Report: VOIP Adoption on Track
05.06.05
BOSTON -- Small, medium, and large organizations participating in Infonetics Research's latest study, User Plans for IP Voice, North America 2005, spent an average of $117,000 on IP voice products in 2003, up 46% in 2004, and plan to increase their spending an additional 9% in 2005.
Resistance to the new technology is fading, indicated by respondents who rated all barriers to deploying IP voice lower this year than last year in a similar Infonetics study.
"There's no denying IP voice is the future, but given all the hype generated over the last year, it's important to keep things in perspective," said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst at Infonetics Research and author of the study. "Although large organizations are adopting IP voice at a decent rate, adoption among small and medium-size organizations is pretty low. But the good news is that awareness of available IP voice products and services has increased among purchase-decision makers."
"On the other hand," Machowinski continued, "Service providers may be disappointed to learn that they have not meaningfully shifted business away from the in-house model with their managed IP voice service offerings. There are a few key barriers left to address before uptake of these services can take off."
Infonetics conducted in-depth interviews with 240 small, medium, and large organizations that use IP voice products and/or services now or will by 2006, as well as 450 shorter interviews to determine VoIP adoption rates, and 362 exit interviews to determine why organizations are not deploying IP voice. Most respondents use in-house IP voice, some use managed IP voice services, and others use a combination of the two.
Study Highlights
29% of large, 16% of medium, and 4% of small organizations will have adopted IP voice by the end of 2005 in North America
Ease of use/manageability, flexibility, and operational cost are the top drivers for adopting IP voice
Deploying IP voice concurrently with other new technology rollouts is the most popular deployment strategy
Among the top reasons cited for not deploying IP voice: the perception that current TDM technology works fine, and the initial cost of IP voice deployment
Hybrid PBXs are the most popular way to provide voice service at respondent headquarter sites, used by 30% now and growing to 38% in 2007
Use of TDM PBX/KTS at headquarter sites is on a sharp decline, from 29% today to 8% in 2007
Only 12% of respondents are solely using IP voice now to replicate basic voice features, the majority of respondents are using IP voice for applications that go beyond basic voice features
Organizations spent an average of $85,000 on managed CPE services in 2003, which is expected to jump 129% to $194,000 by 2006, and spent an average of $158,000 on hosted IP voice services in 2003, which is expected to grow 58% to $249,000 by 2006
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