption of new IT and/or telecom solutions, forcing smaller business owners to have to sort through and figure out options for themselves. Other problems to adoption include negative perceptions around traditional Centrix services and vendor reliability concerns. SMEs are still judging hosted providers by service quality, reliability, provisioning, pricing, and feature diversity.

For more:
- Read Frost and Sullivan's announcement of its SME Hosted VoIP report

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