Hosted VoIP to bloom as comms market grows
Infonetics claims managed services will prove increasingly popular as firms up their comms spend in 2010
Extending spending: businesses are projected to increase extentions by 15 per cent over the next two years
The comms market is set for a bumper couple of years, with the improving economic climate set to herald increased spending on hardware, services and applications, Infonetics Research has claimed.
The analyst reports that worldwide hardware spending on unified communications (UC), IP telephony and legacy TDM kit stood at $10.4bn last year, an annual drop of 21 per cent. But the picture was beginning to brighten by the year's end, with Q4 spending rising three per cent sequentially to $2.2bn.
Infonetics predicts that the market will return to growth in 2010, fuelled by increased spending on pure IP phone systems. Last year Cisco led the pure IP PBX arena, although Aastra and NEC made "big gains" as the market leader saw sales drop.
Infonetics reports that the lion's share of desktop extensions are now delivered via IP, rather than legacy technology. The number of extensions at the average firm is expected to increase by 15 per cent over the next two years. The projected growth has been attributed to companies increasing headcount and revenue as the economy recovers. Spending on applications is expected to spike 14 per cent this year.
The market for UC and voice over IP (VoIP) services performed impressively last year, with global revenue growing by a fifth to $41.6bn. IP connectivity services are the market's biggest growth area, followed by hosted VoIP and UC services and managed IP PBXs.
Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data for Infonetics, claimed the business comms market had been "hit hard" last year. But he asserted that "the bleeding has stopped and 2010 promises to be a better year ".
"It appears that businesses are increasingly embracing a hosted services model, as their capacity needs will depend on how robust the economic recovery is, and hosted services allow them to more easily ramp their capacity needs up and down without a huge cash layout for equipment," he added.
You may also like
/news/4320341/cisco-chief-strategy-officer-patterson-ai-live-hype
Vendor
Cisco chief strategy officer Patterson: AI is 'going to live up to the hype'
Cisco exec VP and chief strategy officer Mark Patterson tells CRN $1bn global AI investment fund is just the start for Cisco
/news/4268980/analysis-crowdstrike-strikes-platform-siem-wars
Vendor
Analysis: CrowdStrike strikes back in platform, SIEM wars
The cybersecurity giant’s latest quarter shows that CrowdStrike is as formidable as ever in its battle with Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft and Cisco-Splunk.
/news/4268365/cisco-unveils-usd1bn-ai-startup-investment-fund-ai-partnership-nvidia
Vendor
Cisco unveils $1bn AI startup investment fund, new AI partnership with Nvidia
‘[AI is] changing the way businesses communicate with each other. It’s changing the way they leverage technology. And at Cisco, we believe we have a very significant role to play here in really being the trusted partner to help our customers navigate this new era of AI,’ says Mark Patterson, Cisco’s executive vice president and chief strategy officer.